Bert Caldwell: CVB maps out a new promotional course

The publishers of three visitor and dining guides will not have their publications distributed by the Spokane Regional Convention & Visitors Bureau next year. They are not happy campers.

The CVB will also compete for the advertising dollars that sustain Tourmap and Experience Spokane, which produce maps, and Spokane Sizzle, a dining guide.

President Harry Sladich says the CVB must assure that tourism-related printed materials and Web sites have the content and look consistent with its overall image. The other guides, he says, are causing confusion.

“We were using whatever else someone decided to do,” Sladich says. “We should have control over our own publication.”

The maps and Sizzle have been displayed at the Visitor Information Center at 201 W. Main Ave. They have also been included in some bureau mailings.

Although the publishers are CVB members, Sladich says that does not entitle them to free distribution.

Sladich says only the CVB is held to account for its success generating convention and tourist business. Membership fees and a bed tax fund the bureau’s $2.8 million budget, which Sladich says is significantly smaller than those of some like-sized communities competing for the same conventions.

A new CVB map will produce $30,000 in revenue if all the spaces are sold. Small change, but enough to pay for attendance at three more trade fairs a year.

Jeanette Dunn publishes Sizzle, a companion publication to “Idaho Cuisine,” which she started in 1999.

She says the first thing she did when she decided to do a Spokane magazine three years ago was join the CVB. She says she was blind-sided by the bureau’s decision to stop distributing Sizzle.

“I felt like I was a strategic partner,” she says. “I don’t understand why they would take it out of their center and act like I didn’t exist.”

Sizzle was not included in the CVB membership guide, published in January. Sladich says that was a mistake caused by miscommunication with the staff.

Dunn was not made aware of the oversight, and meanwhile renewed her membership. To compensate, the center will distribute Sizzle until next March. Experience Spokane goes off the racks Dec. 31, and Tourmap, Jan. 31.

Dunn says she tried unsuccessfully to reach some accommodation with Sladich.

“There’s a lot of things we could have discussed before they gave me the axe,” she says.

The CVB, which has included a dining guide in its visitors guide for several years, printed an additional 30,000 stand-alone copies this year for the first time.

Dunn, who is preparing the 2008 Sizzle, says she is prepared to compete with the CVB. Her advertisers, she says, depend more on repeat local traffic than one-time visitor walk-ins.

Experience Spokane Publisher Jill Smith says she is not sure she and partner Robert Johnson will produce another map, which she says is not a major moneymaker. The two have other projects in the works.

But Smith says the antique stores, art galleries and other small businesses Experience Spokane targeted will not be able to afford the $300 fee for inclusion on the CVB map, on top of the membership fee.

And she questions whether area hotels and motels, which will be charged nothing to be included on the map, will bother to display any of the other products.

Smith, who has clashed with Sladich before, says her map and associated Web site have helped build visitor interest in Spokane. She wonders why the CVB wants exclusivity, especially with its nonprofit status.

“‘Only’ is not a good word if you are a publicly-funded organization,” she says.

Those public funds, Sladich responds, are revenues produced from room fees dedicated to tourism promotion. Only those who rent rooms are taxed.

Smith and the Seattle-based Tourmap publisher made no attempt to discuss the bureau’s change of policy with him, says Sladich, who adds that the bureau is fortunate to have only a few publications competing for tourism advertising dollars. Some communities have many more maps and guides in the marketplace.

The CVB is not trying to put its competitors out of business, he says, but it makes no sense to distribute products that might confuse visitors.

“I’m making sure I have control over this product.”

Sladich and the CVB do an excellent job promoting Spokane — even Smith says so. But the more promoters, the better. If the market can sustain all these players, all the better. The most important thing is the community remains No. 1.