Destination Marketing Podcast Episode 38: Jonathan Freeze
Jonathan Freeze: Be sure to make it an accounting or a destination wide plan and not just a CBB plan because like I said, even I, at the beginning was somewhat uncertain of what we were about to get ourselves involved in, and I easily could have tried to steer it back into the direction of being a CBB only plan, but I think the comprehensive level of the things that will be talked about in the final report, there have to be more organizations involved than just the CBB. Adam Stoker: Today's show is brought to you by a great partner of ours named Connect Travel. Connect Travel puts on the premiere trade shows and conventions in the destination marketing industry. Coming up in February is the marketing leadership summit and that's February 19th through the 21st in Kissimmee, Florida. We're excited about that event. It has a unique format that we'll talk about a little bit later in the show. Go to ConnectTravel.com if you want more information. We hope to see you there. Adam Stoker: 00:54 Hello everyone, and welcome again to another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast, I'm your host, Adam Stoker. We are excited to have you with us today kicking off 2020 with a bang with some great guests. Last week we were able to have you guys hear a little bit about cultural heritage tourism and Stephanie was a great guest for us. This week we're going in a different direction, just another component of destination marketing. I feel like the more we do, the more we find opportunities to educate and collaborate on destination marketing. Excited to have you with us today. Adam Stoker: We have Jonathan Freeze, he is from the Raleigh, North Carolina Convention and Visitors Bureau. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Jonathan Freeze: Thanks for having me. Adam Stoker: We're excited to have you today. When we were talking before, I realized that this was going to be a great topic for the show today, but before we give it away, what we're going to share with everyone, we always have these ice breakers to ask you a couple of questions, get you going, and then we'll dive into the important stuff. Well, it's all-important, but we'll start with you. Tell me a little bit about what your dream destination is Jonathan if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? Jonathan Freeze: Yeah, I have always, and I haven't ever really done any serious research about this, but I'm going to have to at some point before I get too old to take this kind of trip, but I've always wanted to get to some of the islands in the South Pacific, in that Polynesia area. I don't know why that got stuck in my head many years ago. Perhaps it was from the musical South Pacific, but at any rate, I've always wanted to investigate that a little bit more, and like I said, I should act sooner rather than later, before I feel like I can't possibly make such a long trip. Adam Stoker: Yeah, you know that's one of the few international places that I've actually been, and I've probably talked about it too much here on the show, but it's our favorite place ever. My wife and I went to Fiji and if you need a recommendation for a resort and an amazing experience, the right island to go to, oh man I could talk about Fiji for hours. Jonathan Freeze: All right, you've done my research for me then. Adam Stoker: Yeah, exactly. I'll send you to the right place. Maybe we'll talk when the show's over. Actually, no, why not give them a shout out, it's Matangi Island Resort in Fiji, there are 13 little huts on the island, and it's five-star dining for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Hilarious, all the people at the resort are so fun and fun to joke around with and have a good time. We just became such good friends with everybody by the time we left, it was wonderful. Jonathan Freeze: All right, I'll look into that after the show's over. Adam Stoker: Okay, I like it. Let's talk about where you've been. Your favorite place you've ever been. Jonathan Freeze: 03:46 Ever been, I would say it's probably Athens, and I'm particularly interested in the ancient part of Athens like the Agora. I found that to be a cool place to just picture yourself and put yourself back in time and think about the fact that Socrates and some of the other great thinkers of the world have walked in these same places that on these same paving stones and we're there in front of the acropolis and so on. I think that was probably my favorite place that I have been. Adam Stoker: You know what, I love that. Europe hasn't appealed to me a whole lot over the years, but Greece seems like a really unique place within Europe and I think that's a cool place to go. I've never been there, but I've seen a lot of the pictures and everything. Tell me what your favorite part of Athens was. Jonathan Freeze: Well, of course, you have to see the Acropolis and the Parthenon and all that sort of thing, but I would say I probably spent the most time in the national museum, and I could have spent much longer in there. I think at one point I was running through one of the floors just to truly try to get it all in before they closed. I've always been fascinated by ancient history, and particularly the Greeks and the Romans and so that was a memorable trip, I'd like to get back there one day as well. Adam Stoker: Okay, great. Athens Greece, one more for the bucket list here for me. The problem with asking these questions on every show is my bucket list has gotten about five lifetimes long. Now I don't know what to do with it. Well Jonathan, tell me a little bit about your background and what path led you to where you are today. Jonathan Freeze: Yeah, I grew up in North Carolina and I have been fortunate to stay in North Carolina throughout my life, up until now, I may get out one day, outside the state, but I grew up outside of Charlotte in a small town and I went to a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. I studied, well, I have a lot of different interests, but I ended up doing a double major in psychology and in classics. Here you get into the Greek and the Roman side there, but I learned a lot in classics about writing and it sort of set me up I think to ultimately get into a career in communications, and then destination marketing kind of came along. I think you probably have heard a lot of destination marketers say that it wasn't necessarily what they expected they would do, but they - Adam Stoker: Yeah, I actually love hearing the story. You said it kind of came along, how did it come along? Jonathan Freeze: I knew that from my experiences in classics, I knew that I was a good writer and I wanted to get involved in writing. I figured that was a good way to make some money and get into some kind of industry, like the specialty of communications. I just wasn't sure where I was going to end up, so I found a listing for what was called the Durham CVB at that time, now called Discover Durham, pretty much right out of college. It was an entry-level position, but I got fascinated by the business and all the different, as I said, I always had an interest in all sorts of disciplines, and I found this was a way to combine all of that knowledge that I had gained over the years. Skills that I had learned, and help promote a destination, because you have to know a little bit about map making, and you have to know a little bit about the history of the area, and a little bit about the culture and the restaurants and the food scene and even the residential neighborhoods to some degree. It combined a lot of interest that I had into one interesting career, so it's continued to be interesting to me for almost 20 years now. Adam Stoker: Yeah, and you said you started as an entry-level writer, how did you move into your role today, and what is that role? Jonathan Freeze: 07:40 Right, well today I am director of marketing and communications at Visit Raleigh. I was there in Durham, North Carolina just on the other side of our region for just a little over seven years, and I had a great opportunity to move up in the organization through several different levels. When I left there I was actually the director of brand management and marketing research, but I felt like I wanted to get back into true marketing beyond the research and analytic side, and beyond some of the brand management for CVBs at that time was still in its infancy I would say because that was in the mid-2000s. I saw this opening in Raleigh, and I had the great opportunity, and very pleased to be here now for just a little over 11 years in the marketing and communications role. Adam Stoker: Yeah, Jonathan, I've lived all over the country, and one of the places that I lived was in North Carolina in Greensboro, not too far from where you're at there in Raleigh, and I got to tell you, it is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been, and I know that almost across the whole state has that same beauty. It must be nice to be marketing something that is so easily marketable, right? Jonathan Freeze: It's true. Really both Durham and Raleigh, we are always on a list of accolades and there's always this sense that this is an up and coming part of the country from a variety of different sources, so yeah, it's been a fun place because, like you said, we don't have to convince people that they should check it out, we just have to convince them to actually plan the trip and make the visit. Adam Stoker: That's right. Okay, well, I actually like one of the things you said, you said it's an up and coming area and that dovetails nice into the topic that I want to discuss with you here today and that is that you guys just completed a tourism master plan. Tell me why you created that plan, and I know it kind of relates to the fact that you are an up and coming destination, but tell me about that process, and what is a tourism master plan? Jonathan Freeze: 09:45 Sure. Well, I feel like the tourism master plan is the zeitgeist that is on the cutting edge of the CVB industry at the moment. It's really what I think destination organizations across the country are starting to look at as a way to take a step back and holistically evaluate where they're at as a destination. Some will find that they have a lot of work to do to be sustainable and have the right kind of growth, and others will find that they're really on a good path, but they need some tweaks here and there and things like that. We have come to the end of the destination next assessment the destination international has spent a lot of time on over the past few years when they had a self-assessment tool and we ran that with ourselves, and we ran that with our staff as well as our community. When we came to the end of that phase one of Destination Next, we realized that we were in the quadrant of being a trailblazer destination organization, but we were right over the edge into that quadrant, so we weren't extremely high on either of the variables that study looked at. One of the key findings then at that point was how do we get to where we need to be and two things, we needed to work on advocacy and the local community a bit more, and then we needed to consider doing a destination strategic plan or tourism master plan. At that point, that was right about the early part of 2017, we tried to find a way to carve out the budget and the resources and the time to start this project of a master planning process. Adam Stoker: I'm assuming creating a tourism master plan, which is what came out of that Destination Next training that you guys went through, I'm assuming that's something that you need to bring in an outside partner, outside help for because it's not something that every destination has in their wheelhouse. Tell me a little bit about that process and the selection process, and where you ended up. Jonathan Freeze: 11:54 That's right, we had strategic plans before. So, we had three-year plans or five-year plans, and I must admit too, I think our staff, including myself, didn't fully comprehend at the very beginning how comprehensive that tourism master plan, what the definition of it was, but we quickly learned as we looked at what our peers had started doing and worked on a request for proposals from consultants that potentially could help us. It turned out to be when we figured out where we wanted to take it, that it was going to be at least a year-long project, in our case, it actually turned out to be a 13-month project, but we put together a request for proposals, we did some research, and what types of consultants could help us because we knew that we didn't have the manpower on our staff to completely do it ourselves, that we were going to need some external help. Once we sent out that RFP in early 2017, we got, I think, at least three responses from consultants around the country, and then we were able to form an internal committee and look at those proposals and try to pick which one we felt was the right one to help the Raleigh area. The other important thing I should say there too is that unlike an annual business plan or a three to five-year strategic plan for the bureau, we were looking at this as not just a plan for our organization, but also a plan for the whole destination, for the whole county. It wasn't just about us; it was about what was the right fit for the holistic picture of it all. Adam Stoker: I'm glad you guys looked at it from that angle, because unless you have buy-in from not just the tourism department, but every part of the destination it's most likely to fail. I love the fact that you guys encompassed your entire county in this process. Was it difficult to get everybody on the same page, or did the cream kind of rise to the top when you were looking through the RFP responses? Jonathan Freeze: 13:58 I think that it did take some further questioning and it certainly took some interviews to make sure that we were picking the right team. It took us a few months to evaluate that. We do have a complicated destination as well from the standpoint of the players that are involved. We have one county, but we have 12 cities and towns in the county. We wanted to make sure that the consultant had experience, not just with the urban area, but also with some of the smaller and more rural communities that surround the city of Raleigh as well. We also ended up deciding that we wanted to pick a consultant who had some experience in tourism obviously, but that also had some other experiences in their portfolio. We ended up selecting JLL and they have a tourism and destinations team within their organization. Obviously, it's a huge multinational company. They have a lot of experience in real estate and traditional development world, but they now have this team that's focused specifically on tourism and destinations led by Dan Fitton who is a former destination organization executive. Adam Stoker: Okay, interesting. In the JLL RFP response, what stood out to you as, “you know what, these are going to be the right people to help us?” Jonathan Freeze: Well, as I mentioned, knowing that some folks on the team had actually been the head of a bureau before certainly went a long way, and some folks that we knew, even from their presentations at conferences, that they were experts in the field, and one of the folks on our team actually had some experience in North Carolina as well and had grown up in North Carolina also, so we knew that he would feel the vibe of what was going on, obviously there was a lot of research involved. Each state is different, and I think each region is different and it certainly helps just to have a little bit of historical background there too. Adam Stoker: Great. The 13-month, process, you engage with JLL, tell me about the finished product. What did you learn? What made you nervous? What did you realize you needed to create or do to execute on this plan? Jonathan Freeze: Sure. So it is a 10-year plan. It started in 2019 and now it runs through 2028, just that can boggle the mind a little bit because if you've only had three and five-year plans before, you're not necessarily even ready to think about the future in 2028. Adam Stoker: Yeah, if you're afraid of commitment a 10-year plan is a scary thing, right? Jonathan Freeze: 16:46 It's just something that most bureaus have not committed to before, that's absolutely true. Part of this process across the 13 months was that they looked at 2,000 of our assets, or amenities. They kind of re-inventoried all of the potential assets that could be used in tourism promotion and evaluated them. The finished product, as you mentioned ended up being 159 pages, with a 51-page appendix. Even the size of the report at the end is a lot to take in. Adam Stoker: And this is a detailed document, right? It's not like you can get a cliff notes of eight pages and have all the details, you need all 150 pages. Jonathan Freeze: The bureau staff at the very least has to absorb all of those pages, and we were able to create an executive summary out of it, and some simpler communication tools to use to talk to our stakeholders, but it is a lot to absorb at a glance, and then distill from there and decide what are the first steps that truly can be tackled. JLL certainly outlined eight priorities for us, and they group the plan according to those. There are eight chapters basically within this long report, and that was extremely helpful. I should mention too, this is all online, so if any of the listeners want to look at it, they're certainly welcome to after hearing me talk. Adam Stoker: You know what, let me just stop you really quick on that. We have a LinkedIn group called Destination Marketers and that's where a lot of our listeners will go to collaborate, share ideas, that type of thing. Do you mind if we post it there in the Destination Marketers LinkedIn group? Jonathan Freeze: You certainly can. Adam Stoker: Awesome. Jonathan Freeze: You'll see that there is at the very end here’s a handy timeline, here's the suggested recommendations on what to tackle first and in what order, and also it's not just a bureau plan, as I said, it's really for a number of other stakeholders in the county that it's recommended that they take action as well, and come alongside us and do certain things to achieve the goals of the plan. That was very important to us to have all of the information there is. Certainly, we doubt that all of our stakeholders might have read it from beginning to end, but also have some other summary tools as well and put it online and have it available across the course of the 10 years truly, and even give some implementation updates on the website as well. Adam Stoker: Great, so you got the plan created, what was step one? Was it having a stakeholder meeting to disseminate that plan? Or tell me a little bit about that process. Jonathan Freeze: 19:31 One of the cool things that I feel like we did that could work well for other organizations is we were able to start and end the 13-month project at such a place where it was bookended by our annual meetings. As a destination organization we have an annual meeting for our local partners every year, it happens to be in August in our case, so we were able to publicly kick off the project in August of 2017 and then conclude it in August of 2018, so share the vision and then share the results. Adam Stoker: I mentioned earlier that today's show is brought to you by Connect Travel. Their marketing leadership summit is coming up in February. I had the opportunity to go last year, and it was such an interesting format. It's a format that allows you as a destination to sit down with suppliers for a few minutes, a short period of time, to see if you want to continue the conversation. It allowed me to meet with several people and get to know their needs quickly and build a quick relationship so that we can see if we wanted to continue the conversation. If you're looking for new technologies, new products, new partners, it's a great way to have a quick introduction without taking too much of your time. I hope to see you there February 19 through the 21st in Kissimmee, Florida. President Obama will be speaking this year, so we're excited about that event, and we'll see you there. Wow, yeah, that's pretty great. Did you know it was going to be a 13-month process, or did it just kind of work out that way? Jonathan Freeze: We wanted it to work out that way. I will admit that there were a few nervous moments there when we wondered if we could truly debut it all publicly, but we did, we did pull it off and JLL pulled it off, so I think that helped because that's the time that we have the most of our local partners all in one room at one place and time. We get about 500 of our local partners into that room. That was a great way to begin and end the planning. Obviously, the implementation has only just begun. Adam Stoker: Yeah, I know it's difficult to get 100% stakeholder buy-in, and it's hard to get them to read 158 pages, or whatever, of a document like this, but what has it been like with the community? Because you were able to present that to your stakeholders, what has the buy-in been like since you launched that plan? I know you're in the infancy there as far as implementation but tell me a little bit about that. Jonathan Freeze: Right, well we've been very fortunate that the process has been so engaging, and we ended up having, I think it was just over 1800 individual engagements throughout the 13-months with locals. People did feel that they had a voice in it, JLL was very receptive, and said in every meeting that I attended with them that they were open to anyone sharing anything with them at any time of day, via email, via phone and that was great. So many of our local partners were able to contribute across the course of that year that they did feel they were heard. When the final report came out, they could see things they had said in that written report. Another thing that I think was extremely helpful for a destination like ours where you've got a complicated set of municipal partners is that we were able to produce and JLL was able to create these as well after completing the 159-page report, let's say a two to three-page report for each of our municipalities. They were able to extract what they felt was most relevant from the priorities for each one of those towns and give them their own PDF document that was an overview just for them. I think that's also really made our towns feel like their voices were heard, but also there were specific recommendations that could be given back to them, and many of them are different places in their tourism development. Some don't even have a hotel property in their town yet, but that might be what they need to work on first. Adam Stoker: See, I love that every town got their own document because otherwise, it all kind of falls on the DMO to execute on this plan, but now with that PDF for every town, everybody's got their own to-do list, right? Jonathan Freeze: 23:54 That's right, and we had quarterly meetings with the towns at any rate, but since that time, they've been encouraged also to form a very specific tourism committee for their municipality. It may just be three people let's say, but those three people can run point on a lot of the projects that we need to work on together, and simplify us as a destination organization knowing which department to contact let's say, almost like a liaison type situation where we can get to know each other better over the course of the next 10 years, and I think they can grease the wheels that are needed to be greased whenever we need to work on a project together. Adam Stoker: That's awesome. Were there any uh-ohs, or oh-nos that you uncovered throughout this process about your destination? Jonathan Freeze: I think the question that we ask and JLL ask at each step of the way so when they looked at all these assets that we have, they were always asking, “what is the highest and best use of that particular thing.” There's certainly a lot of things throughout the area that we found were not being put to their highest and best use, not to say that it was bad, not to say that it was intentionally being squandered, the resources being squandered or something, but just that if you have tourism in mind perhaps we need to do this a different way, or perhaps this facility whenever the next time it's renovated, these things could be taken into account or if we're going to have some money free up from our public tax offers that build a new facility, then we should keep these certain things in mind because it's very important to sport's tourism. We just looked at things from a lot of different ways. I think a good example is our convention center, which is just over 10-years-old now. That's an example of it's not a negative thing, it's been maintained very well, but every building needs to be optimized in a certain way the next time that it's renovated or expanded and so the plan talks about, for example, factors that we should keep in mind whenever we're making physical improvements to the building. It also talks about some ways that our sales team can sell the building and attract certain kinds of business that will fill it optimally. Adam Stoker: That's really good. I think about the convention center example, and it's like you know what, when that thing was built 10 years ago it was built for a different target audience or persona than the convention center will be when it's updated. So having those factors in mind as you go to update or remodel something like a convention center, that's the point of this tourism master plan, right? It's not, “let's not all just do it on our own, but we're all buying into the same master strategy or plan,” right? Jonathan Freeze: 26:47 That's exactly right, and planners, I should say that too, all of the feedback wasn't just local planners where certainly one of the audiences that were consulted in the research phase of the process and they told us their most recent feelings about Raleigh whether they had many of the ones that were surveyed had been here within the course of the last 10 years. So yeah, to your point it's actually the tourism master planning process can take into account a lot of the local stakeholder needs, but it can also take the consultants expertise and kind of what the market wants and what is happening on a national level and kind of translate that down to the destination level as well. Adam Stoker: Okay. How about the idea that this master plan is accurate? Because I think there's a lot of different research that could be debunked, or it's like hey the methodology here was a problem or whatever. Somebody always wants to push back when you roll out an initiative like this. So tell me how you were able to monitor and be aware of the accuracy of this plan? Jonathan Freeze: Sure, well one important thing was that we did form a steering committee at the beginning of the process. We tried to pull a wide range of folks; I think it ended up being I want to say 18-ish folks that agreed to serve on a steering committee from different local industries including some that were just allied with tourism. So they were almost like a sounding board for the consultants throughout the process as well, so being that they had such a local depth of knowledge and such a breadth of knowledge as well, from representing different parts of the county as well as different industries, it was good to have that as a sounding board as well, and say “does this sound right? This is what the surveys are seeming to indicate, or we went out and did site visits at these 20 places, and this is what we're starting to think, but does that seem right based on your county-wide history.” I think that was helpful to keep things accurate, and I think it's important also that there be some kind of already established degree of engagement between the CBB and the community because going into a project like this if the CBB is out of touch completely with the county then that's not necessarily going to work either, because to your point, you're not going to be able to do the ground-truthing of whether what we're finding is right, and whether it could even work. Adam Stoker: Yeah, but I'm glad that you had that steering committee because even though every stakeholder didn't have the opportunity to be on the committee, it's an organized group of people that they all kind of know, like and trust, and can buy into that verification that you got through the steering committee. I like that as a way to make sure that you're getting an accurate plan. As other destinations say, “Okay should I do something like this?” what do they need to be aware of? Maybe the amount of work that it's going to take, or the types of stakeholder buy-in that they're going to need? What should people be considering as they say okay, does my destination need a tourism master plan. Jonathan Freeze: 30:04 Sure, I think we touched on one already, which is be sure to make it a county or a destination wide plan and not just a CBB plan because, like I said, even I at the beginning was somewhat uncertain of what we were about to get ourselves involved in, and I easily could have tried to steer it back into the direction of being a CBB only plan, but I think the comprehensive level of the things that will be talked about in the final report, there have to be more organizations involved than just the CBB. I would also talk with some others, listen to some podcasts like this or listen to some presentations like this, and talk with somebody- Adam Stoker: Only this one. Only this one Jonathan. Just kidding. Jonathan Freeze: Talk with some others that you know, peers in the industry that might have gone through something like this and be sure that you also are aware of the time and the commitment that it's going to take. A 13-month project is not an easy thing to tackle, because we know that bureaus are always maxed out for time, they always feel they don't have enough resources, so make sure that you are fully aware of what you're about to get into whenever you embark on this kind of project. Then, I think the last thing that occurs to me is that we have a tendency to forget the small details, which are not small to the bureau staff that has to work on them. Things like the IT department, and do we have the systems information systems in place that can handle some of the recommendations that come out of the tourism master plan, do we have the right CRM database that can do the right analytics and reporting that we're going to need. Maybe our analytics that we've used for the past 10 years is not what's going to carry us into the future and be able to give us the type of insights that we need to accomplish the goals in the plan. So that can be overlooked, unless you go into the project with that in mind, and at each step of the way you're thinking okay, how much are we going to need to set aside of our staff time and resources in the future to just be able to track the information that's now going to come at us in new ways when we get to the end of this planning process. Adam Stoker: That's great. And just for clarification purposes, there are some other great podcasts in the industry. In fact, I got Bill Geist on our scheduled guests coming through and he's got a great podcast in the industry. Definitely tongue in cheek when I say only ours. Okay, Jonathan, budget, let's talk budget. I'm not asking you what did Raleigh spend, but give me kind of a range of what a destination probably is looking at as they evaluate doing a tourism master plan. Jonathan Freeze: 32:42 Sure, I would say at least six figures, but depending on the size of the destination and maybe I'm wrong, it's a very small destination, but I would say if it's a size of destination of Raleigh or larger, then I would say maybe even up to 300 or $400,000 is not unreasonable. Maybe $500,000 isn't unreasonable for a destination even larger than Raleigh. It's not a small undertaking. We were able to, because of that 13-month project plan, we were able to split ours across two fiscal years as well, which was helpful in terms of the payment. Adam Stoker: Yeah, you know I'm really glad you share the budget information with us because to take on a project like this, you better feel pretty confident about your ability to get everybody on the same page, because the worst thing you can do, and I've seen destinations do things like this, spend the money, get the information, and then at the end, nobody's prepared to act on it. The commitment, not only because of the amount of work, but the amount of budget and really kind of sacred tax revenue that's going into that, I think it's critical to make sure that you're confident you're going to be able to get buy-in from your stakeholders to execute on a project like this. Jonathan Freeze: That's right. I think also be able to set a visionary goal for yourself at the beginning too, like in our case, we felt that we wanted to reach 21.7 million visitors by 2028, so we kind of set that out as a vision at the beginning of the project. When we started the project we're about 15 million, so we looked into our numbers and we tried to think of what's attainable for the destination, but also what's not going to tax the destination too heavily in terms of those types of visitation numbers, but I think that's also helpful at the beginning and that also causes your stakeholders to say here's a very tangible reason why we're going to spend this money because it is very important that we smartly execute over the next 10-years if we want to be the type of healthy destination that we picture ourselves as. Adam Stoker: Yep, I love that. Here's where we want to go and if all of you want to reap in the benefits and success that comes along with achieving this goal, then guess what the tourism master plan is our roadmap to get there and we need all of your help. I think that's really good. I'm just going to say my piece here on a tourism master plan. One thing I've seen, even here in the agency as we work with destinations is it's difficult if you're kind of in the day to day to take a step back and look at things holistically, and to say, “okay yes I'm writing this piece of content, or yes I'm running this digital campaign, but what's our north star that we're all working towards.” I love that a tourism master plan, not on an individual basis, but for the entire destination everybody gets the opportunity to see the holistic plan and roadmap and then everybody knows what they're working towards, right? Jonathan Freeze: 35:56 Yep, that's exactly right. One of the things that we've done at the end of our planning process or the first thing that we did in terms of setting out what our staff needed to do was start to translate it into our annual business plan, so of course, we still have those plans in place, but now are we able to take that annual plan and truly relate it back to what the overall 10-year plan says that we should be accomplishing in that time frame. Adam Stoker: I love it. Okay, all right Jonathan, what's next for Raleigh. What do you guys have going on next? What's the future look like? You got your plan. Jonathan Freeze: That's right, and you can look at the plan as well, we'll put the plan out there. We are now halfway through our technical year one, which would be 2019 through the 2020 fiscal year. I think that part has gone well so far. We're finding that we're getting traction on the things that we're supposed to have been accomplishing in year one, we're about to get ready for year two, and prepare our next annual business plan according to the master plan. We've got some things brewing. I'm even surprised to some degree how well it's going in terms of what we were talking about with our stakeholders where we've got the county is now going through a process where they are seeking proposals to start spending some of the money that we have available from the hotel occupancy taxes and the other hospitality taxes in the area to make improvements to facilities throughout the county. We're going to, we've got our convention center that's looking at specifically some short-term things that they can do to improve the appearance of the building, but at the same time our sales team is working on those priorities for booking the right business into the center at the right time. So that's underway. We've also got some plans happening from the private development sector where they're looking at, can they build some new hotels within the market? Our towns have recently had a meeting with a variety of hotel developers who flew in and met with them and talked with them about what they would like to see happen in their towns. There's a lot of physical development that people are looking at that I think we're going to have coming online in the next couple of years. Adam Stoker: Sounds like an exciting place to be. Jonathan Freeze: It is. Adam Stoker: Great. Is there anything, Jonathan, that I haven't asked you that you feel like would benefit our audience? Maybe a better piece of your experience that you could share with everybody that you wish you knew back when you started or something like that. Jonathan Freeze: 38:37 Sure. I think, and we touched on this just a moment ago to some extent. I think start well in advance of the project kickoff talking with your staff at the destination organization, just about the concept of change. And it may be difficult for folks at all levels of the organization to truly grasp what's about to happen, but I think the more talk about it upfront, and just talk about the internal philosophy of change and how leadership and management would like to see us achieve the vision that's attached to the planning process that we're about to truly have a totally comprehensive outside view of everything that's happening in the county from a tourism standpoint, and just getting ourselves ready for that. Nobody likes to be surprised by negative information or we could say here's the opportunity, it's not a challenge it's an opportunity, but if you get what I'm saying. You have to go in, as you said yourself a moment ago, if you are going to spend this kind of money and go into such an in-depth planning procedure, you've got to be mentally prepared to feel good about the change that's going to have to take place, and that could be anything like I say, the way that IT is deploying software for the bureau staff to use, all the way up to talking with your elected officials about the changes that may have to happen to some policies, or to the way that we're spending our tax dollars that go to capital projects and so on. Adam Stoker: Great advice. Jonathan, this has been fun. Jonathan Freeze: Yes. Thanks again for having me. Adam Stoker: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show. I think this is a topic that I don't think gets discussed as openly as we have today in a lot of cases, and I appreciate you being willing to be a little bit vulnerable and share the process that you went through with the destination for this tourism master plan. I think it's going to benefit a lot of our listeners. Adam Stoker: Reminder to everybody who's listening for us to continue to grow as a podcast and grow our listener base, and we're so excited because we're going to hit 10,000 downloads sometime in the next week, and it's kind of spiraled beyond anything we ever expected when we first started the show. Adam Stoker: So thank you to everybody for listening and continuing to listen and subscribing. We'd love to have anybody who's enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review that helps us continue to climb up and have more destinations benefit from the wisdom from guests like Jonathan gave us here today. Thanks everybody, and we'll talk to you next week.
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