Transcript:
Leon Downey: [00:00:00] I would encourage destinations to do as much research as they possibly can to find a way to ask their guests what's important to them because it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what they think. It matters what that mom who sits out and thinks what she likes, what she doesn't like. Does she feel safe coming here? All those kinds of things.
Adam Stoker: [00:00:20] Today's episode is brought to you by Relic. As many of you know, I own an advertising agency called Relic and we work specifically with tourism destinations. If there's any of you that are struggling with what to do next, or you've tried agencies that don't specialize in tourism, or if you've been using the local flavor for years and years and you're just looking for something new, I would say give us a call. Give us the opportunity to take a look at your plan, see what you're doing. Use our tourism knowledge and industry specialty to examine everything from your brand to your tactical execution and make recommendations of how to help. We'll do that assessment for free. We'll give you those recommendations for free. And if you like what we say, maybe you can hire us to execute on those plans. So a risk-free opportunity to have us take a holistic look at everything you're doing, provide some recommendations and you can see us in action.
If you're interested in having us do something like that, please send me an email directly at adam@relicagency.com. I would love to set that up with my team.
Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of The Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. If I sound a little different, it's because I have taken the show on the road. We are in Tennessee this week and we have several stops along the way. But this pandemic has caused us to be in unique situations wherever we go, and I'm sure everybody's feeling that. So while I'm in Tennessee, we are actually doing a remote recording with our friend, Leon Downey. He's from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. And Leon, welcome to the show.
Leon Downey: [00:02:06] Thank you, Adam. I appreciate the opportunity to share with your audience.
Adam Stoker: [00:02:09] Oh, absolutely. We're excited to have you. Pigeon Forge is a unique destination. It's going to be a lot of fun to dive into Pigeon Forge as a destination. But before we do, we've got a couple of icebreaker questions we like to ask just to get the juices flowing a little bit. So I got to ask you, Leon, what is your dream destination? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Leon Downey: [00:02:32] Well, that's an easy question to answer, Adam. I'm at my dream destination. I'm a native Tennessean. Lived here my whole life except for some army time. And part of that army time was spent in Hawaii. But you have the best of both worlds here. We have America's most visited national park seven miles from the city. We have over 70 attractions here in our city, and it's just a great destination to promote. I've worked in three other cities doing the same kind of work here in Tennessee. Tourism is important in those three cities, but it's not the only game in town like it is here. Tourism is the only industry we have here. I've been here for 32 years and the city supports us. I've worked for the same city manager the whole time I've been here, have a very supportive city commission. They understand that if we're not out marketing the city of Pigeon Forge, our business community can't be as successful as they are.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:24] Okay. I like it. I’ve got to tell you though, Leon. You may have cheated a little bit on that question and that's okay. You went with your own destination. I'm excited to talk about Pigeon Forge today. Let's say outside of your destination, what's your backup plan? If you could go anywhere else in the world, where would that be?
Leon Downey: [00:03:47] Well, again, as I mentioned earlier, I spent some time in Hawaii while I was in the army after I graduated from college, and I absolutely love Maui. If I could live anywhere in the world after I retired it would be Maui. It's just a paradise as far as I'm concerned. The weather there's always amazing. Love the ocean, so if I could live anywhere in the world after I retire it'd be Maui.
Adam Stoker: [00:04:07] Got it, got it. I've never been to Maui and I have a trip booked right now for November to Maui.
Leon Downey: [00:04:14] Hope you go.
Adam Stoker: [00:04:15] But if the regulations don't change, then I might have to cancel it. So we'll have to see if that 14-day quarantine gets lifted.
Leon Downey: [00:04:22] Yeah, they're really struggling over there. Their economy is based pretty much on tourism too, one of their main staples. So they're really hurting. I try to keep up with what's going on over there. They're 6,000 miles away from the West coast so they're very isolated there.
Adam Stoker: [00:04:37] Yeah. That's the balance that everybody's having to try to figure out right now is we obviously want to make sure that we keep everybody healthy, but we also have to protect the economy. And every city, every state has a different situation, right? And everybody has to manage it in their own way, but what a challenge for every destination to try to figure out what the correct balance is there.
Leon Downey: [00:05:04] It truly is. Yeah. In Hawaii. And I was chosen not to allow people in without quarantining them for 14 days, so their cases are low, but their economy's really suffering right now because it's so dependent on tourism.
Adam Stoker: [00:05:16] Yeah. Yeah. Crazy stuff. Okay. Let's get into Pigeon Forge. I'd love to hear a little bit about you, Leon, and how you got into tourism.
Leon Downey: [00:05:26] Sure. When I got out of the army, my degree is in communications, so when I got out of the army, I was fortunate to land my first job in the tourism industry with the Smoky Mountain Visitors Bureaus as their marketing director. Spent three years there with them and then moved to the Oak Ridge Convention and Visitor's Bureau where I was the first executive director of that organization. Was there for, I guess, about two years and then the City of Knoxville, Tennessee called me and asked me to be their tourism development manager. So I spent five years there. From there, then the folks here in Pigeon Forge asked me to come to be their executive director. So that was 32 years ago this past April. So love being here, love the people of this community. It's a great community because tourism, as I mentioned is our only industry and the business community really works well with us. We're a little bit different than probably a lot of the people you're doing with your podcast in that we're city employees. We serve the same function as the Convention and Visitor's Bureau, but we're city employees because the city feels like tourism is our number one industry. And that's why we're city employees.
Adam Stoker: [00:06:36] Oh, that's an interesting dynamic.
Leon Downey: [00:06:40] It truly is. It's unusual.
Adam Stoker: [00:06:41] Yeah. One of the things that I kept hearing as you were walking through your background, I kept hearing, "Well, they asked me to come here. They asked me to come here." You must be doing a good job if you've got multiple destinations seeking you out and asking you to come help out.
Leon Downey: [00:06:58] Well, I've been blessed. That's all I can say, Adam.
Adam Stoker: [00:07:00] That's great. That's great. Well, let's talk about Pigeon Forge. You gave me a little bit of an overview of Pigeon Forge as a destination. Tell me what you feel like is the competitive advantage that Pigeon Forge has that maybe other destinations don't. I know you've got access to the national park. That's very close, eight miles away I think you said.
Leon Downey: [00:07:23] Right.
Adam Stoker: [00:07:24] What's the essence of Pigeon Forge?
Leon Downey: [00:07:28] The big thing for us is that we're centrally located in the Eastern part of the United States. We're within a day's drive of two-thirds of the US population East of the Mississippi River. We have excellent interstate access with I75 North/South, I40 East/West and I81 out of the Northeast. So we're primarily a drive destination and that works well for us. Even when the economy is bad, when gas is high, we continue to do well. The only time that I've been here in 32 years that we have been down and in tourism is in 2008 when the economy crashed. We were down 8%. in 2009, we were down 4%. And until this pandemic hit, we'd never been down and all those period of times. Each year the economy grows here. And again, the other thing is a lot of people might not know about this destination is we do a lot of research and it tells us that any season of the year, at least 80% of the people who come here are repeat guests. And many of those people come multiple times throughout the course of the year. I think the reason they come is that Pigeon Forge again is unusual in that we're never static. There are always new attractions, new hotels, new restaurants. There's always something new for people to come and see and do here. So these people have ownership of this destination. The other thing that works for us that's unique is that we have our sister cities to the South of us in Gatlinburg, which is seven miles down the road, and joining our North city boundary limits is the city of Sevierville. So there are three destinations here that most people see as one destination. If you're from Birmingham, Alabama, you walk out your front door here and you see the Great Smoky Mountains. You can't miss the Great Smoky Mountains. So when you ask these guests where they went on vacation, they'll say the Smoky Mountains, but when you delve down into it, they'll say that "Well, I stayed in Pigeon Forge." But the research is very clear that when people are here, they're visiting all three cities and spending money in all three cities. So that really works in our benefit that we have a great location. We have our sister cities that our guests see as one destination, and we're never static. It's a great city to promote. It's easy to promote this city and it's a family vacation destination. That's what we're all about is family vacations.
Adam Stoker: [00:09:46] Well, that brings up a question for me, Leon, and that's that you've got these sister cities that are really close. The research shows that the visitors are seeing these three destinations combined as one destination. How do you work together with those other two destinations and make sure that your messaging and marketing are unified?
Leon Downey: [00:10:11] That's a great question, Adam. We're friendly competitors. Gatlinburg wants its visitors to stay there and spend all their money. Sevierville wants the same thing and so do we. But we all realize that we're interdependent on each other. So if Gatlinburg is successful in attracting visitors or Sevierville's successful in attracting visitors, then we win. Again, research, we do a lot of research and our guests are spending money in all three. And then what we do in markets like Chicago that none of us have enough media in because it's such an expensive media market, the three cities go together to Chicago into places like Washington, DC. At that point in time, we promote the Smoky Mountains rather than our individual cities, because somebody in Chicago may never have heard of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee or Gatlinburg or Sevierville, but they more than likely have heard about the Great Smoky Mountains. So we work really well with each of our sister cities and our counterparts. Our staffs work very well together and do a lot of joint promotions together in bigger markets where none of us have enough media dollars to make much of an impact.
Adam Stoker: [00:11:16] Awesome. Yeah. It sounds like you guys have found that healthy balance between when you separate your funds and when you join them together and help each other out. Sounds like a pretty healthy relationship.
Leon Downey: [00:11:28] It truly is. It works for all three of us and all three cities and our city managers and city commissioners all realize that we have to work together to be successful. And that's just one way we work together. They work together with highways, through transportation, through water, through landfills. All of those things, the three cities and the county work very closely together because we're so dependent on each other.
Adam Stoker: [00:11:54] Got it. Okay. Well, I know one major attraction within your destination is Dollywood, and obviously, Dollywood is world-famous and it's a theme park. And as most theme parks, when COVID hit, everything changed. Do you mind walking me through a little bit about kind of what that experience was like and what that timeline has been for Dollywood in Pigeon Forge?
Leon Downey: [00:12:20] Sure. Dollywood is the most ticketed attraction in the State of Tennessee. They had almost 3 million visitors last year. So they got shut down when the State of Tennessee and shelter in place order came down from the governor. Actually, Dollywood was in the park. They were getting ready to open the park the first weekend in March and were going to open. They opened to their season pass holders and media. Then the next day they were planning to open the park. And that's when we had to shut down the park, shut down the city basically. They reopened it with the Tennessee Pledge, which is the guidelines that allowed our business community to reopen. They reopened on June the 15th. The President of Dollywood told me they had to make over 700 operational changes to their business model in order to reopen. They had a plan for each of each restaurant, each ride, each retail outlet. They had to make a separate plan for reopening each of those stores and attractions. So they made, like I say, 700 operational changes.
Adam Stoker: [00:12:20] Wow.
Leon Downey: [00:13:29] They're taking temperatures when they come in, our guests come in the park. They're making them wear masks and they've put sanitation stations throughout the whole park. So they've made a huge change. Of course, it's limited the number of people who can come to the park. And again, it's an economic driver. It's the largest employer in our city and in our county, so it's really devastated a lot because they've had to limit how many people can be in the park at any one time.
Adam Stoker: [00:14:00] Got it. Wow. That is a huge change. 700 operational changes is not just like, "Oh, hey, let's put a mask on and call it good." They went through every process they have and tried to make sure it's operational for COVID.
Leon Downey: [00:14:17] Their plan was amazing. They went through it with us. It was just how much detail went into it so that they could reopen safely to keep our guests safe and to keep their employees safe. And people, I think I saw on TripAdvisor where people are saying that they feel very safe there now even through the pandemic because of the changes that Dollywood made. For instance, they have 40 different music shows a day at the park, but all those used to be indoor theaters primarily. All those venues now are moved outside. So all those shows are taking place outside again, to take care of outdoor theaters in order to keep everybody safe.
Adam Stoker: [00:14:54] Wow. That's got to be such a fascinating thing to see. I would imagine that with all the pent-up travel demand that's out there, as soon as they opened their doors they were busy again.
Leon Downey: [00:15:06] They were. Again, they're not doing as much business as they normally would do at this time of the year, through the summer, but they're making money is what… That's the main thing, keeping the people employed.
Adam Stoker: [00:15:20] That's right. Yeah. As the biggest employer in your area, that's a huge, important point. So I guess that brings up another question for me. I know we're going a little off the outline here, but with Dollywood being the biggest employer within your destination, what was the temperature of the destination when everything shut down?
Leon Downey: [00:15:44] Well, last year we had north of 7 million people here in the city of Pigeon Forge guests. And it was really eerie once the city sort of shut down. Our business were forced to close and the order came down to shelter in place. It was the last half of March and all of April we were a ghost town primarily until the Tennessee Pledge allowed our businesses to open up in increments. Now basically everything's back open, but we're still at 50% capacity basically. So you go into a restaurant and every other table around you is empty because of the COVID and safety features. So we're open for business and seeing guests, but not as many as we normally would see at this time of the year.
Adam Stoker: [00:16:32] Yeah. Well, I know that when you guys realized what was going on with the pandemic and what it was going to do to your destination, you quickly pivoted from a destination marketing organization to a news organization. Tell me how that came about and what that experience was like.
Leon Downey: [00:16:52] That's a great question, Adam. Being city employees, we're the marketing organization for the whole city of Pigeon Forge and the city government, and because we are the marketing organization, we also handle the city's public relations. So we're the natural organization in the city to talk to our businesses, talk to our residents. So we really had to step up our efforts in communicating. Every time there was a change in the Tennessee Pledge guidelines, we were the organization that had to push that out to our business community and make our residents aware of that. So it's been a huge undertaking for us. Since March, our marketing staff, along with our agency staff, have a traditional agency that's been with us for 30-something years and then our digital social agency has been with us for 20.
Adam Stoker: [00:17:44] Wow.
Leon Downey: [00:17:44] So we worked really close to those people to push that information out, not only to our businesses but to our residents and also to our guests. So it's just been a huge undertaking. Our marketing staff and our agency staff have done an amazing job and our city commissioners and our city manager and our business community really appreciate it, because a lot of our businesses, the vast majority of our businesses are smaller businesses. They don't have a big staff to do marketing and things of that nature. So they depend on the city of Pigeon Forge to keep them informed about what's going on. At that time, early in March, we had to pause our marketing efforts. So that was our focus primarily is like you said, being a news agency for the residents, for our businesses and for our guests.
Adam Stoker: [00:18:32] Yeah. In just a moment I want to get a little deeper into that experience and how you guys were able to make that pivot. Some of these relationships that you have with these agencies are some really long-standing relationships. I'm sure that was a very big benefit when you had to make this pivot, but we're going to take a quick break first and then we'll dive back in.
Leon Downey: [00:18:57] Good deal, Adam.
Adam Stoker: [00:18:59] You guys, I have been working on something for the last six months that has been such a giant project, but I'm so proud of it. I'm excited to announce that I've just released my book. It's called Touchpoints and it's the destination marketers guide to brand evaluation and enhancement. It is a comprehensive guide for destinations to look at their brand, evaluate what you've done, and make a very clear and detailed plan of action of how to fix it. Look, I'm biased, right? Because I wrote it, but I think it's so good. I think it's a great guide and I'm really, really happy with how it turned out. I wanted to tell you guys about it. It's available on Amazon. Search Touchpoints by Adam Stoker and you'll be able to get that book for your destination. I think it's going to be, especially for anyone that is trying to look at their brand holistically, this is the book for you. So check it out. Leon, you stuck with your traditional agency you said for 30 years, and obviously, it predates you being at Pigeon Forge. Then you stuck with your digital and social agency for 20 years. What's the benefit that you've seen from being able to have such a long-standing relationship?
Leon Downey: [00:20:22] I think one of the reasons Pigeon Forge has been successful as a tourism destination is because we have that consistency with both of our agencies. Both of those agencies have some of their best account people working on our camp because we've been with them so long that their business, the agencies' businesses have grown. We're no longer they're our largest client in most cases. But again, there's this connection that our staff, our city, our businesses have with the agencies and the agencies have that connection with us. So they give us their best effort. We talk to those folks on a daily basis. They're here all the time. Actually, the digital agency's out of Austin, Texas, but they have a person in Nashville that works for us down there full-time. We go through agency reviews. We have to go through agency reviews every five years or so. The agency reviews that they've done in the time I've been here with the committee, I and the city manager don't have a vote in that. None of the city commissioners have a vote in what agencies. It's the business community that backs us. And each time they go through the agency reviews, people have always said, "Well, why would we go away from these two agencies because we've got the best?" They know us and we know them. So it's really a great relationship to have a lot of communities I know go through different agencies, turnover all the time, but we have that consistency with them. So they understand how Pigeon Forge businesses work, how Pigeon Forge government works. And again, those businesses in town call on our agencies for advice and they give advice to them. It's just a great working relationship.
Adam Stoker: [00:22:03] Yeah. It sounds like it. And some of our people listening might be sitting there thinking no relationship is perfect. There's got to be bumps in the road here or there, and I'm sure there have been for you. So knowing that you've been with this agency or these agencies for this long, how do you handle it when there's a bump in the road when there's a problem or a mistake and you have to address it with the agency?
Leon Downey: [00:22:28] Well, we just have to be open and honest, you know? If we've made a mistake or they've made a mistake, then we have to ... We're friends. It's business, but we just have to do the right thing. You're exactly right. We've had issues sometimes that are thorny, but you address it head-on and move on. It's always worked out because they're trying to do the right thing, we're trying to do the right thing. And again, we have that. It's a bond, a friendship that we have. And so you don't really ever do anything that's going to jeopardize that friendship and that relationship.
Adam Stoker: [00:23:00] Got it. Okay. Well, I want to go back a little bit. You mentioned that you guys had to pivot to a news organization. It feels like we're nearing the time when things are going to start to migrate back to the way things were. It'll never be the same, right? But your role will start to go back to more of a destination marketing organization over time. Have you guys thought a lot about how and when that transition takes place or are you still in the middle of it? What does that look like for you?
Leon Downey: [00:23:33] I think probably because we have been so involved in communicating with our residents and our visitors, I'd say they're going to expect us to continue doing that. That's another function for our department. But again, we also have to communicate regularly with our guests. We have a huge database, email database, a newsletter database that we communicate with regularly. So we're starting to push out our marketing right now. It's not encouraging people to come. It's just trying to keep Pigeon Forge top of mind and encourage them to travel responsibly. I think travel responsibly is going to be on everybody's radar for a long time until we get through this pandemic. We have to encourage our guests to wear a mask and social distancing and we need to be respectful and keep them safe. But they also owe us that as a community too to keep our employees and our residents safe.
Adam Stoker: [00:24:29] Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So your recovery campaign right now as far as where you're at is still in the keep it top of mind, but we're not doing acquisition marketing at this time.
Leon Downey: [00:24:41] Correct. Yes. It's just letting people know we're here and when they're ready to travel, we're here and that our businesses are open even though they're at this point in time, again, what's the word I'm trying to say? They're not at full capacity because of the guidelines from the State of Tennessee.
Adam Stoker: [00:24:58] Yep. Okay. So from a tactical standpoint, when you are able to do acquisition marketing again, have you guys outlined what your tactics are going to be and how they're going to be different than what they were before?
Leon Downey: [00:25:12] Again, we'll meet with agencies when we start getting back into marketing. And the other thing too, Adam, that we do, it's really easy for us to do is because when people are here visiting they're here as guests primarily. We're not like the other cities where I've worked where tourism is just part of the game here. Here tourism is the only industry so we do a lot of research. We ask our guests constantly what they like, what they don't like, what they want to see more of, what they don't want to see more of and all of those. So we're constantly asking our guests those kinds of questions. So we're learning in this pandemic what they ... The big thing right now is they want to be assured that we're doing things safely here is what the research is telling us before they come back. So you can't ask enough questions. You can't do enough research in my opinion. And in a lot of destinations in my experience, the other three destinations where I've worked in Tennessee didn't have the ability to do the research that we do. If you're in a city like Knoxville, Tennessee, you have business travelers, you have transient people though on the interstate, and then you also have convention meetings and tourists as well. So it's really hard to do the kind of research that we're able to do here because tourism is the only industry here. So it's just constantly asking them what they want to see more of and what they feel safe with right now is what we're doing.
Adam Stoker: [00:26:27] Yeah. That's a real advantage for you to be able to know that who you're talking to is one specific type of visitor. And you're not getting your answers skewed in the research because you've got one type of traveler. I think that that's an interesting benefit that you guys have.
Leon Downey: [00:26:45] It truly is. It's unique and that's a word that gets overutilized a lot, but tourism's the only game in town. I'll give you a perfect example, Adam, how dependent our tourism industry is here. When I went to have my eyes examined in March before the pandemic started, my optometrist, the first question he asked me when I showed up at his office is what kind of a tourism season we were going to have here. You think why would an optometrist want to know that? Because he's dependent on his, his clients are dependent on the tourism industry here, and if they don't have a good year, they might not be able to buy glasses for their kids and things like that. So it's really interesting that people understand here in this community that if it wasn't for tourism, they wouldn't have their businesses, a lot of it.
Adam Stoker: [00:27:30] Well, I see a couple of benefits from that for you and your office. One is the residents of your community have never understood better the value that you bring to the community. That's always got to be a refreshing thing to have people understand what you do and the impact that you have on the community. I know there are some destinations that maybe it's not so easy to answer that question. So that's really interesting. What other benefits or positives do you feel have come out of the pandemic for you and your team?
Leon Downey: [00:28:04] Again, I think it's brought the community closer together. We had a major wildfire here in 2016, in November of 2016, which brought our community together with our businesses and our residents. Again, we're used to going through difficult times and pulling together. I think that's part of the resiliency that we have here as a destination, not just in Pigeon Forge, but our sister cities of Gatlinburg and Sevierville too. Again, working together with them, even though we're friendly competitors, we rely on each other so much in so many ways that we're blessed to be this close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is America's most visited national park. This park also is different and unique in that it doesn't have an admission charge. So last year they had over 12 million visitors in this national park. I think again, because there's no admission charge and because we're so centrally located in the Eastern part of the United States and we're a drive destination, even in tough times, it seems like in the 32 years I've been here this destination does a lot better than other destinations that I'm familiar with that had depended on flights and things of that nature.
Adam Stoker: [00:29:14] Yeah, which makes COVID an even bigger shock to the system, right? When you guys have outperformed a lot of other destinations and other crises, like the recession in 2007, 2008 or 2008 to 2009, excuse me, 9/11. You guys probably outperformed the competition. But when everything shuts down, that's a game-changer.
Leon Downey: [00:29:39] It truly is. And every destination's going through the same thing we are. We had the fires in 2016, and so we focused on the recovery message and that, and let people know we're here. But every destination in the world is dealing with the same things we are right now, unfortunately.
Adam Stoker: [00:29:56] Yep. Yep. Well, you touched on it earlier. You said, "Hey, we've been talking to the community so much that I expect they'll want us to continue when this is all said and done." What else do you see as far as changes or pivots that you've made that you think will continue after things, whatever this new normal turns out to be that it will continue to be a part of your process?
Leon Downey: [00:30:23] Good question. I have to think about that a minute. Again, I think we're always going to continue to work closely with our business partners and even our residents depend on us. We do newsletters too on behalf of the city of Pigeon Forge that the city manager and the city staff help us to provide information to our residents. The other thing about that is we only have 6,238 permanent residents, but that's pretty amazing to be such a small --
Adam Stoker: [00:30:51] Well, considering your visitorship, that's wild.
Leon Downey: [00:30:53] It is. The other thing that's pretty interesting and people would not realize it, again, we have 14,592 lodging units in our city. So we have twice as many lodging units as we have residents or more than twice as many.
Adam Stoker: [00:31:09] Wow.
Leon Downey: [00:31:10] Yeah, but then you think about the infrastructure that is required to provide that many services, city services like water and sewer. Even though we only have 6,238 residents, we have a water treatment plant that produces 11 million gallons of water a day, same with wastewater. We have 68 sworn police officers because on any day you can have 50,000 or more than 100,000 people here when we have events in town. So our residents have to realize, I'm sure they don't like the traffic that some of our events create, but they also understand that tourism is what keeps their taxes low. We have the best city services that you could possibly have. So it's a really unique situation here.
Adam Stoker: [00:31:58] I've got to imagine the unemployment is low in Pigeon Forge.
Leon Downey: [00:32:02] It has been up until this time.
Adam Stoker: [00:32:04] Well, yeah. Good point.
Leon Downey: [00:32:06] Less than almost full employment. Basically, everybody that wanted the job could be working before the pandemic.
Adam Stoker: [00:32:12] Well, I'm hoping that at least that portion of normal returns as quickly as possible for Pigeon Forge. Leon, what do you think the next six months looks like for your destination?
Leon Downey: [00:32:25] Well, I think we'll probably still be dealing with COVID for the next six months or so. So responsible travel's going to continue to be our messaging and letting people know that they can safely travel here and how our businesses are keeping them safe. So I think that's what we're promoting right now is the outdoors, like the national park, about rafting on the river, and then starting November, in early November, I think it's the 13th we have the three cities have worked together for over 30 years to do Smoky Mountain Winterfest which has just turned into an off-season into a major shoulders season for all three cities. Each city puts up winter light displays. Dollywood puts up over 6 million winter lights and we leave those lives on through February. So we'll be promoting that that's something that you can do, drive around out in your car and not be socially distanced in that way. So we're fortunate to have all these outdoor activities available here, plus the winter lighting program. We think that probably between the three cities we have about 15 million winter lights that we put up now ...
Adam Stoker: [00:33:31] Wow.
Leon Downey: [00:33:32] ... during this. So it's a winter wonderland. It's a great time to be here. Again, probably the thing I'm most proud of is being involved in the creation of Smoky Mountain Winterfest 31 years ago, get the three cities to work together with Dollywood are our largest attraction in the market. Before that time, back in the late eighties, people were laid off at the end of October when Dollywood closed, leaves fell off the tree and unemployment was up in the 20% range. So we've taken what was an off-season and turned it into a major shelter season by working together with our sister cities and with our business community.
Adam Stoker: [00:34:12] That's amazing. I think collaboration is going to get more and more important the longer this pandemic is something we're dealing with.
Leon Downey: [00:34:21] I agree.
Adam Stoker: [00:34:22] Leon, you've been to several different destinations. You've seen a lot over the course of your career. What do you feel like is the main piece of advice that you could give destinations who are struggling with the same things that you've gone through as well?
Leon Downey: [00:34:40] Again, it's hard to do, Adam, but I would encourage destinations to do as much research as they possibly can, find a way to ask their guests what's important to them because I tell our staff all the time, it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what they think, it matters, what that mom who sits out and thinks, what she likes, what she doesn't like. Does she feel safe coming here, all those kinds of things. I know it's a hard thing for a lot of destinations to do, but you need to find a way to find out what your guests, what's important to them and what's not important to them.
Adam Stoker: [00:35:12] Listen, listen is great advice. Yeah. Listen to your visitors, listen to your potential visitors and then act on what they say. I think that's great advice.
Leon Downey: [00:35:25] Thank you.
Adam Stoker: [00:35:26] Well, Leon, is there anything I haven't asked you that you think would benefit our listeners?
Leon Downey: [00:35:32] I think you've covered the water very well, Adam. Again, it's a great place to come, a great place to visit. It's a family destination and people can go to our website at mypigeonforge.com and find out anything they want to know about planning a vacation here. We love having guests here. I love what I do here. I'm 71-years-old and I'm not planning to retire anytime soon because I love what I do here. I love working in this community. I love our staff and working for the city of Pigeon Forge. I'm blessed.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:02] Awesome. Awesome. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you, Leon. Thanks so much for taking the time to share your experience and expertise with us today.
Leon Downey: [00:36:10] Thank you for giving me the opportunity, Adam. It's good to meet you this way.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:14] Absolutely. Maybe someday we'll do it in-person.
Leon Downey: [00:36:17] All right. Travel safe.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:19] Thank you.
Leon Downey: [00:36:19] Thank you.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:21] Everyone. This has been another great episode of The Destination Marketing Podcast. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, please leave us a five-star review. Other than that, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.
Okay, everybody, we've been talking about recovery for a while now, and my team at Relic has been working on recovery campaigns for several destinations over the last couple of months. They've actually developed a pretty amazing, we'll call it an algorithm to know when it's safe to do acquisition marketing in a market. So what I mean by that is you've got government regulations. You've got how is the virus affecting that market, whether there's been a decrease in cases or a decrease in deaths in that market? When is it safe to advertise, "Hey, come to our destination?" Like I said, our team has come up with this algorithm to provide that information for you, and we're offering a free market report. We're calling it Recovery Triggers. If you'd like a free Recovery Trigger report for your target market where you want to draw visitors from, please email me directly at adam@relicagency.com. Or you can go to recoverytriggers.relicagency.com and we'll get you set up with a free report. We even have the ability to send you a weekly recurring report so you can see what's happening in that market on a weekly basis and make sure you're launching your acquisition campaign at the perfect time.
[End of Transcript]
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