sitting in for him. And I think we have a quorum now. I thank everybody for their efforts of getting here and being here for the time that you can be. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to have the pledge, please. Everybody rise. I'd like to go ahead and ask, starting with Trish, to identify yourself on this board, please. Sure. Good morning, everyone. Trisha Rodriguez with the Travex Boat Tours in the Clearwater Perry. Captain Dylan Hubbard, Hubbard's Marina. Good morning, everyone. Dave Gattis, Mayor of Beller Beach, representing the Barrier Islands Governmental Council. Good morning. Copley Gerdes, City Council, City of St. Petersburg. Amanda Coffey with the County Attorney's Office. Russ Kimball, Sheridan Sankey, Clearwater Beach. Brian Lowak, Visit St. Pete Clearwater. Chris Lotvalla, Pinellas County Commission. Bruce Rector, Mayor of the City of Clearwater. Katie Gannon, Mayor of the City of Oldsmar. Good morning, Doreen Moore, TRS, Travel Resort Services, Vacation Rentals throughout our beaches. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to make the comment that our vice chairman, thank you for being here today, and we're glad that you're in the vice chairman, and we're looking forward for you being a chairman next year. And our prayers are answered about your health, and just get stronger every day if you can. We know you will. Thank you. And this morning, what we're going to do with the agenda, we're going to go through the first part, and then we're going to move one around so we can have a quorum. So first of all, the approval of the minutes. Item number three. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Do we have any public comments? No public comments? So the first agenda item I'd like to bring up is the St. Petersburg Powerboat Races. Good morning, everyone. Happy New Year. Craig Campbell, Director of Community and Brand Engagement at Visit St. Pete Clearwater. Excited to be here to give you a brief update on elite events, and specifically one event in particular that we'll cover today. Excuse me. That event is the St. Pete Powerboat Grand Prix. So for some context, the event did previously apply for funding in fiscal year 26. They were reviewed and approved last summer. And as you can see, they were approved for up to $125,000. The applicant at the time was Powerboat P1 USA, and the dates that were submitted were September 4th through the 6th, 2026, so Labor Day weekend. We learned of an update around mid-November that Powerboat P1 USA was purchased by the International Hot Rod Association, a.k.a. IHRA. And then IHRA then shifted their season schedule around to then start in St. Pete as opposed to concluding in St. Pete. So their new dates were March 27th through the 29th of 2026. And obviously, these are some substantial changes here. They're a new promoter, new dates, new plans, all that good stuff. So that necessitated a new elite event funding application. That new application was submitted on December 19th. They requested the previously approved amount of $125,000 in funding. The elite event committee, our internal committee, we quickly reviewed the application. The key metrics that we looked at here, 60,000 projected attendees, and then using our tools to extrapolate some information and some data, we projected around 12,000 room nights generated by this event, over 12 million in economic impact generated by the event. And a big piece of the puzzle here, as well as the TV exposure that's included with this event. So commercial units and other broadcast elements on CBS Sports, YouTube, and Speed Sport. So we're excited about all of those elements combined. And our new staff recommendation is just the same as the old recommendation is $125,000. But wanted to open it up to you for any questions, comments. Ultimately, we are seeking your approval to move forward with this recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners in February. Any questions? On the elite events, as a refresher, I don't believe the time period was part of the scoring when we went through it, correct? Or was there a time? It actually is. It is a consideration. That's what I thought. So this movement from what would have been a slower time of year to peak season, essentially, That was the, honestly, the bulk of our conversation was taking it from a non-peak time of year, Labor Day weekend to spring break-ish peak time. We did have this conversation with IHRA and expressed our concerns with this date and kind of keeping it that way. Moving forward, they did indicate that they're not set in stone in the future, that really because of the late purchase in the year, it really pushed back the start of their season to March. But their ideal date is actually in early February. So we're hoping to kind of get into that cycle in 27. So kind of moving forward, we were excited about that prospect, having an early February event. So didn't want to really handcuff this year's application because of that. Thank you for the explanation. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Second on the agenda, I'm going to move back up to St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport. Bye. Oh, good morning. It's a pleasure. My name is Mark Sprake. I'm the interim director, along with Jackie Hartnett, who is the CEO of Starmark Marketing Firm. And we're going to share with you some of the phenomenal steps and growth that we have experienced this past year. So in terms of air service and passenger traffic, year over year, we have been seeing a phenomenal growth of the airport. We had a slowdown with the COVID in 2020. And then we had a little bit of a slowdown in 2024 with the two unfortunate weather events of the hurricanes. But then this past year, we even projected or surpassed our own projections of 2.75. We actually had just shy of 2.8 million passengers that flew in and out of St. Pete Clearwater National Airport, which has resulted of year over year. We've been increasing, and it's 14% of traffic that was up since last year. We haven't introduced one new city in 2025. That was Colorado Springs. That's a year-round service. As well as we're introducing three more cities this year that are coming up starting February 13th to Atlantic City, February 20th to Trenton, New Jersey, and March 5th to Huntsville, Alabama. All year-round service. With these past year statistics, this breaks down to month by month. You would think that possibility the spring break would be a busy time for us, followed by the holidays towards the end of the year. But it's actually the June, July, August area that we see our most amount of traffic that are not only flying into our beautiful tourism and beaches areas, but also flying out to the cities that we serve, that Allegiant serves, of the 63 nonstop destinations. So where is the top 25 cities that St. Pete fly to? The first one is Knoxville, Tennessee, followed by Asheville. Asheville has always been a predominant favorite destination, but now Knoxville has overseeded that. And why do these markets make it so successful? Because it's the Allegiant's model. It's the nonstop service, air service, that we provide to in and out of St. Pete. The green number there, that's the amount of pastures that we see per year. That's the year ended the second quarter, 2025. And then the white number is passengers per day each way that we see. Remember, Allegiant also doesn't go to all these cities seven days a week. Their model is still two, three, four days a week. And that's why they are very successful to continue to provide service to this area. Another reason why we were so successful is Kayak. It's an online travel engine for passengers to go in and find what's the best flights. And they uncovered the U.S. airport to the lowest average round-trip air fur. And these are the top small airports, offer the cheapest flights. And you can see that Orlando-Sanford, another Allegiant hub that's out of Orlando area. And we're number two, followed by the Atlantic City, and then it goes right down from there. With that success, we see a lot of our concessions revenue going up. So our car rental revenue, we have collected just about 6.5% more in 2025 than in 2024. Our paid parking revenue is down, and that's because we renegotiated a contract. We invested heavily into new software with our parking concession, as well as received five brand-new buses that shuttle between the terminal and the economy lots. It's followed by our food and beverage revenue, where we've collected 10.6% more than in 2025. Followed by our news and gifts, that's your grab-and-go's, and that's at 13.2% more in 2025. And then followed by our ground transportation, that's our taxis, our Ubers, our Lyfts. Toro, which is something like an Uber or Lyft. It's an app that you can go and rent a car. And then our courtesy shuttles. So altogether, we've collected about 9.5% more in 2025 than in 2024. So overall, revenues were up, just shy of 2.5% last year, and it's a great year for us. And on that, I'd like to turn it over to Jackie to present the marketing. Chamber Day today. Glad to be here. So last year, we celebrated, this time in January, our second annual Pi Day. That included giveaways and tickets, opportunities for Allegiant and a hotel stay. And many of you joined us, and we had great partner support. As a result, we hit it out of the park. From a social standpoint, we're some of the targets for our performance metrics. You'll see there, 36% increase in reach on the Instagram, 39% increase in views, and 110% increase in the content interactions. That then resulted in 96% of the follower growth. So those are the kinds of things that we want, these kinds of activities, not only to build community engagement and surprise and delight our airport guests that day, but also bring us a return in our social. And if I click, this is going to play a video. Ready? When people discover the airport code for St. Pete Clearwater International Airport is P-I-E, they find it unique, charming, kind of sweet. And at Pi, that's the recipe for a great travel experience. Pi is the stress-free regional airport that provides the easygoing way in and out of Tampa Bay. So on January 23rd, to show our appreciation to Pi's passengers and the St. Pete Clearwater community, we partnered with Visit St. Pete Clearwater to roll out our second annual National Pi Day celebration, The baggage claim area was filled with hundreds of very excited guests who were happy to hang out and fill up on fun and freebies. Pi unveiled this year's selfie-inspiring sand sculpture. A steel drum player brought a slice of paradise. While guests spun the wheel for free prizes, Stilt Walkers a la mode go great with Pi Day. And of course, there was Pi, Pi, and more Pi. It was a tasty reminder of what our passengers, airport team, and community already know. Everyone loves Pi. Started our year off on a fun way. So in addition to that, as mentioned before, we updated and created digital assets that ran to promote the Colorado Springs new route. Low-cost flights from Pi to Colorado Springs, the route everybody's been craving. And then we refreshed our creative to promote the Key West route. Big slice, small price, get on island time, and Pi time. Easy, breezy, hot and ready. Trips to Key West. As a result of the Pi Day kickoff, we created these stickers to be able to give to folks who are visiting the airport so that they become brand ambassadors and can put them on their luggage and their tags and things they treasure like phones and computers designed to increase brand awareness and some fun. We also continued with our organic growth throughout the year, advising passengers and the community on holiday travel tips, engagement, recognizing our employees, special events, and airport announcements. And so our organic traffic is up on all three channels. And then we're super excited because this is the week. Get ready. Friday from 10 to noon. We're celebrating our annual Pi Day today in the bags that you have. If you can join us, wear your shirt and celebrate. If you can't join us, wear your shirt anyways and tell people that we're having a great day at the airport on Friday. So it's in your bag along. We didn't bring you a pie today, but we did bring you a sweet treat. So you've got to dig into that bag. So thank you. Next, I'm sure you heard of current events that Elysian Airlines has bought in an airline called Sun Country. And Sun Country is maybe new to you all, but it's been around for decades. It's primarily located and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It goes to predominantly warmer destinations and down in the Caribbean. And we have a nice video to show you and give you updates between the two airlines. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Greg Anderson, and I am the CEO of Allegiant. I'm excited to share some important news about the future of our airlines. We've announced that Allegiant will acquire Sun Country, bringing together two carriers with similar flexible capacity models, complementary networks, and a shared commitment to connecting travelers to the places they love. Jude and I have known each other for a long time and have great mutual respect for one another and the team members of both companies. We and these airlines are cut from the same cloth in many ways, which is one reason we think this combination makes a lot of sense. Let me begin by saying both Allegiant and Sun Country team members should take great pride in what we have built as independent companies. An airline is the ultimate team sport, and we have both established ourselves as leaders in affordable leisure travel with our flexible capacity models. Our businesses are strategically aligned. Together, we will have more resources, greater flexibility to further strengthen our important role in North America's leisure travel market, delivering value to travelers, partners, team members, shareholders, and the communities we serve. First, our complementary route networks and diversified fleets will expand choice and improve service for customers. Together, we'll offer more frequent service to more popular vacation spots across the U.S., as well as select international destinations, providing more people with access to affordable, convenient air travel. Second, the combination of Allegiant's scheduled service and charter operations with Sun Country's long-term charter and cargo partnerships and their deep roots in Minneapolis creates a more diversified and adaptable airline. These operations balance demand cycles, provide stable revenue streams, and increase aircraft and crew utilization throughout the year. Third, we are both doing this from a position of strength and together forming an even more resilient airline. By combining our two carriers, each known for outstanding operational performance, loyal customer bases, consistent profitability, and strong balance sheets, we will achieve greater scale and resources. This will enable us to further reinvest in the business and our team members, expand our network, and be the clear leader in affordable travel. I'm thrilled to be here with Greg to announce this incredible milestone. For over 40 years, Sun Country has been one of the country's leading low-cost airlines. Flying our guests to their favorite people and places. We are founded in Minneapolis and have been an integral part of life in Minnesota ever since. By coming together with Allegiant, we'll be better positioned to deliver for our team, guests, and communities now and long into the future. I've had the privilege of working with both airlines, and I can say with confidence that this combination is an exceptional fit in every way. For our customers, our employees, and our communities, in fact, Sun Country's first ever flight landed in Las Vegas, Allegiant's headquarters. For our guests, we will bring you even more non-stop flight options to new destinations for leisure travel without compromising on cost and service excellence across our two iconic airlines. We will maintain our significant presence in Minneapolis and offer expanded loyalty rewards. For our employees, we will be part of a larger national airline with more flights, more investment in you, and more opportunities for career development and cross-training possibilities. For our communities in Minnesota and beyond, we'll be an even stronger partner with more flights in and out of Minneapolis-St. Paul and an unwavering dedication to making a positive impact here at home. We are building a stronger airline together, greater than the sum of our parts, and I can't wait for what's to come. That's right, Jude. While our corporate headquarters will remain in Las Vegas, we are proud to continue Sun Country's deep roots in Minneapolis, where the combined company will maintain a significant presence. Just as Sun Country is vital to Minneapolis, Allegiant offers similarly important services to the 125 communities we serve. We greatly value the strong relationships that exist between an airline and its community. Now, today's announcement is just the first step in the process. Until the transaction closes, which is expected in the second half of 2026, we'll continue to operate as separate and independent companies focused on delivering the reliable service and value that our customers expect. As we move toward closing, we'll solidify our integration plans. We look forward to working closely with our team members and their unions, including pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, ground staff, dispatchers, and our non-union team members to ensure a smooth and transparent integration. We're committed to communicating updates throughout the process. We encourage you to visit the website that we've created, soaringforleisure.com, where we've posted additional information and we'll provide further updates as we work toward completing this transaction. This is an exciting chapter for our companies. Together, we look forward to creating one of the most adaptable and resilient airline models in the industry. Better positioned to deliver even more benefits for travelers, team members, and the communities we serve. Thank you. Thank you very much. I hope you understand the merger. Again, it doesn't happen overnight. There's still some processes that have to go. And even though the deal should be closing aggressively by the end of the second quarter of 2026, you'll still see what you see at Legion today and Sun Country Day is what you'll probably see for the remainder of the year. So on that, it is a pleasure, and I'll take any questions. Anybody have questions? Does where does Sun Country go into now or where they're flying out of? Out of the Tampa Bay area, they do a charter out of St. Pete to Biloxi, Mississippi. They have an MGM Grand Charter that they do, and we do seasonal service out of St. Pete to Minneapolis, and they predominantly go year-round out of Tampa to Minneapolis. They have about 150,000 passengers that they've got, and we do foresee that that Sun Country would be vacating Tampa and coming full-time to St. Pete. Good news. Good news, I think. Anyway, thank you, Mark, very much. Oh, Russ. Yeah. I'm sorry. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple things. One, I noticed on this sheet where it shows your most frequent visited markets are, you know, the top two are Knoxville and Asheville, which are very close together. I was just in Knoxville and Smokies this weekend. I mean, it's a huge number just from those two that are really connected with Smokies. Do we do anything to incentivize that, or does that just organically happen, that traffic between here and the Smoky Mountains? I know I see some ads for Asheville here and, you know, one or all three of the Gatlinburg Pigeon Forge, some air volume communities, but is that something that we've worked on, or does that just organically happen? Yeah, I'll just speak from our side. We've got a very tight working relationship with the airport and Allegiant, and we're constantly communicating where we see things from our data popping, same thing from them where they see things, and we share those, and we work together to make sure that, you know, we're benefiting from their service. They're benefiting from our marketing on the route, so it's a collaboration. But, you know, Asheville, for example, and many of the destinations in Tennessee, those are comp sets for us, and we're starting to see higher and higher numbers there, so we focus our efforts increasingly on those areas. It makes sense, just like we do with our international routes, where we have the direct connectivity. That's where we want to put our dollars. And then I know that, you know, I flew through the airport over Thanksgiving, and I know that I had to park in free parking, which was overflow parking, because even the economy parking was completely full. And we're working on that as a county with a garage and doing some things. But, you know, what, and the numbers keep growing out there, what's our ceiling out there? I mean, we, there are days where Allegiant doesn't fly, so I know there's at least some gate capacity to add additional flights, but what's our capacity to do even more out there? Do a little bit more. So there are peak periods that we're just saturated. We can't grow during those peak periods. So what we're doing is we're working with Allegiant. We're not the only base that they have, so we're working with, instead of having maybe our airplane starting here in St. Pete and, say, going to Des Moines, Iowa, and then from Des Moines coming back, it would start in Des Moines early in the morning at that crew base and then start flying into some of the non-peak areas that we have. So we're looking at their schedules, and we always look at ways and means throughout the day of how they can still bring in passengers and continue to be profitable. But there are, again, to answer your question, the peak periods from the 6 a.m. until the 7.30 a.m., yeah, we're all filled up. Same thing during some peak periods in the afternoon and during the evenings. When I first started, we had only about two banks of rush periods. Now we're up to four. So we consistently look at their models, their cities, where they can go to, and then where can the aircraft start out and come to this airport versus starting out here and going there. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Mark, very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Hello to Jeff over there, too. Next on the agenda, we have the 2025 visitor profile. Aaron? And, Mr. Chair, as Aaron makes her way up, just a quick introduction, a reminder. Aaron is the CEO of Future Partners. Future Partners is our research firm. They conduct over 4,000 visitor intercept surveys annually in market. So this is the data directly from our visitors. And we use this data, this visitor sentiment data, to make our marketing decisions. So we're extremely happy to have Aaron here today. And for those of you that were with us last week at one of our summits, this may look somewhat familiar. And for those who weren't able to join us, I think you're really going to find some value in this data. Thanks, Aaron. It's such a great pleasure and honor to be here with you all today. And if you were at one of those events last week, it won't look similar or look identical. Just a warning. But always great to look at data, right? So thank you, Brian, for that introduction. Again, I'm Aaron Francis Cummings. I'm the CEO of Future Partners. My team, we get up in the morning to provide tourism research and critical insights to the greater travel industry and for our very beloved clients like you all, really illuminating trends to bring the future of travel within reach to all of you. So I'm going to start off on a high level today to give you some really important context as you think about the year and how you're marketing this destination. And that's with how American travelers, their sentiment right now. And then I will share with you some trends that we are seeing and how people are looking at travel and the types of trips that they're going to take so that you can, again, think about how that might work and how you bring more people here and the types of visitors that you want. And then I'll get into the Pinellas County visitor data. So the overall sentiment, American traveler sentiment findings that I'll be sharing with you come from Future Partners, the State of the American Traveler Study. This is a monthly tracking survey. We survey over 4,000 American adult travelers all across the U.S. The data is then weighted to match the demographics of the American traveler. We started this study back in 2006. So it has a milestone anniversary this year. Most of what I'll be sharing with you is data collected in November, and I just got our most recent data in, so I'll let you know any updates from the slides. I had to submit the slides before that data came in. And the confidence interval of what you'll be seeing has a plus or minus 1.55 percent. Okay, so let's look at American traveler sentiment. I would say look at the outlook on travel and, most importantly, their financial wellness. And I will say the big trend from 2025, when I looked at everything that we collected in 2025, is that Americans had their eyes on travel but their hands on their wallets. And I'm still continuing to see that as we start 2026, and you'll see that in this data. So we asked them to compare their current financial situation now compared to a year ago. And we see that 35 percent of American travelers say they feel better off now financially than they did a year ago. So 40 percent feel unchanged, and a quarter feel they are worse off now compared to a year ago. So if we look at this metric in a time series, that top two box, those feeling better off or much better off, that's in the blue line. And the bottom two box, those feeling worse off, that's that black line. So looking back to 2022, we see the unevenness in financial wellness. But over the last year, fortunately, we saw through 2025, people feeling better off did grow six points from the start of the year to the end of the year, and those feeling worse off did decline by three points. And then looking at the most recent data, we're sort of in this holding pattern. But this is good. It's always good for our people feeling better off to outweigh that proportion feeling worse off. And something that's really important, since coming out of the pandemic, Americans have a sustained excitement to travel. When they think about their travel, almost 87 percent have some higher level of excitement when they think about travel. And if you look at this over time, coming out of that pandemic, then we go into that revenge travel year, really the peak of that in 2023. But we see a sustained level, again, of excitement amongst Americans for travel. It really has stayed there, hasn't declined. And again, seeing that into the early part of 2026 as well. And then in terms of how willing they are to spend on travel, one of the questions that we ask are, thinking of their finances, do they think that the present right now is a good or a bad time to spend their money on travel? And right now, over a third, 35.4 percent, say that the present is a good time to spend on travel. Just under 28 percent say that, no, actually right now is a bad time to spend on travel. And if we look at the time series of this metric, I think this is some really, some celebratory context. Because coming out of those pandemic years, a larger portion of American travelers actually felt like the present was a bad time to travel. That's that black line, spending on travel is a bad time. And then you see that blue line, those that feel the present is a good time. We start to, that line starts to outpace that black line. And again, throughout 2025, after the weirdness in the spring, because of some tariff-induced panic, we saw, again, a consistent level of Americans willing to spend on travel right now. Okay, so let's look at travel budgets and how those have trended. Back in, back the month prior, travel budgets reached a record high in our study. The typical American travelers said they were going to spend $6,211 on their leisure travel in the coming year. Unfortunately, I just looked at our most recent data. That budget number has come down, but it is still well above the 46-month average of 4,707. Of course, some of this has to do with inflation, but it does outpace inflation. So Americans are still committing their financial resources to travel, and that's great for all of us in the room. Okay, so with that context of their mindset, how they're feeling about finances and travel, I'm going to walk you through some key consumer trends that we're seeing and to look out for in 2026 as your customers are making their trip decisions. All right, I'm going to start with this. This is gig tripping. These are trips centered around major concerts, events, and festivals, and we found that nearly 40% said that gig tripping is a type of travel that they were going to do in 2026, although this is down four points from the year prior. And then, interestingly, gig tripping, although almost 40% said they would do it. That appeal of this type of trip, probably no surprise. It does decline with age. So that baby boomer generation, not as likely, just 27% said that they would do a gig trip. But our peak travel generation, our millennials, almost half of them said that they would be doing this type of trip in 2026. And, of course, millennials are our greatest traveling generation, not only in terms of volume, but in their psychological commitment to travel. So keep your eye on that type of trip. All right, then foodie trips. We don't consider foodie trips as much of a trend as really a mainstay now in how people make their travel decisions. And when people look at where they're going to travel, food is such a big part of how they feel that they will actually immerse themselves in the culture of the place they are traveling to. And more Americans say they will be planning food trips in 2026, with 63% say that this type of trip is appealing to them, and that has actually grown six points from the year prior. And, again, that millennial generation, they are really that target for this type of trip. Almost three-quarters of them saying they will find this type of trip appealing as they look at their 2026 travel, but our Gen Z and Gen X on the other side of that generation also very almost close to them in the percent that think that's appealing. Okay, sleep tourism. This is something that we started studying a year ago. As the name suggests, these are trips focused on rest, relaxation, and improving sleep. It's very sad that we're in an era where we actually have to travel just to get sleep. But it's very appealing, almost 40%, 38.7% say that taking a trip specifically to maximize their rest is an appealing type of travel for 2026. This is down seven points year over year, but still a really significant proportion of travelers saying that this is something that is going to motivate their travel. And if we look at this by income, interestingly, it's those middle-income bands that are really focused on this type of travel. And those tend to be the highest volume of travelers come from. Okay, and then experiential travel. These are the types of trips where you participate in immersive, hands-on experiences that really connect you with the destination's culture, history, or environment. And we found more than the majority, 56.1%, say this is an appealing type of travel for them. In 2026, this is unchanged from the prior year. And when thinking about positioning your destination for travelers looking for experiential types of experiences, you can see that this follows very closely along an income line. So it's more appealing the higher up in income you go. And those higher-income travelers also have, as you would expect, much higher budgets that they've set for travel. And the typical person, a traveler who finds experiential travel appealing has a travel budget for the year of over $7,000. And so just a quick recap of your takeaway here. These specialty trip types we found are more common to how people are looking at travel and how they select their destinations. So there's really opportunity here as travel marketers to think about that as you showcase what's going to get people to come here and come to your businesses. Okay, so let's now look at Pinellas County Insights. I will walk you through the fiscal year 2025 visitor profile. So as Brian said, we've conducted this every year since 2018. And its purpose is to really develop very detailed profiles of who visits here, who they are, where they go, what they do, how long they say, what they spend, what they thought of the trip. And so you can really think of these findings and this research that Future Partners conducts as the why. We are really here to help you get the insights into the why of your tourism. The methodology that we employ, it consists of in-person, in-market interviews of Pinellas County visitors. They are intercepted at random tourism points throughout the county. We collect a minimum of 400 of those interviews every month. The data I'll be sharing with you comes from over 5,000 interviews of travelers here in market in this last fiscal year. The data that the visitors give us, it's input on tablets, except for the demographic questions, in which case our local employees hand the tablet over to the visitor so that they can fill out the demographic questions on their own, since those tend to be more private. The visitor intercept surveys in market, they are really, really critical for, again, getting at the why. So explaining who visitors are and why they came and fully how they spent their money and across all different types of lodging. No other data set can accomplish that why piece more thoroughly and more accurately at this time than talking to people in market. But that's not all we use. The data from the visitor interviews are then lined up with all the secondary data inputs in order to normalize it. So we weight the data, again, looking at all those secondary inputs to make sure we're not overweighting one audience over another. And I did want to let you know that going forward into 2026, in addition to the in-market interviews of visitors, we will also be adding in additional online surveys through panel companies. So your data set is going to grow by the thousands. So next time I'm here with you, we should be in more of the 7,000, 8,000 range. All right, so let's look at the profile of visitors to the county. I'm going to take you through these four different definitions of visitors. So we have our North County Communities Traveler. So they visited at least one of the Dundin, Tarpon Springs, Safety Harbor, Palm Harbor, or Oldsmar communities on their trip. Then we'll look at the Greater Clearwater Beach Traveler. So this is the visitor that went to at least one of the Clearwater, Clearwater Beach, Indian Shores, Indian Rocks, or North Reddington Beach and Reddington Shores communities on their trip. Then we'll look at the Greater St. Pete Traveler. That's someone who visited the St. Petersburg community on their trip. And then finally, the South County Beaches Traveler. So they went to at least one of St. Pete Beach, Pasadena Grill, Treasure Island, or Madera Beach on their trip. Okay, so in the fiscal year of 2025, the average visitor to the St. Pete Clearwater area had 3.6 people in their travel party. A quarter of them traveled with children. They were predominantly domestic visitors with in-states New York, Georgia, Ohio, and Michigan being the top origin markets. And 9.1% of visitors coming from international markets. The factors that were most important to their decision to visit here were the area's outdoor recreation opportunities, the restaurants and beaches, having friends or family in the area, and the area's attractions and its overall atmosphere. On average, travel parties spent $330 a day during their trips. And they were most likely to eat, shop, and enjoy Pinellas County's award-winning white sand beaches. While they were here, three in five visited Clearwater or Clearwater Beach. More than half visited St. Petersburg. Around a third visited Madera Beach. And roughly a quarter visited the Tarpon Springs community. Your overnight visitors stayed 4.2 nights and five days in the destination on average. All right, let's look at the North County Communities Traveler. So compared to the average St. Pete Clearwater visitor, the North County Communities region of Pinellas County, that visitor spent more. They spent $385 per party per day. They were more likely to be traveling with children than the typical visitor. And these were more likely to be out-of-state visitors, particularly from New York and Michigan. Aside from the Dunedin, Tarpon Springs, Safety Harbor, Palm Harbor, and Oldsmar Communities, whose visitation define the North County Communities Traveler, these visitors also journeyed to Clearwater or Clearwater Beach, St. Petersburg, Madera Beach, and Largo. They also dined, visited the beach, and shopped. But ambiance and the weather were of greater importance to them than the average St. Pete visitor when they looked at why they chose to come here. Overnight visitors to the North County Communities region also stayed longer than the average St. Pete Clearwater visitor. They stayed 4.7 nights and 5.6 days in this destination on average. All right, let's move into the Greater Clearwater Beach Traveler. So compared to the typical St. Pete Clearwater visitors, these visitors spent more. They spent $383 per party per day. They were also more likely to be traveling with children and more likely to be out-of-state visitors. The Greater Clearwater Beach Traveler skewed higher for visitors from New York, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Apart from the Clearwater Beach, Indian Shores, Indian Rocks, and North Weddington Beach Communities, whose visitation defines this traveler, these visitors also spent time in Tarpon Springs, St. Petersburg, Doondon, Madera Beach, and Largo. They also dined, visited the beach, and shopped, but beaches, weather, and ambiance were of greater importance to this traveler than the typical St. Pete visitor. Overnight travelers to the Greater Clearwater Beach region also stayed longer than the average overnight St. Pete Clearwater visitor. They stayed 4.5 nights and 5.4 days in the destination on average. Okay, moving into the Greater St. Pete Traveler. Okay, compared to the typical visitor, this traveler spent slightly less. They were at $316 per party per day and less likely to be traveling with children. They were more likely to be out-of-state or international visitors. So, aside from St. Petersburg, Greater St. Pete travelers also visited Madera Beach, Clearwater or Clearwater Beach, St. Pete Beach, and Tarpon Springs. They also dined and shopped, but visiting museums filled out their top three activities, supplanting beach visitation. And area attractions were of greater importance to them than the typical St. Pete visitor. Overnight travelers to the Greater St. Pete region also stayed longer than the average Pinellas County visitor. They stayed 4.3 nights and 5.1 days in destination on average. All right, and finally, our South County Beaches traveler. So, compared to the typical visitor, they spent more. They are at $364 per party per day, and they were more likely to be traveling with children and more likely to be out-of-state visitors. This one particularly from Georgia and Pennsylvania. Apart from St. Pete Beach, Paso Girl, Treasure Island, and the Madera Beach communities, which define this traveler, these visitors also spent time in Clearwater or Clearwater Beach, St. Petersburg, Tarpon Springs, and Doondon. They also dined, visited the beach, and shopped, but beaches were of greater importance to their trip decision than the typical visitor. And overnight travelers to the South County Beaches region also stayed longer than the typical visitor. They are at 4.7 nights and 5.6 days in destination on average. So, that is the profile of the visitor in the fiscal year 2025. I wanted to highlight for you the plethora of insights that are ahead. Future partners will continue to conduct the visitor profile and economic impact research, and again, adding the addition of the online panel surveys, and also to provide a way for you to get more topical information more quickly. We're also adding what we're calling pulse studies each quarter. Then we bring that in with your ad effectiveness research, which will also include heat mapping and eye tracking analysis. We'll continue your brand awareness research, and we're adding in a lot more qualitative, which means more open-ended, like real traveler interviews into that research. We'll also continue your resident sentiment research, including an online community of residents. So, again, you can get more topical data quicker. And then we also always will bring in our national and global benchmark research into your findings, so again, provide that really important context. And those are through our State of the American Traveler, State of the International Traveler, and the Future of the Meetings Industry Studies. So, thank you again for having me with you today, and it would be my pleasure to take any questions that you might have. Thank you for the presentation. Being in John's past, I had the pleasure of running into a lot of your surveyors and chatting with them. The origin states, I had a question on that. Predominantly Florida. What we see a lot is folks who might come into Orlando, do the Disney World thing, and then come over to do attractions and beaches. Could it be a possibility that some of those people are misrepresenting their origin state, like saying they're originating from Florida because they came from Orlando, but in reality they're from out of state? I know, we collect their zip code and then... That's where it's coming. Yes. I hope they're not doing that. But we do collect their zip code. Okay. So that we... And thank you for asking that because I want you all to know that we have multiple ways that we make sure that we're getting the right information from people. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. And, Dylan, it's not uncommon for in-state visitors to be top for any destination. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Erin, very much for the presentation. Can you give me an idea of how these surveys are conducted? In other words, is it an iPad with pre-selected items or is it a conversation? In other words, are we limiting ourselves to these specific categories or is it more open-ended? I'm just curious. Yeah. So it is primarily closed-ended. So it's a survey programmed on a tablet. Our surveyors have to... In order for the information, everyone to understand the question correctly, they have to ask the questions the way it's written so that, again, we don't want too much interpretation from the visitor so your data is more accurate. But, again, I think you've seen our surveyors. They do try to be as friendly as possible. And they do make sure that people understand the questions. But the reason that it is pre-set is so that everyone is getting the same question for data accuracy. But that's another great question because the way technology is moving in our market research world, it's very exciting how much more, like, open-ended conversational data that we can get that is, like, can still get that accuracy. And that's something that we really want to bring to the research program here. And then I was curious, when you were talking about the types of travel, experiential travel, the gig traveling, it said the base was fewer. It was 2,170 travelers as opposed to some of the data where we've got, you know, more than 5,000. And I was just curious why that was, if there was a particular reason. Sure. So those national trends that I showed you in the front, like gig, tippering, experiential travel, those come from the State of the American Traveler Survey, which is that national survey we do each month. And those questions were only asked of half of the people that we surveyed that month. So it's still a big sample size, and it's still, you can have confidence in those findings. It was just to keep the survey questionnaire not from being 40 minutes long, which, because when it's 40 minutes long, we're not going to get good data. But that's the difference in the sample size. Okay. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome. Any other questions I can answer for anyone? Yeah. Mr. Chairman, yeah, I love the whole presentation. The part where you break down the four different parts of the county and the differences, I think that's really important for us, and I appreciate that. I appreciate all of it, but I really appreciate that part of it, because we have a very diverse county, and I think you've pointed out we have a diverse range of visitors here in the county. We have different people that visit each of these four parts of the county that have, I wouldn't say widely different experiences, but they come here for different reasons, and I think you've pointed that out really clearly. That was very helpful information, so I appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, I'm so glad that was helpful. Well, I think that's why you have a really top-notch tourism research program here that allows for that. You know, when people ask you, well, why do you service them? It's so you can do that, and it's, again, as you saw, there's some, if you were just serving 400 visitors a year, you just would not be able to see that, and it is really important for those communities, because, yeah, it is different. Believe me, we all want visitors to come to the entire county. I want folks to come to St. Petersburg and have a great experience, and I want all of us to succeed, but I am really interested in making my community succeed, and so, for me, this is really helpful to see what is it that Clearwater folks come, you know, that may be different from reasons that motivate or experiences that others have here, so this is very helpful to our Clearwater community, I think. Great, fantastic, and we're always happy to answer any questions about, again, the data's there, so. So, Mayor Rector made me think of another question. Do you have the raw numbers of the number of folks who fit into each of the buckets, the North County, the Greater Clearwater, Greater St. Pete, South County, travelers? Yes, the base of the sample size for each of those, yes, and I'm sorry, I don't have them on top of my head. Okay, no worries, we can maybe get it for you. Talk to Brian and find out. Yeah, I'm just curious for, because I'm North County, I'm Oldsmar, so I would be really curious to find out how many fell into each of those buckets. Thank you. Question, can you talk a little bit more, you talked about expanding it into digital, and talk a little bit more what you're going to be doing and what type of questions you'll be asking, different than the person that's already here. Can you talk a little more about that area that you're expecting to come back next year for? Yep, sure, so by adding the online, so say each methodology has its strengths and then the weaknesses that you have to account for, and that's why you bring in multiple methodologies. So the online people's memory, we have to ask them about a past trip. So most of the questions will be the same, but we do have to account for the fact that when they take it online, time has passed. So there may be some questions that we decide are not appropriate for that methodology. However, now they've had time to reflect on their trip, and there may be questions, maybe even they want to record a video about it. But there's something that we can really benefit from that methodology using with that, like, post-trip reflection. And that's where I think the strength of that methodology comes in, in addition to just adding to your overall sample size of how many visitors you all get to say that you spoke to. And the other part I have is on the survey that you do now with our visitors, is there anything that you would suggest that we're not doing that we should be doing from other areas that you do? I'm not just saying this. You have a best-in-class tourism research program. So I think you're doing everything that you can. The one thing I'll say is, and we've really thought about this in this year and going forward, and we will bring this to you. So there might be technology that allows us to capture more video or audio, because I think it would be really fun for you all for me to come here next time, and you can hear visitors speaking themselves, and there will be an efficient way for us to do that. And then we did add these pulse surveys. So when things come up, I mean, things inevitably always come up, we can get you visitor reaction to, I don't know, different trends or whatever is of interest to you here in the county, that we can get you their response to that faster. But I think you're asking, I think you're doing a great job asking the right questions. Any other questions from anybody? Any other comments you have? Thank you very much. Thank you all. We're looking forward to the next one. Next on the agenda, we have Destination Metrics. Eddie? Good morning. And, you know, before just kicking into my presentation, I just want to, you know, say the work that Erin and her team does for us has been really, like, some of the core foundational work that we've put into our strategic marketing efforts and how we define what kind of audiences we're supposed to be targeting. And as we've delved further and further, kind of using that tool into our research, we continue to ask more questions of it. And that's why, you know, so much of the work that we're kind of in the future leaning towards is qualitative information, so more of those open-ended questions that we can really take the time to digest. One of the things I've found interesting and, you know, research project that will be released soon is the resident survey. And we had the opportunity to do some video interviews as part of that project. And it was so enlightening to just hear from actual residents about their thoughts about tourism and really where they were. And so adding that to not just, you know, one-off surveys but kind of making it a core integrated part of how we collect our surveys, I think, is really going to be transformational in terms of how we start to really pinpoint some of those targeted marketing profiles. So with that said, jumping into destination metrics, we'll be looking at some of the November historical data to start out. And as we look at this data, we're looking at not just how we're doing compared to last year but also the year before that since, as you all know, we had some storms the previous year. The good news is that we were very close to the previous two years in terms of November TDT. We were below last year by about 1.8% and then below 2024 by roughly 2.5% or so. For the year, we're still up about 11, over 11% in terms of these first two months compared to last year. And we're below 2024 slightly by about 4.4%. I bolded the first four kind of geographic regions for you guys just as a note that those four regions make up about 88.5% of the total local option TDT graph that we see here. So the good news from that is that compared to 2024, kind of our last normal year, three of those areas are actually up. The vacation rental performance, Clearwater, Clearwater Beach, as well as St. Petersburg, which really illustrates kind of sustained growth from the last kind of quote-unquote normal year that we had. And obviously, we remain below on St. Pete Beach by a significant amount. But then, you know, looking at the previous year, we're nearly 100% up from where we were that first month after the storm. So some real progress, I think, is being illustrated in this information. As we kind of look to see what remains open, we really see these core areas that still have some temporary closed rooms. I will say there's about four beach properties that have 100-plus rooms, which make up a large percentage of what remains temporarily closed. Everything else beyond this area is 100% open. And you can see, you know, four out of these five categories are, you know, well over 90% open. There's not a whole lot of temporary closed accommodation structures in the COSTAR report. Looking at some of the data that we have, which is a sample from COSTAR for our hotel performance and key data from our vacation rental performance, we can kind of see, you know, where we are in terms of these two different areas of accommodations. Compared to 2024, we were very close to last November. We were up a little bit in rate, but below a little bit in demand and revenue. Obviously, compared to 2025, it's a very different story, but we had a lot of residential displacement in the month of November. So, you know, we're still kind of celebrating a little bit those numbers that, you know, just indicate that residents aren't being occupied in our hotel rooms. On the vacation rental side of things, we can see that we were actually up from both years. So, it does look like our TDT, you know, kind of revenue and the performance that we see in our survey sample are kind of getting us back to where we hope to be from that area of lodging. Looking ahead, and if you were, you know, a part of the meetings that we had last week, these slides will probably look a little bit familiar to you. Hopefully, I can go into them a little bit more detail in this capacity. But our 2024 is kind of that high watermark where that 0% is on the graph, and that's, you know, essentially the ceiling that we're looking to break through and improve from our last kind of high performance. And you can see as we're pacing in February, March, and April, this data was, by the way, pulled from Amadeus at the start of the year, looking at kind of our peak seasons. We're above last year in terms of the hotel revenue pacing, which is great news. Obviously, we would like to be above 2024. We're still not quite there yet for February and March, but we do look like those numbers are starting to really increase in the month of April. So, that's more good news kind of approaching us. And we can kind of see where those markets are coming from. So, you know, we obviously invested, as you guys were aware, in our marketing media plan last year in places like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston. And those are some of the markets that we're starting to see a lot of return year-over-year growth in terms of our feeder market. And I do want to illustrate, you know, we talk about origin markets in a lot of different capacities, and it's important to kind of be aware of those in our visitor survey. Obviously, those origin markets are coming from a survey sample of individuals. This origin market data is coming from hotel bookings. So, you know, just those origin market kind of pieces of information might not always sync up perfectly, but that's essentially because of how the sources are being conducted. The only place that we see a decrease of significance really is in Tampa's St. Pete Clearwater Market, which, again, is that hotel residents that aren't occupying our, you know, hotel rooms. So, please, visitors, you're more than welcome to snatch an empty bed. And as we look ahead towards our vacation rental revenue pacing, again, this information is coming from key data. And this does illustrate that we are above kind of that 2024 ceiling. So, hopefully, you know, we'll see what can happen here, but we're optimistic that this will help us in terms of our economy, that we will still really see a strong demand to our area through these different kind of types of accommodations, whether that's vacation rental or our hotels coming back online. With that, that's my presentation. We'd love to take any questions from you guys. Questions? Actually, a comment. Thank you very much, Eddie, for all the information keeping us up to date. I just wanted to comment about the pacing for the vacation rental revenue. Because the data is compiled, say, January 1st, and here we are at the end of the month, I'm seeing from a vacation rental standpoint that those numbers are ever-increasing because of the short-term window in January. People are booking for February, March, April. And so, that's a positive note that those, that chart's going to be driven up when we look back and see where were we. So, that's, you know, always good to know that, you know, you can't, you're not, you can't do this survey or these pacing numbers every month. And we did talk about that, I think, Brian. So, you know, we'll see the positive aspect of that. We will try. I'm sure it's for the hotel industry as well, so. Yeah. Well, hopefully this pacing data is informative to you all, and we will do, you know, if it is useful, we'll continue to try to implement it as much as we can in our presentations. Other questions? Anybody? Thank you. Thanks. Next on the agenda, we have our, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will be brief this morning. Yesterday, at the Board of County Commissioners meeting, the board had two items that were both recommendations from this council. One was to revise the capital project funding program guidelines as recommended by this council. They did so. They approved those. And one of the changes contained in those capital guideline programs was to add, as an allowable expenditure, beach park facilities. And so, in order to do that, we had to revise the tourist development plan. The board also approved that yesterday. So, thank you for your work getting that to them. And that is now the law of the county, as they say. Next, we have, next month, as you know, we're down two members today who are up in Tallahassee, walking the halls, talking about the value of tourism and advocating for the industry. Next month, we will have Pinellas County's intergovernmental liaison, Tristan Summers. He will come and provide a legislative update to you all, specifically tailored towards anything related to tourist development tax or TDCs or anything that touches that. As some of you are aware, there are some bills out there floating around, many repeats from last year. Some got movement. Others did not. But Tristan's the expert. So, he'll be here next month, which will be one month into session, kind of at that halfway point. So, he'll have a better understanding on what has legs and what does not. So, come prepared with any of your questions next month for Tristan. And with that, Mr. Chair, that's all I've got. Thank you. Board comments? Any board comments this morning? Anybody? I would say I would ask for adjournment from the board. Second. This meeting's adjourned.