Good morning, everybody. If we could all take our seats. I'd like to call the October 15, 2025 meeting of the Pinellas County Tourist Development Council to order. Good to see everybody. Why don't we start off with some introductions. We'll go around the room. Clyde, if you want to lead us off. Clyde Smith, Bill Maher Beach Resort, Treasure Island. Good morning, Doreen Moore, Travel Resort Services, TRS, Vacation Rentals. Morning, Bruce Rector, Mayor of the City of Clearwater. Morning, Russ Kimball, Sheraton Sand Key, Clearwater Beach. Brian Lowak, Visits St. Pete, Clearwater. Brian Scott, Pinellas County Commission. Amanda Coffey, County Attorney. Dylan Hubbard, Hubbard's Marina. Good morning, Dave Gattis, Mayor of Biller Beach, representing the Barrier Islands. Good morning, Chuck Prather, the Birchwood, downtown St. Petersburg. Good morning, Phil Henderson, Starlight Cruises, South Pasadena, Medeir Beach, and Clearwater Beach. All right, well, welcome, everybody. Thanks so much for being here this morning. So, Commissioner Eggers will not be joining us this morning. He is up in Tallahassee testifying before a special House committee. And you've, I'm sure, probably all heard by now that Commissioner, our friend and colleague, Commissioner Latvala, has been dealing with some pretty serious health issues. Good news is he's on the mend and things are looking up. You know he's feeling better when the first thing he says to his wife is, turn on the Phillies. So, he is improving. He does have a long run ahead of him, so keep him in your thoughts, in your prayers. But I've been told that he may be feeling well enough to join our work session tomorrow virtually. So, fingers crossed, we're hoping to have him there. With that said, why don't we move on to approval of the minutes from August 10th. Have a motion? Motion to approve the minutes. Okay, a motion from Bruce Rector and a second from Clyde. Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, passed unanimously. Okay, now we'll move on to public comments. Do we have any members of the public that wish to speak? No speakers? Okay. All right, now we'll move on to presentations. The first we have is Mr. Adam Ross. Run up, sir. Good morning, everybody. It's great to see you have a lot of familiar faces here. I know everybody pretty much in this room today. I want to say thank you to Brian Loak, Chair Scott, and Commissioner Russ Kimball for inviting me here today to give this presentation. We've been honored for a very long time here in Pinellas County to collect tourist development tax for this council here. And we brought you some good statistics. I have relatively good news. Let's start with... All right, that does work. All right, good job. So this is a comparison of 2023, 2024, and 2025 to show the amount of tourist development tax dollars we've been collecting month by month. As of right now, even with the impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, we're only down from last year 5.23% so far this year, and we have only one more month of reporting to go. So I think that's actually... And if you look month by month, it's been pretty consistent in that dollar amount, but I tell you that this is optimistic because as more of the beach communities are repaired and houses restored, Airbnbs, hotels, all that, I feel confident that it'll get back to normal around this time next year. So I think that after the devastating impact, and there's a lot of leaders in this room here today that were essential in getting people back into their home and getting our tourist community back up and running. So thank you for that. And as you can see, that effort was put to good use, and we're getting those tourist development tax dollars back. And also to give you a perspective on that is that we, with working with Mike Twitty's office, had close to 13,000 catastrophic refunds that we redistributed to taxpayers, which were essential, obviously, to helping them get their homes restored. It was about $6.5 million that we returned to those homeowners. And as I said, as more and more of these properties, the rental properties and hotels, are back up and running in normal capacity, we do expect these to level out next year. Anybody disagree with that over there? All right, I got a thumbs up from them. I did bring my team of subject matter experts, so if you get too into the weeds, I will have to call on them because while I might be the face of the tax collector's office, I am blessed to have inherited amazing tax staff for my operations, and they were, well, they were voluntold to come here today, but I'm happy they're here. So this is actually, we have seen an increase in the number of new account applications since the launch of this new county certificate of use program. I just wanted to show you this. This is one thing that if you have questions about later, I will have to rely on my subject matter experts. But we have been navigating these new accounts and giving them direction based on their needs of what is necessary and to actually start up and collect these taxes. But I think this is promising that we've had a lot more new account applications since the launch of that program. And I think that just shows that we have a lot to look forward to on the horizon here in Pinellas County. Hey, Adam. Yeah. So does that suggest that these were short-term rentals that were not on the tax rolls and were not remitting tax? No. These are just new applications. So this is like a new program. So I would say, again, if you, I have people here that are subject matter experts that could really get into the weeds on that. But I asked that same question. I was told no. Next, we appreciate, we have partnerships with property management companies, which obviously makes our job a lot easier in collecting these taxes for you a lot easier. They send us monthly property list updates. We help keep their information accurate. They do as well. Anybody that uses this portal, once we authorize the owner, corporate officer, managing member, it makes this whole process so much more streamlined. And it's really not a testament to me. It's to them over there that get all this done. So thank you. And also, they've streamlined our power of attorney forms as well with this process. Like, again, this, it just makes the whole process streamlined and more efficient. Okay. So this is, I get, I get questions. They get questions about this a lot, too. So we have different reports. And I want to kind of take this opportunity to explain them. This is kind of something that led up to me coming here today. So we have local option CVP reports and our monthly comparison report. I can't get into the total weeds on the details with this because the only, about specific account information is protected. So the only, and it's not, this is floor statute. The only entity that I can talk about specific details on accounts is the Department of Revenue. I know that sounds crazy that I can't talk to you, who I collect these taxes for, about the details of each account. But that's just the way the law is. And I have spoken to some legislators maybe about changing that. But that's completely in their hands. The local option CVP report is the amount collected for the reporting period only, no matter what is paid. The official comparative report is the amount collected in a month, no matter what the reporting period it is. It could be delinquent, future, or pending reports. So there's always going to be a difference in the whole number amount on these two reports, which always leads to questions. And I hate to say it, but my answer always is I can't tell you the details about that until the legislature changes that. But I assure you, right, we always collect our money. It's like Benjamin Franklin said, the only things certain in life are death and taxes, and we collect them. So if you told us, you'd have to kill us. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the questions we get is the miscellaneous category. That's a small group of cities grouped together. I can't tell you which cities because of the confidentiality. But that's Florida statute 213.053. And again, while these are called miscellaneous, it is actual entities like cities that we do collect these taxes for. And because of the confidentiality, we're unable to separate the cities into separate reports for the collections. Again, it's just following the law. I wish I could give you more details on that, but like the chair was kind of to say, I would have to kill you. So that's really a real rough shot run through this on what we do for this, for the TDC. If you have any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them if I can. And if not, I will phone a friend over there for more details. But let me end by saying thank you. It's an honor to do this for you. I actually, when we get together for the Florida Tax Collectors Association, there's only a handful of tax collectors that actually do this for their counties. It's mainly the large counties. There's some clerks that do it and some county offices do it. But I honestly think this is great because we get to have – we really pride ourselves on having first-class customer service here at the tax collector's office. And the time that I came in, just like an example on the DMV, I sat down with all of my management staff. And I said, what are some of the ideas that you've always wanted to implement in this office but never been able to? We took a series of those. It was about seven or eight. And we implement them in March. And we took an hour and a half wait time and got it down to, as of a few weeks ago when I got the last report, average of 29 minutes. So I tell you that in this arena, I have – I am blessed with excellent subject matter experts that come to me with ideas to make this process and just the taxpaying process in general more efficient. And we're going to have some more big announcements coming about that, that we're going to be rolling out here soon to not just make the tax collection experience more efficient, but to save the taxing authorities and the taxpayers money. So stay tuned on that. I know the chair is aware of it, but in the next few weeks, we will be rolling out more information about that, and I'm really excited to do so. So at that, I would like to go ahead and open up to any questions you may have. Probably don't have the answers, but you showed the gains, the new properties or new taxes. Do you have a net number? In other words, do you know how many went – Talking about this one for the – Yeah, when the green shows how many ads there were, do you have any – is that a net number or is that – It's the net number? Yeah, it's the net number. It's a net number. Yeah. Oh, great. Yeah. They're shaking their head yes over there, so. That's good. It makes it look even better. Yeah, like I said, I really think, especially with just how devastating Helene and Milton were, for us to only be 5.23% behind from last year and all of this put together, I think that next year could be a record year, especially for – it's a testament to everybody in here that helped with rebuilding our communities. To get us back up and running this fast is amazing. You did well. Part of it was also the construction workers that were using hotel nights. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of balanced it. Absolutely. So these new accounts, these are not properties that have been rebuilt. These are completely new entries, correct? I'd have to – yeah, I'm going to have to rely on my phone a friend here. This is Elizabeth Gianquinto. She is our TDC champion. Good morning. Morning, Elizabeth. Basically what this is here, it's – we receive applications from our taxpayers who are beginning to rent their properties. And because of the Pinellas County short-term certificate compliance for the unincorporated areas, we did see an influx in accounts because of that. So what we're seeing here are properties who have registered with us because either they began renting their properties or they had been renting through Airbnb, BRBO, some of the registered platforms. But because of the new law with the unincorporated properties in Pinellas County, they had to have a tourist development tax account to prove to Pinellas County that they were paying the taxes. So that's why we were seeing an influx. So some of these, it's – we're not going to see an increase in tax collections because they were being reported by the registered platform. Thank you for that explanation. Sure. Yeah, that's helpful. Any other questions? No way. Yeah. Chuck. Elizabeth, when the folks fill out those applications, they're only filling them out if they're in unincorporated Pinellas County, correct? Not in St. Pete or any other municipality? For the Pinellas County short-term certificates, correct. Only unincorporated. Any other questions? All right. Elizabeth, Adam, thank you both for being here. Appreciate it very much. I'm pretty sure everybody here knows how to get a hold of me. If you have any questions after or going forward and always – we have an open-door policy at the tax collector's office. So look forward to working with you all in the years to come. Thank you, sir. All right. So now we're moving on to destination metrics. Eddie, come on up. Good morning and great to be here. I think a lot of what you're about to see in the next couple of slides might be a little bit redundant, but, you know, no problems there. You know, and obviously our destination metrics begins with the TDT data that we receive. And we are very lucky to have this data not just as a whole for Pinellas County, which, as brought up previously, we're down about 2% from the previous year in the month of August. But for, I think, the third time, we surpassed $6 million in collections. So that is, you know, something worth celebrating there. We also, you know, as pointed out, we receive a monthly local option report, which is, you know, the TDT broken down by some of our key areas. So, you know, with this, we're able to see the information about, you know, what is a little bit of a better look in our area. Obviously, we've seen for, you know, pretty much this entire year, Clearwater, Clearwater Beach has been up over the past year, as well as St. Pete has been for the past couple months. And this month included, Dunedin has been up. And then, of course, our beach communities and some of the other areas in our destination have still been in recovery. So they're still, you know, kind of getting back on their feet. And that also includes, of course, our vacation rental kind of miscellaneous collection in the local option report. Yeah, as brought up previously for the year, we are down about 5.23%. So that's great. And on the graph, the blue marks the previous year, yellow marks this current year. And then the kind of shaded blue is the average of the past four years or so. So, you know, we are, again, really close to, you know, where we've been before. And that's great news considering, you know, Hurricane Milton and Helene came through our area last year. And then, you know, going away from the TDT reports, obviously, we try to add a little bit more color. So, you know, our hospitality performance snapshot for the month of August, what we saw in our CoStar data is that we were about flat in terms of the total hotel revenue for the month of August. We were down a little bit in that hotel demand, but that was offset by an increased rate on the hotel side. And then on the vacation rental side, we also had an increased rate, but our hotel or our vacation rental revenue was a little bit below last year, you know, as our demand and supply really continues to recover from that key industry for us. And I wanted to take a little bit more time to kind of go a little bit further into our vacation rental progress this month. This is coming from a sample of direct vacation rental units from key data. It represents about 2,800 units in total. And what we've seen from this sample is the revenue for the sample really getting close to where it was last year. The orange bar represents the previous year. The blue line represents this current year. So, in the past, you know, four or five months, that's really, you know, gotten closer to where we were this previous year. The graph below that is nights available, which is key data's metric for supply. And that basically shows a very slow recovery and a very slow growth. So, we really aren't back to where we were last year in terms of our vacation rental supply units. And then just kind of looking at this further, you know, we've seen the vacation rental daily rate increase, especially in the past, really since April, it's been positive year over year, which is great to see. And then on the demand side, you know, we were way down to start this fiscal year. But that has really improved as we've gotten into these summer months as well. So, some positive progress, but obviously it is going to be a longer, you know, recovery timeline for this industry as a whole. Looking at some other data, hotel trends and forecasts, I wanted to kind of share this slide, which we shared a version of it at the joint BCC-TDC meeting last month. But this looks at SCIF's U.S. Travel Index Summary, which includes aviation, hotel, vacation rental, and car rental areas for, you know, across the country, how they've been performing relative to last year. So, 100 represents, you know, the same as the previous year. Anything above that is a little bit of an improvement. Anything below that is below last year. As a whole, you know, the U.S. aviation industry was doing pretty well until the last couple of months where it has gone down a little bit. The U.S. hotel industry has been a little bit underwater for, you know, the entire year. There's been a couple of moments where it's been above last year, including, you know, January and March, but overall it's been a little bit below the previous year. On the opposite side of things, the U.S. vacation rental industry and the U.S. car rental industry has been doing quite a bit better than it was doing the previous year, especially that U.S. car rental industry. Now, jumping to kind of a different view, but this is something we don't often report on, but I'm happy to share it today. Today, this is a look at kind of our group hotel performance. So, the blue bar on the graph on top represents the Tampa area demand, so basically anything, you know, over the bridge. The St. Pete Clearwater area demand represents, you know, our area. It also actually goes a little bit into the North Shore as the coastal markets aren't evenly aligned with our counties. And then the Sarasota area demand represents Bradenton, Palmetto, Sarasota, that entire region. So, what we've seen really is, again, with the month of October, we had a little bit of an abnormal month because of emergency room blocks and other, you know, room blocks related to the storm. Up through March, for the most part, our area, the yellow bar was above where it was this previous year. And then, you know, we've really had similar behavior across all three kind of regions of the Tampa Bay, Sarasota, broader region. And obviously, April, May, June, July, August has been a little bit below where it's been last year. The graph below or the table below shows our total group hotel demand relative to the total hotel demand in CoStar. And that's been very consistent for the past couple of years. It's, you know, kind of hovered around about 20% of the total demand is represented by, you know, CoStar's group segment, which is blocks of 10 or more per night. And then the last slide I, you know, wanted to share with you guys is kind of a look at what we expect to happen in the next three months, as well as September, which we didn't report on previously. For the most part, what we're expecting to see is numbers that don't look so great in comparison to the year before. And that's a lot because, thankfully, we haven't had any storm-related impacts this year, and those really showed up as, you know, displacement for the first few months of this past year. If we look to the previous year, which is fiscal year 24, we see overall, you know, growth in both revenue, demand, and supply. So we are seeing, you know, positive numbers, but when we compare them to the previous year, obviously, we're going to see the impacts of the storm kind of throw off the annual comparison. But, you know, overall, I think we do feel pretty positive that we're moving in the right direction, you know, headed at the start of this fiscal year. With that, any questions? Questions for Eddie? Thank you, Eddie. Great report again. Appreciate it. On the group hotel performance, is there any way to tell if hotels counted group at FEMA as a group or as a transient? It's a really good question. That's something that we, you know, talked internally. There's not an easy way. I think we would have to probably try to go to the hotels themselves to get that information and understand how they blocked off those rooms when they were, you know, saving them for FEMA-related instances. In fact, we did ours as transient, just to not throw off our group pace in the future. Russ, how did you do yours? I believe it was a group, I think. And I think, as you're asking this, I think that's something that we can kind of look at, because I don't think there was a big number of hotels that we could go to and try and get that number, or even if you have to give us a general statement in the next few months, because that is a major number, and kind of compare where we are. I'm not sure what I'm asking, but whether we could look at that a little bit, Eddie, and see what really is happening to us. Yeah. Because that went until, like, March, I think, February, I think, or the middle of February. February for us. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. On the reporting side of things, because the storm threw off the numbers, I noticed you were forecasting versus 24 and 25. Is that kind of your plan moving forward? It's not an official plan that we've discussed, but I think it would be good for us to kind of put the numbers in greater context. You know, that's one of the reasons. What we're struggling with, too, is, like, how do you, the next couple months, how do you report? Yeah. I mean, it's one of the reasons why this past year we began to kind of look at the average across the past few years in terms of the TDT collections to try to get a little bit more of that fair comparison, because, yeah, obviously the storms are going to throw the numbers in, you know, what we did last year. It's going to look a little funny if we don't include some greater context, so. Okay. Thanks, Eddie. Thanks. Appreciate it. All right. Now we're on to Atlanta activations update. Jessica, how are you doing this morning? Good. Morning, everyone. Jessica Morrow, Marketing Project Manager at Visit St. Pete Clearwater. Excited to be with you all again today to recap two of our most recent activations in Atlanta. So we worked with our internal teams and our agency when planning our strategic action plan for out-of-market activations and identified two key events that we wanted to attend in one of our key markets for drive and fly, Atlanta. Both of these, we were able to feature some of our core pillars or and statements for the destination. So we showed off some of our arts and culture scene at Piedmont Park Arts Festival and then highlighted our dining at Atlanta Food and Wine Festival. Our team headed up to Atlanta for a two-day activation in Piedmont Park. When we were looking at how we wanted to execute this, we really wanted to have a more personal touch with the estimated 60,000 attendees annually for this event. So we worked with Creative Pinellas to bring up three local artists to be a part of our footprint. They brought not only, you know, a little bit more depth into what our art scene looks like, but they actually brought some local art with them to sell as well. So we had prints, canvas art, ceramic and clay sculptures, and then handmade fine jewelry. Those folks were able to interact with the attendees and then came home with kind of a round number of about $1,500 over the weekend of sales for their local art, but also extremely more added value we heard from them post-event for the exposure and kind of introduction to this market of Atlanta. Another part of our footprint, our activations team really wanted to incorporate some interactive elements. So we had our color wall that had line art of the St. Pete Pier, and folks could play artists for the day and kind of fill that in while interacting with our team. We also produced three custom postcards that told a little bit more of our story of arts and culture in the destination and then also highlighted those artists' unique arts. And then we had a sweepstakes for both Atlanta activations, so they could enter to win a prize. And then this not only gave them opportunities to win like a stay, but also a trip to the Dali and then to tie in more variety throughout the destination, some Saber St. Pete tickets too. So that was for both activations that we used that sweeps. And then we worked with our agency to bring in some local influencers from Atlanta to come by our booth. Two influencers joined us throughout the weekend to learn a little bit more about St. Pete Clearwater and the art scene and then promote that to their combined 640,000 followers. Not shortly after, less than a month after, we were back in Atlanta for Atlanta Food and Wine. I actually had the pleasure of working with the activations team to attend this event. It was actually a really great experience for me to kind of see our brainstorming in the office and then come to fruition. Our team on the activations side works really hard to kind of fully round out our brand and have that personal touch with our travelers that come to the destination. So extremely grateful for them. And it's hard work, so I appreciate the time that they spend out there. It's long days, but it's really rewarding and fulfilling. So Atlanta Food and Wine is a sister event to New York Food and Wine, which we did attend last year. So we repurposed our footprint. We expanded it a little bit. We had a 30 by 40 presence there. Huge presence in comparison to a few of the other booths. But we also added a chef's tent. So similarly to Piedmont, we wanted to bring some representation from the destination. So I'm extremely grateful to have Crabby Bill's family brands and the Bon Appetit team come join us for all four days of the event. And they prepared thousands of pieces of food for the 10,000 attendees over the four-day period. Chef Cruz and his team worked extremely hard to create some coastal dishes that not only represented our destination, but also the variety that their restaurants have. So we were serving up different dishes every day. They prepared about 2,000 samples was the recommendation for servings per day. One of my favorite things to witness while I was there was the chef was serving up right next to us, and people would thank him, grab the meal. And then I saw multiple people turn back around and just tell him how great all of the dishes were. Also, apologies to anyone that was in Atlanta for Saturday. We ran out of Grouper. They crushed it. They did a phenomenal job. They could not get enough. So we'll have to plan to up that next time. But overall, great experience. The team worked extremely hard, and we got great feedback on the food and bringing that chef up. Another thing that we integrated was we worked with Jason on the PR team and then our meeting and leisure sales teams to coordinate some VIP nights before the event opened up. So the first hour, we had some opportunities to meet with media influencers and some key clients that are in Atlanta to have, like, a more intimate experience, really introduce them to the destination, have some of our staff have one-on-one conversations to kind of drive media stories and then travel interest to St. Pete Clearwater. And they also got to sample some of that food before gates were open for the rest of the attendees as well. This is something I think we're extremely interested in doing in the future. We worked with our business development team to see who was already going to be in Atlanta during the time that we were activating to really optimize on our presence there and bring in some key clients to have conversations. Also, Jason joined us on Thursday to host Atlanta Media, and then a variety of influencers joined us throughout the weekend. And that resulted in an estimated over $76,000 in earned media value. I think that's the wrap for me. Overall, we had about 700 folks enter our sweepstakes. So those are now Atlanta locals that we can interact with more and drive traffic to the destination. And I think the biggest success and win for us overall for both activations was really bringing folks from our destination up to these markets. The most feedback in both activations was how excited folks were to see art being produced from our destination and what that landscape looks like, also the type of cuisine that we have. So I think we're probably going to try to replicate that in the future, but from our end, extreme success on that. Any questions? Questions for Jessica? I get to talk about the fun stuff I always say when I come up here. Yeah, you get the fun job. Yeah. All right. Thank you all so much. All right. Thanks, Jessica. All right. Now we're moving on to the Envisionist introduction. Yeah, and Mr. Chair, if I could, many of you recall about a month ago, we awarded our new advertising agency contract to Envisionist. And so they hit the ground running. A couple weeks ago, their team, their entire team came down for about a week. We showed them around the destination. They met with some of our local partners. And they really got a feel for the vibe of St. Pete Clearwater. In the meantime, they've been hard at work both in Chicago and down here with our Steve and the team. And we just thought it would be a great opportunity for them to introduce themselves to you all today. They've got a very high-level presentation on who they are, what they do, what they've seen from some of our data, and then just a high-level plan for it. But I thought it would be a great opportunity just to introduce the newest members of our team to you all. And we look forward to the future with them. So thank you. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. It's an honor to be working with and on behalf of Visit St. Pete. And also, thank you very much for giving us some of your time today. I'm Vanessa Garippo. I'm the group account director over at Envisionist and work very closely with the team. And, yeah, thank you very much, Brian, and to your tremendous team you've built. They've been a pleasure to work with so far. And we're thrilled to be here. I'm Jason Goldberg. I'm one of the founders of the agency. I'm our chief innovation officer. And I'm your executive sponsor for the account. So we are finishing our 23rd year as an agency. It was started in an apartment. And, you know, over that time, we've worked very dedicated within the hospitality tourism and hospitality tourism landscape. But additionally, we pair that with deep experience in emerging technology spaces, which I'll touch on why that's of value to what your efforts are. But what that means is we get you. We understand the challenges facing DMOs and CVBs today, both globally and domestically. For us, we use that. We don't rest on that experience. It allows us to understand your challenges. But it also positions us to capture opportunities that we know you're not going to miss. But how do we know you're not going to miss them? For us, when we talk about working in these other spaces, we've looked at the tourism landscape, and we've found opportunities to say, how can we innovate? How can we push it forward? And so we take experience from insure tech, financial technology, and bring those capabilities to the tourism landscape so we can say, great, how are we identifying new opportunities? But, frankly, we always talk about an opportunity that you actually can't act on is a completely useless opportunity. And so for us, it's not just about us being ahead and capturing those opportunities. How are we making it easy for your team, for your destination, for your communities to act on it? What data can we leverage? What experience can we bring in innovation from other spaces that are going to push it forward? And so with that, Enjoy Your Agency has been a moniker for us for a long time now. And, yes, hopefully the team believes we are fun to work with, but that is not what Enjoy Your Agency only means. We do look at it as a statement of how we partner, how we work together. But, frankly, for us, it's more about it being a promise. For us to look at it and say to your team, our partners, your communities, the world's getting more and more complex. How are we giving you agency, personal ability to navigate complex spaces and empower you to make decisions faster, more effectively, limit waste? So, we're thrilled to be here. We're thrilled to have this to work with. And this. And this. And this. And all of this. You have, and obviously your strategy has pointed in this direction already, almost a shocking amount of diversity in the experience that you've built here. Why was it shocking to us when we came down? As we think about your market and all you have to offer, you know, Vanessa and I, as marketers, we're not supposed to personify ourselves as your audience, but we're going to do that right now for a second. Vanessa and I represent exactly who you want to come here. Why is Vanessa not planning girls weekends out in St. Pete downtown? I have a family of five. I have three kids who not only, like, love them some beach, but frankly, I've raised them to have way too fine a pallet for dining, and they enjoy a good museum more so than you'd expect a child to do. Why aren't we thinking about the destination beyond what it is today? This is a challenge that's been facing you as a destination. And as we think about challenges and we're looking at the road ahead, you have so much to be proud of. But challenges do exist, and for us as marketers, we need to look at them so that we can uncover where we can attack them. And so as we are thinking about the market, of course, St. Pete Beach and other communities are still recovering from the hurricanes. But as we start to look at trend data, you know, we look at insights as a driving force for us, we need to continue to get younger. We need to look to more diverse audiences to really fuel and funnel growth. When we think about marketing, we need to be thinking about today, but we also have to be thinking about the next decade for this destination. How are we getting younger converts to come on in? And so as we look at data, it becomes really interesting to see a trend line that connects the very value that we're talking about your destination has with younger audiences. They are seeking immersive cultural experiences. Yes, they want to go hang at the beach, but they want more out of their travel dollars. They're looking for value. They're looking for experience. They want to sample and understand what it means to be part of a community when they're visiting it. And frankly, I don't know about anybody here, but when I travel, I like to picture, can I live there? And I think that is a really interesting experience that we can capture for the destination. I don't think any of you are unaware of international headwinds that are facing the United States in general across the travel landscape. The part that we're paying attention to for St. Pete Clearwater, 10% of your visitation is represented by international audiences, but a lion's share of that is Canada. And what's standing out to us is that Canadian interest in Mexico is surging. It directly points to the fact that they're skipping Florida. They're actually considering spending more dollars right now on travel, on their airfare. And so for us, we need to be considerate of that as we're looking at investment management and how we're looking at attacking those markets. How can we get in? How can we cross those barriers that are facing those audiences? All right. Say hello to Panama Beach, Cocoa Beach, and Daytona Beach. I don't remember which one's which because they all look the same. The fact of the matter is there's a sea of sameness facing beach marketing, particularly for the Florida markets. We need to be able to stand out. You have started to push a direction that is a great foundation to build on to do this. But as we look at this, this is a lot of noise that we have to differentiate in, and we have to look at what assets we have to be able to push that forward. Lastly, a trend we are looking at, I'm sure everyone in this room has also heard ad nauseum the letters AI, and you're probably going to hear it 20 times today. But for us, as we get asked about this quite a bit, it's not about a technology. This is changing what it means to be human. How we interact with the world is shifting right under our feet. In turn, the book for how we market tourism and travel destinations is being rewritten before our eyes. It's how we research, how we decide, where we even book, and how we book. At one point in time soon, we're going to have robots that are literally taking care of our entire vacation, and we just get to go. We're not quite there yet. But the fact of the matter is, is that as marketers, we need to be considering the human behavior shifts, and the destinations that don't get out ahead of this today are going to be playing catch-up down the road. And so for our clients, we are putting a ton of investment into establishing a level set understanding. All right, so with every challenge, an opportunity is presented, right? And so for us, as we think about supporting the destination, what we bring to the table and what we keep in mind always is, first of all, how are we bringing an integrated perspective to what we are doing? And in turn, how is that leveraging a performance-driven mindset? Now, what those two things mean is, are we looking at the forest and the trees at the same time? And are we looking at every dollar being spent, every ad we are putting up, as an opportunity to make sure that we are driving forward performance and what that means for unlocking growth for the destination? So the big opportunity, and you're already pointed in this direction. How can we lean in further into the dynamic cultural assets you have to engage new and diverse audiences? And we're going to talk a little bit about how we're going to do that. First of all, precision. Right now, there is a tremendous amount of waste in marketing. Honestly, there's a tremendous amount of waste between agencies and their clients, but we won't get into that side of the equation today. But as we look at precision, a digital forward strategy allows for so many new opportunities that we can begin to capture for the destination. And this is about looking at what we've built as a foundation and how are we building on top of it to cut through the waste. And I'll give you a little bit more on that soon. Adaptability. What digital empowers as an opportunity for us is that often these campaigns get launched. They run for a year. They do their thing. You're waiting for the next year. Get those releases out and call it a day. And for us, every moment should be an opportunity to optimize. Every channel should be a partner that we can test within. Is this message working for this distinct audience? How are we getting effectiveness in it? When I talk about us working in spaces like insure tech and financial technology, every penny counts for those folks. And every moment is an opportunity for them to say, is this working? If it's not, what are we learning? And get out and let's spend more money somewhere else. We try to bring that mindset when we're talking about a performance mindset into tourism marketing to drive innovation for you guys. And then lastly, an insight not shared is an insight wasted. So whether it is within the media campaigns we're running, the creative that we're working on, or across the organization, whether it's earned media with PR or looking even at the organic landscape and how people are finding our brand, in the end for us, we want to be looking at sharing insights across the board. Because what you can learn in one avenue can drive change and optimization in another. All right, so we're not going to go through every little detail of this, but when we talk about a performance mindset, what you're really seeing here is an opportunity to look at and say, great, what are we learning about the landscape? What insights are we pulling about our audiences? What trends are we seeing in the market that can start to infuse our strategy? And then how are we looking at this around how we target? What are the booking windows for what people are looking at today? What information can we get from data that we're either purchasing or capturing on our own? And how, in turn, is that being looked at investment forecasting, right? We're as much financial advisors as we are marketers, and we're one-third therapist as well, but that's, again, for a different meeting. But for us, we really need to be looking at how are we using our money wisely, where are we getting the best bang for our buck, and not be beholden to a partnership just because we did it the year before. In turn, we use this entire mechanism to look at what do we need to measure. We actually look at the end of the journey and say what needs to be true for us, what are new opportunities for us to measure, how do we partner with Eddie and the team to give you guys even more insight so that you can be armed to push strategy forward for the TDC and the destination. As we start building a foundation of insights, who's spending the most for us right now? Where's our highest value, folks? We're from Chicago. We represent a pretty good market for you guys. What are we looking at? What are we leveraging in that space to really differentiate? Gen Z, you know, we just talked about. I talk about planning for 10 years from now. These are future families. These are future spenders. If we can get them interested in the destination, let them picture a journey where they can see what nightlife and excitement looks like for them, but they can picture their family down the road, and they can see where that journey is going to lead to them and build loyalty for the destination. This is about getting that foundation in place. And then, you know, we are looking at a predominantly in-state-driven hotel revenue, and so we need to maintain that, right? And we need to continue to grow it, but our ability to look at growth segments outside is going to be a significant opportunity for us, whether that is identifying new markets where we want to start building awareness with that younger audience, or we're working within a market that we've already been in heavily, but we maybe haven't carved out a niche within it that they hadn't paid, that they weren't paying attention to us before. All right, this is an eye chart. I'm not going to explain all of this. This just shows that we look at a lot of different things. No, for us, this is precision. We are not looking at our audiences as a one-trick, this is who we're going after, and we're going to call it a day 34 to 46-year-olds in this marketplace and call it a day. Instead, a digital forward precision strategy is going to allow us to align our investments to what are their interests? What is the context that they're looking for information in and they're reading? What data do we have access to that we can start to have more one-on-one conversations with people? And one that I want to call attention to is looking at DMAs. So we'll talk about Chicago for a second. Vanessa and I live in two different zip codes, but we're in this city. I know every stakeholder wants the entire city of Chicago to travel here. They're not all going to be able to afford it. They're not all interested in it. It's not all a fit for them. And there's a lot of wasted dollars when you attack a DMA. One of the learnings we took from the insure tech space, because they're literally doing this to sell you insurance, is looking at zip code level census data and fine-tuning your dollars into a marketplace where we're getting more precision within zip codes that index more highly with their likelihood to travel here and their ability to spend and our goals as a destination to grow. In turn, when you set that up, it allows us to be more precise with our creative. To take opportunities not to just blanket a space. You've set a great strategic course for talking about the destination. You are on track for where it needs to go. We see an opportunity to continue to look at how are we emphasizing that unique culture, that in the context of the beach, but connecting it with the folks that it will resonate with. We are not the same people, and the 20 million other people that we're trying to reach are not even close to the same as well. This approach will allow us to emphasize the right aspects of the brand, of your product, with the folks that it's going to resonate most with. Last word on AI. Unchained is a company that the founders of Envision It launched. Our CEO, Todd Brook, is overseeing this organization. I'm only bringing this up because Unchained is Destination International's official education partner. As you can see here, they're currently working with Visit Florida. This is something that we're calling attention to because it's not only an opportunity for us to support these destinations in the AI space well beyond marketing, but it gives us a unique position to up-level our team's efforts, your team's efforts, and push new thinking into this space. So when I talk about needing to have a diverse strategy to go after those who know AI and those who have already integrated into their lives and those who haven't yet, this sets us up to really be able to tackle these opportunities for the organization and the destination. Hello, everyone. So, yes, Brian alluded to this earlier. We are already hard at work. We've had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of incredible people on the Visit St. Pete Clearwater team. We continue to meet more on the daily. And we're just having a great time immersing ourselves within the destination, learning more and more each day, combing through an enviable amount of data. Most destinations do not have what you have. And that is already positioning you in a very great spot because with that information and data, we're able to use that to apply to our marketing strategies as well. But, yes, we are having a wonderful time with everyone here. Jason has talked about this, our approach. This is specifically how we're going to take it and evolve it from where you're at today, marrying our approach to it and where we're going to be. So, again, we love your foundation. You are spot on there. I think what we find as opportunities is how we're going to enhance and focus on key priorities like audience, creative, media planning, and our performance storytelling. From an audience standpoint, Jason alluded to it before, not a blanketed approach. Everyone is uniquely different, even within our own markets. Like Jason said, I live in a different zip code than Jason. I have different interests. So we want to make sure that we're targeting people based on what their motivating factors are as well so that digital helps us do that. More on that in a couple seconds. But, yes, we want to make sure we're meeting people where they are and where they're consuming things. Additionally, the creative needs to back that up as well. It's not a one-size-fits-all sea of sameness like the slide that was probably 15 ago. It is a unique messaging per audience. Like, we need to make sure we're speaking to them not only where they are but what they want to hear. You have so many unique, incredible, diverse assets here that each means something different to somebody else. So we want to make sure that we're doing that smartly and strategically. And then same thing with our media planning. We have these multidimensional audiences. We want to make sure from the precision approach that we are marketing to them when and where they're consuming content throughout the whole funnel. So all of this is bringing and bridging all of these pieces together in a holistic way that makes it the most valuable so that we can, one, deliver on your KPIs, and then we're getting into our storytelling, which is we have KPIs that we all know that we're targeting towards. But, however, and Jason alluded to this as well, is there's more that we need to uncover as well. There's KPIs that there's market growth. There's new segment opportunities. There's all these things that we're going to learn through. There's new geopolitical reasons that we might be understanding or uncovering that can all impact where we are and where we want to go. And then employing more of a digitally focused and enhancing some of that investment there gives us the opportunity to not only be able to do this type level of targeting, but it also allows us to be nimble and agile and pivot where we need to. Because we might not always be right on the first shot, but we're certainly definitely going to be open to learning and pivoting quickly as well. So we're doing all of this to make sure that we are agile and then can deliver against your investment. This is a lot to look at as well, and I'll just speak to the main takeaway here is we have so many different audiences to speak to, but not all of them are planning at the same time. Not all of them. Jason, it's going to take him longer to get a family trip booked than it's going to take me having a girl's trip booked. There are different planning phases and cycles throughout the year. So we need to make sure that we are methodical and strategic about how we're targeting and when we're targeting and understanding what the consumer's lead-up time is for that planning process as well. Our data provides us that. We have so much of it, and we're still so much to comb through. So we use all of that to inspire how we're going to be targeting our audiences and when. And then this is just kind of where we're at in the process right now. We are currently working with the Visit St. Pete Clearwater team on our strategic brief and getting alignment there. And then all this is to say we're building on the foundation and developing your media plan for FY26 and then cannot wait to get everything off the ground. So, again, thank you all for your time. Sorry I talked fast, but I just wanted to make sure we were in the time limit. But if you have any questions, we're both happy to answer any of them as well. Questions? Bill? Two questions. What's Belize your travel? Yeah, I got it. People that are traveling for business, but we want them to spend a couple more days, right? It's actually a highly valuable time. So I'm literally spending one more day. There's a conference next week in Vegas. I have to go. Oh. That was me last week. The other question is, I'm in the passenger vessel business and dinner cruises and sightseeing and so forth. And the hoteliers here are also doing things with individuals and with groups. So what is a group account director in your world? She oversees a large amount of our tourism business. So she's very connected. So it just means she's managing your account or directing your account. Okay. And a specialist in the tourism destination space. Yeah. We think a group is like 20 or more in a home. Yeah, yeah. No, she's not a group travel director. No, no, no. Not going to do that. Okay. And do you do anything besides? Thank you. Do you strictly do destination marketing or do you? So like it's actually the business is segmented into three focus areas for us. Almost half of our clients fall into destination marketing and tourism. The other half is separated into, as I said, emerging technology. So financial technology, insure tech, crypto, that kind of fun stuff. And then consumer spaces. So we have home improvement companies, main clinics, those kind of businesses. You don't take on individual company clients? We do. We do. Yeah. And when I talk about DMOs in the tourism space, we've represented a NASCAR track. We've represented entertainment cruises, which had 14 ports across the country. And Navy Pier. Navy Pier in Chicago is our client. Variety of hotel chains over the years. Although the hotel chains all pulled their money after the market crashed in 2009. So we kind of pivoted from the hotel space. Entertainment cruises. Was that city cruises too? It was the, God, it was the sea dog. So it was all the lake cruises and then the sea dog and the riverboat tours. We didn't have the architectural tour. But, well, we had an architectural tour. I agree. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. We spent a lot of time in the restaurant space as well, which that picture of Frank and us talking about his crabs was a lot of. Sorry, that came in. Well, it was in the picture. That's what he wanted to talk to us about. So, anyways, any other questions? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Great presentation. We appreciate it. We're excited. Even before this, we were excited how happy the team was to have you all coming on board. So that's very good. My question is, I'm looking at your clients' Chicago area, the Chicago, Choose Chicago and Cook County and Chicagoland. How do you differentiate if you're doing three clients right there? Because we're very close to Tampa Bay and, of course, visit Florida is part of who we have to integrate with. How do you do that? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think the real key for that is knowing that all the stakeholders involved are, A, looking out for their best interests, right? Like, you are competing for audience, but there's also opportunities for partnership and leveraging what you have to drive growth. So when you talk about Cook County as an example, we had to run a program for – it was with ARPA dollars, and it was to promote their outdoor assets, which I've lived there my whole life. And we're like, we have outdoor assets outside the lake? For every one – this is testing me – one acre of land that is residential in Cook County, it's 70 acres of outdoor space. Yes, look at me. And so for us, it was interesting because Chicago is in that, but because of how the dollars were being spent, we weren't allowed to market their assets. Choose Chicago could not participate in that program. And so what we ended up doing is that intimate knowledge actually allowed us to say, great, how are we allowing people to know that the campaign ended up being called Outside Chicago? And so it was really about how are you taking the story of Chicago as a kind of starting point but then educating them on those outside assets. And I think, lastly, those organizations all have really great relationships with each other. And so the ability to kind of look at and say, great, this is a piece of data, and that is of value to this other organization. Now, we were a center point of all that, which we have our non-competes, or our non-disclosures, so we can't be walking across the hall and being like, hey, by the way, we're seeing all this here. But we can bridge those conversations and say we'd like to share this information. It's going to be, like I said, shared insights drive innovation. We want to make sure that they're there. Yeah. I would also add that they all know each other, and they're working almost in tandem just with different budgets. So a lot of the time it is shared interest that is happening there as well. So, like, we'll do co-op opportunities between, like, Choose Chicago and Navy Pier. Navy Pier is a partner of Choose Chicago. So I think there's a lot of intermixing and intermingling that makes it easier to do that, specifically to the ones that you called out in your question. Any other questions? Yeah. I just wanted to comment on one thing you said, which the rest of the members of this council will tell you I've mentioned before, is when you put up the billboards of the different beach destinations, how they all look the same, that's the reality, is that, you know, we take great pride on our beaches being the best in the world, and they are. But people are really looking for more than, you know, what do I do if it's a cloudy day? You know, what other things are there to do here? So I thought that was really important, the point that you made. I would just share with you that our, you know, we don't have money to spend to pay these folks and do all that if we don't drive hotel visits to the beaches, though. Although there may be great restaurants at St. Petersburg and Tampa, we need them to stay on our beach hotels. And I think the thing that is the message we need to continue to think about is how do we share with folks how proximity-wise all these other things to do are really easy to get back and forth to. You can go to dinner in St. Petersburg. You can do, you know, you can go. Yesterday I had an event with Mayor Castor and Mayor Welch in Tampa. We were together as a region on all kinds of things. And when we just had the Eagles played the Bucs and basically took over Clearwater Beach, I mean, it was boat race weekend. You know, I've never seen, I've lived out here for eight years on the beach. And so I've seen Eagles games before against the Bucs. I have never seen that many. They, because they're familiar with Clearwater, with the Phillies, they know it's 25 minutes over the Raymond James Stadium. So what they're going to do on their off time? They're going to stay on Clearwater Beach when they come, because they've been here enough as Phillies fans that they know it's not that hard to go to St. Petersburg, to go to Tampa to eat at a nice rest. But yet their downtime primary focus is to stay on the beach. So that's, and there are all kinds of, it's not just the Eagles. I mean, Taylor Swift a year or two ago had three concerts over there. We had tons of folks out here on Clearwater Beach who are in for those concerts. And so certainly we have to be careful. We're not here to promote Hillsborough County or Tampa. I'm not saying that, but I think messaging all the other things there are to do in Tampa Bay. So if you come in for the ICMA conference, which you are, if you came in for U.S. Conference of Mayors, like last year, tons of mayors stayed out here on Clearwater Beach because they had gotten the message, it's not that far away, to come back and forth. And I think that was a really good point you made early on because we just need to make sure folks know how connected our beach properties are to all these other great things and how world-class they are. Yeah, and I appreciate the comments. And Bill, to your question about Belize, you know, it's a cute name, but you could attach that to the sports traveler, the concert traveler, right? Like, how are you not only getting them to come, but also extend? And to Clyde's point, Tampa is there, and I'm not going to use the word let's conquest them, but we can leverage that as an asset for us. And how are we encouraging that storyline and connecting them to it? And the one piece I want to, like, we are a beach destination. You just have so much other things that can create a much richer travel experience. And I think that there are lots of audiences that are very unaware of that opportunity here, which creates an opportunity to open new eyes to the destination. And so, I mean, it's one of the primary things we were excited about. That's why I showed you so many pictures going through it. Like, there's so much to work with and sell that story. And we know what one extra day means for the destination. Just one extra day, and that's a significant amount of revenue to pull in. I 100% agree. People are completely unaware. They don't even know, you know, some people. Where's Clearwater? Is that, you know, close to Miami? No. I mean, they really have no idea of the geography and how close we are to all these things. So I 100% agree. And, again, I don't live in Hillsborough. I'm not here to promote Hillsborough County. They do just fine on their own. But there are a lot of great things happening throughout the Tampa Bay region, not just in Pinellas. We have the best county of all of them. But still, I think getting folks to know how we're located in a region, Tampa Bay, where there are all kinds of things to do. I think that's really important, educating folks, because I just don't feel like they're aware of where we're at. And how close we are to these other things. And how convenient it is, for sure. It's our job. Yep. Russ? I'm going to add on to the mayor's comments, if I could. I'm with Sheridan Sankey. And we're on an island on the other side of the bridge. And I can tell you that our business, 40 plus, 42%, 45% of our business is group business. So, as you talk about your leisure word and business, I challenge you to say, give us a new word with leisure and group business, because it's intertwined also. And so, one of the events that we do quite a bit is beach parties and all. But that's that group business that's saying, I'm going on the beach for the leisure hour or two in the evening while I have the meeting inside during the daytime or whatever. Group business is very important to, I would say, the majority of the tax collection of Pinellas County are the bigger hotels. And there's a fair amount in Clearwater, St. Pete Beach, and now it's growing in St. Petersburg. So, that is a piece that I challenge you to look at also and relate to it. And then I've got a second question, if you would. Tell us a little more about your agency. Tell them about the size, what your growth is, how you divide up and everything. How many Vanessas do you have for different types of accounts? There's only one Vanessa, Russ. Do you divide your non-leisure to your same accounts, or how do you do that at all? Yeah, so we have a dedicated tourism group, but we're an integrated agency. And I think a big mistake that a lot of agencies make is the teams are siloed off. They don't share insights. So, our media director, who oversees the entire media team, as an example, he worked at, oh, it's LendingTree, and he ran $400 million worth of paid media for LendingTree. We recruited him in. He's overseeing tourism media. So, when we look at that, right, that is someone that's every dollar counted. Every moment of his life was being spent to be measured on performance. He also has a massive sports collectibles side of his life, which he'll gladly talk to you about. But the agency is roughly 70 full-time employees, plus a bench of about 60 to even maybe double the size of the agency of vetted contractors and partners. It's made up of creative media technology, organic search, account services, strategy. But they all work together. And I think that's really the important part for us is the shared insights across it so that our tourism management folks are sitting in integrated pulsing meetings with not only tourism people talking about tourism. It allows us to bring innovation and insight. It allows us to say, oh, you're running a testing program for, I keep saying InsureTech. I'll say something else for a home sales company. Hometown America is a client of ours, as an example. They might have property in Pinellas County, for all I know. But the point is, as we bring that together, Russ, again, shared insights and integrated perspective is what we're looking for. I have to tell you, I'm very impressed with what I've heard today. Thank you. And I thank you. The only person that has a problem with this is tomorrow we're reviewing and looking at new agencies for our hotel. They've got a problem with the questions that we can ask tomorrow. So thank you. If I could arm you to make really digging questions, it was a win. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Anything else from anybody? Bill? As you're developing and emphasizing the unique cultural experiences off the beach, on behalf of Captain Humbert and myself, I want to make sure you emphasize all the things on the water. For sure. But that's culture. That should be your main focus is all the boating activities. That's culture and interest, right? And that is its own level of culture. And, like, take sport fishing, right? Like, that is a very distinct cultural group. And if we can hit them with the right message that is maybe connecting them to the extended experience they can have here, that's what we're talking about when we say culture. I just couldn't fit all the images of everything we have. Well, I did on the other slide, but you get the point. But, yeah, 100%. And it's really, it's a big map to figure out of all the different niche audiences that we can speak to. And then it's talking about who we're prioritizing, how we're spending dollars, and then connecting the story. I've heard this before, but I've tagged mine. It was what are the exact reasons you're here? Yeah. The first letter of one of those words is water. Yeah. Love it. They may have moved Chuck over to that side for a reason, to keep those water guys in line. Dylan, no question? Thanks, Russ. No, I just wanted to say thank you. For me, this is a little bit more iterative. I got voluntold by Brian. Still haven't quite forgiven him to this RFP process. And so I've already had a chance to ask you guys a lot of questions. And I look forward to working with you. Thank you so much. Brian's like that, isn't he? Yeah. All right. Vanessa, Jason, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Moving on to comments from our team CEO. Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few notes. We've had a lot going on internally with staff. And I just wanted to highlight a few of the recent moves that we've made. I'm happy to report. So you'll recall last two years ago, we were missing some directors of various departments throughout the organization. And we had a number of folks operating in a director capacity that didn't have the title. Over the past two years, we have reclassified some positions, promoted some individuals, the last one that was hanging out there was the groups, the meetings and groups department. And I am proud to say that that is no longer the case. And we have recently promoted Stephanie Priakos to be the new director of meetings and conferences. So if you join me in congratulating Stephanie. She's ascended quickly in the organization. She came on board about a year, a year and a half ago. We were blessed to get her. And now she's leading the team over there on meetings and conferences. We also have a recent higher promotion, depending on how you look at it. But you're well aware of our tremendously successful internship program. Sorry, brain lapse there. Our internship program. And we've had some great folks come through the doors and intern with us over the years. Unfortunately, at the end of their internship, they wanted to stay an extra semester. They didn't have enough. We didn't have a place for them in the organization. So we expanded that internship program from one semester to two semesters. But even then, we didn't have places for many of these tremendous interns we had. I'm glad to say that has recently changed. And at the end of her internship, Daniela Slater was able to be hired full time to the team. And I believe this is the first intern that has made that transition. And the way that came about was we had a vacancy. Kylie, in the community engagement side, saw a gap and an opportunity to really increase efficiencies by bridging that gap between the community engagement team as well as the activations team. And so the position of destination experience manager was created. And I'm happy to say Daniela is our first ever in that position. So I believe she's back there. Yes. So two promotions. Unfortunately, we have another promotion, but it's not within the organization. She's promoting out of the organization. And after 35 years of public service to the residents of Pinellas County, as well as the Visit St. Pete Clearwater Organization, our vice president of finance and administration, you know her well, Terry Tuxhorn, is going to be retiring at the end of the month. And I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, the last two years, I would not have been successful if it was not for Terry. I think we do a lot of cool and fun things in the organization. None of it happens without Terry on the back end. I recently saw the Wizard of Oz. She's kind of like Oz. She's behind the curtain making it all happen from everything from our contracts, our agenda items, our onboarding HR stuff, our compliance with statutes, our certifications, our emergency management plans. Terry's the mastermind of it all. And we're really going to miss her. And I just wanted to thank her for her service to our organization, the residents of Pinellas County. And Terry, do you have anything you'd like to say? Good morning. When I stood up here for the first time, Karen Seal was the chair. So it's been a while. I started with the county 35 years ago, as Brian had said. I started as a facility worker. So I'm here today ending my career as a VP and to say that anything is possible. I want to thank all of the wonderful people I've worked with at the county, including the CVB and all of you here. I especially want to thank Brian for this opportunity and for your support. You're in very good hands with my success, so you can be assured of that. And lastly, I'm leaving you for now, but not for good, as I promised activations that I would volunteer as a brand ambassador. So I'll be back representing the destination. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. So when Terry came to me and said she was going to be retiring, I almost had a heart attack. I didn't know what I was going to do. And when I thought about how are we going to replace Terry, and you've got to have someone. You have someone from the outside come in, and they're not familiar with the internal county processes, the systems that we use. There's going to be a learning curve there. I didn't know who internally was there, so I started thinking of if there's anyone in the county that I could think of to do this position, who would it be? And by golly, she was actually a candidate for this position, and she is sitting behind the post back here in the audience. Frederica Collins, many of you know her as the former deputy director of OMB. She's now the VP of Finance and Administration with VISA St. Pete Clearwater. So we're glad that Frederica is with us. Also want to make you aware of this week, it is a takeover on Wheel of Fortune. We partnered with Visit Florida as well as a few other destinations from around the state. For this week is Live More Florida Days on Wheel of Fortune. And tomorrow night, hopefully you're at Clearwater Jazz Holiday enjoying this weather and the tunes. But if you're not, you can't make it, you're at home, and you want to tune in at 7 o'clock for Wheel of Fortune. That is our takeover night. And we will be giving away the bonus spin on the wheel. I don't know the proper term for it, but you pull the flag up if you land on there. You get the trip. It's a trip to the destination. I believe the trip includes Opal Soul, as well as an experience at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium and dinner at our Michelin-rated restaurant, 4-2 in St. Pete. So be on the lookout for that. It was a great opportunity to partner with Visit Florida, the other destinations, and another premium brand in the Wheel of Fortune. So we're excited about that. And speaking of premium, we all know that the Michelin Guide had its first four recommended restaurants here in Pinellas County this year. Well, they started something new. Many are familiar with the Michelin Guide for its food recommendations. They did start a key program where they recognized hotels. And I'm happy to say that we have our first Michelin-recommended hotel property in Pinellas County in the JW Marriott Clearwater Beach. So we can now not only talk about our Michelin-rated restaurants, we can also talk about our Michelin-rated hotels in the destination. So it's a pretty special thing, and stay tuned for more on that. And then, last but not least, we talked about events. This is that time of the year. The weather's getting great. The events are starting to fire up this week. That starts with the Clearwater Jazz Holiday Thursday through Sunday. We hope to see you out there. John's Pass Seafood Fest is coming up at the end of the month. We'd love to see you there. King of the Beach, if you want to get some lines wet and chase some kings, that's coming up the first weekend in November. And then, obviously, we have the ANICA LPGA tournament coming just down the street to our very own Pelican in November. So a lot going on. I hope you get out there. And I do see Charlie Justice, President and CEO of the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber, in the room. And I just want to recognize him and thank him for it. I saw it all over social media. I saw it on the news. You got a ton of great PR. But thank you, the Taste of the Beaches just wrapped up on Sunday. And I believe there were over 40 local restaurants that participated in that. So well done, sir. All right. Any questions for Brian? All right. Hearing none, do we have any board member comments or discussions? Yeah, I just have one. And I had the occasion to think about it last week. I spoke to the travel group for Amplify Clearwater. But when the tax collector, Ross, presents the numbers, we're only 5% off. You know, certainly local governments, we all did our part to get the beaches back together to get these tourists back. And Brian, your team did an amazing job helping get folks back here, too. But I just wanted to share with you all, I really appreciate the St. Pete Clearwater sponsoring the Rose Awards. Thank you very much. St. Pete Clearwater sponsoring the Rose Awards, just recognize those frontline workers. And I know you all will do the same thing I'm doing, whether it's an excursion. I mean, you all contribute to that, too, your folks that work for you or bars or restaurants or hoteliers. We've got thousands of frontline workers who really, that 5% off, that's their success as much of all of ours. So I just want to point that out. And thank you again for sponsoring that and other things you do to recognize our frontline workers in this county. Anything else? All right. Hearing none, our next meeting is November 19th. And we'll see you all then. And we're adjourned. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then. We'll see you all then.