CLEARLAKE— This Thursday at the Clearlake Judges Breakfast forum Joan Mingori from the Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce introduced guest speaker Brian Fisher, a board member of the Lake County Tourism Improvement District. Fisher spoke about the District’s current progress as well as their plans to continue moving forward in the future.
The Tourism Improvement District was created in 2018, and prior to that Lake County had minimal funding to promote itself to other cities and regions, with in print ads being the county’s sole advertisement. Fisher noted “There’s nothing wrong with print, I’ve sold print my whole life, I think it’s a great place, but it’s hard to gauge what’s going to happen with print.” After collaborating with outside consultants the Tourism Improvement District established a 1.5 percent assessment fee that stakeholders (businesses like hotels and other lodging) would charge their guests to help fund the marketing necessary to draw in more tourists.
Fisher reviewed their 2021 revenue with 43.8 percent of that coming from the assessment fee, followed by 25.2 percent coming from the transient occupancy tax and the rest coming from Clearlake, Lakeport, and Middletown. These funds have allowed the District to expand their advertisement efforts including the installation of four billboards, two in San Francisco and two in Sacramento, which they hope to renew for this next year.
The T.I.D. also runs the Visit Lake County website and Social Media accounts (lakecounty.com, Instagram @visitlakecountyca, Facebook Visit Lake County California, TikTok @visitlakecounty) which have been getting increased traffic from places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. According to Fisher “In one year we grew the number of followers on Facebook by 120 percent, and last year by nine percent.” The District also just created a Tik Tok and has been reaching tourists on yet another platform with Fisher sharing “We are one of the first California jurisdiction counties to have a Tik Tok page and we have a great time with our videos… they are beautiful and fun and get a ton of engagement!” The Visit Lake County Website has also grown with 201,421 new users and a total of 414,568 views, with each user spending an average of 1.39 minutes on the page, which are all increases from last year.
Fisher stated “The No. 1 industry in California is tourism. Bigger than Agriculture bigger than everything” and the District aims to capitalize on that as best as possible for the community. He further detailed how the economic impact of travel in Lake County is $175 million dollars stating “For every dollar someone spends at one of our stakeholder’s hotels they are going to spend three dollars outside of that hotel in another business” making tourism one of Lake County’s most important economic drivers.
Next week’s guest speaker at the Clearlake Judge’s Breakfast forum will be Russ Perdock with the Clear Lake Chamber of Commerce. More information and their schedule of speakers can be found on their Facebook page.
