Get started. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our October meeting of the Pinellas County Tourist Development Council. We'll go ahead and get started first with the pledge. Doreen, if you could lead us in the pledge, please. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you. And I understand we do have a quorum now. That's good. Everybody's in place. We may have one other person showing up, but we can actually take some votes this morning, conduct a business of the day. And I just wanted to say, first of all, that I brought this hat because it's the only one I had that said the World Series on it. So it's a bit used, but it's still, the point is that we are there and it's kind of fun. Last year, the Blue Jays were in the World Series and we got to, they opened up the field in Dunedin. So everybody from the town went out and watched it up on the big screen. I don't think we're going to get that at the Blue Jay Stadium this year because they didn't even make the playoffs. But anyway, proud of their efforts this year and we'll see how they do the next step. So, and before I get started on anything else, I want to go ahead and take just a moment and recognize one of our members who, though a short timer, very impactful. So give me just a minute. So sometimes people stay on the commission for, or on the council for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and make good impact, solid impact, or not as solid impact. But sometimes we have people that are here just for three years and Mayor Gaddis is going to be leaving us. This is his last meeting. And what an impact. So an advocate, obviously, on our beaches and the work that you've done in conjunction with everybody here, it certainly has been appreciated big time. So if you'd come up just a minute. And we just have a couple little, a little gifts. This one is a certificate of appreciation awarded to Mayor Dave Gaddis, August 1st, 23 to October 21st, 26th, by the way. Your steadfast commitments and advocacy for our beaches has enhanced our coastal communities and has left a lasting impact on tourism throughout Bel Air Beach and Pinellas County. Thank you so much. Thank you. Welcome. And we have some bags, you know, you couldn't be a member of the CDC without getting some goodies. So we have a bag of good stuff and you can look through it at your leisure. But I really wanted to thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. And if you have a couple of comments you want to make, if not, that's okay too. Oh, sure, sure. It's been an honor and a privilege to work with each and every one of you and also with past members. I've seen a lot of people come through this, uh, this council, uh, since I've been here and, uh, I will, uh, truly miss working with all of you. And, uh, I'm sure I'll see you around because Pinellas County is a, uh, very close knit, uh, group of people and, uh, and we're all friends here. So, uh, thank you very much. All right. We're going to go ahead with the, uh, approval of the TDC minutes. Uh, any questions or comments to have a motion, make a motion motion by mayor Gattis, uh, second, uh, second by commissioner or TDC member Clyde Smith. Thank you. Um, uh, any questions, comments, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries unanimously. Any public comments this morning? I see no one in the house, so we'll go right ahead into presentations. Brian, you've got three or four of them for us this board. Yeah. We've got four on tap and we're going to kick it off with Steve Grimes. He's going to come up and give you an update on, um, many of the, uh, advertising and marketing initiatives that are underway. Good morning, everybody. Great to see you all. And, uh, I'm here to give you just a few updates on the many, many things that we've got going on at the moment. I think I could probably have taken the entire meeting with updates of all of the marketing that's going on right now. So I've abbreviated it. If you have questions or want more details on any of these, let me know, because I'm going to go through them fairly quickly. So I want to talk a little bit about beach culture. Uh, last time we were all together at the August meeting, we shared some of the early creative and talked about how beach culture was rolling out initially in Florida and later in the year it was going to be rolling out nationally. Well, it's now rolling out. I want to talk a little bit about sports, um, a new initiative that we just recently launched called the SPC suite, which I'll talk more about some television exposure and then finally our art everywhere initiative. So first off beach culture, for those of you that were at the besties, you will have seen these giant letters that we had created capturing the beach culture concept. Um, so beach culture is now live all across the country in all of our key markets. So all of our advertising has now been updated to the new campaign. Um, and we have three new TV spots. I think last time I was here, I showed you three spots, um, that were called the reels and they looked like people's photo reels. Um, and one of the things I said at the time we were doing there was we were, because of the way we're targeting these ads, we need a lot of creative. So we're going to be constantly updating and constantly changing. So we now have three additional spots, um, that I want to just take you through similar concept where you'll see we have a family, we have a couples and we have a group of friends version of each of these and each ad gets delivered to those very specific targets. So let's look at them one at a time. Everyone was all smiles here. We found our family spot. That one was obviously the family spot. I don't know if the back of the house, they can turn up the volume just a little bit. Um, next one is the couples. We wanted more than a beach vacation and really found it here. And then the last one is, uh, groups of friends. The right kind of energy. Yeah. This has to be an annual thing. So as you see, all of those spots do a really nice job of balancing beach and culture and really taking people all around the county and showing them all the different things that they can do. And that concept carries on into all of the print advertising and digital advertising that we have running. So this is just a small sample of some of the things that are out there. And you'll see that we've got some ads lean towards the beach and talk about the museums. Some talk, show the museums and talk about the beach. Um, and then others talk about food. Um, so here's some examples. People come from our museums too, soak up more than sunshine for less. And then in the case of the grouper sandwich, catch more than sunshine. Um, so we've got these now running in lots of different places. Um, we're also targeting cold weather. Um, as I was, I'm heading up to Pittsburgh in a few hours where I just learned it was going to be 32 degrees tomorrow morning. So, um, people are going to start looking to come down here. Uh, and, uh, these are some of the ads that we've got running now in some of the cold weather markets. And then we also have our trade ads. So where, you know, business development, uh, meetings, conferences, where we're again, bringing the beach culture, look and feel and bringing some of that messaging into those ads as well. So mixing business with sunshine and business with an unforgettable backdrop there. Um, we also are doing some more tactical things as we start to look at some of the sports. So ocean race, we've all talked about that a lot over the last few months. We have now started ramping up our ocean race advertising. Um, so we're out there with digital ads targeted to the East coast, uh, sailing areas, uh, places like Chicago, where they've got big yacht clubs and telling people basically it's time to start charting your course to St. Pete Clearwater. You'll see more of these obviously, as we start to get closer to the race star, which is the middle of January and then the stopover itself here in May and then sports. We have to talk about the race. Um, so we've been running some ads, promoting the race and celebrating the team and the fact that at least for now, they're still in St. Pete. Um, so we've been updating these as the race have been advancing. And thankfully we now have to update them one more time with a world series version of these ads we brought on at raise influencer. We've had social content from the games. So really leaning into the fact that we are the official beaches of the Tampa Bay Rays and that we, uh, hopefully now we'll have a national television audience, uh, in St. Pete for at least two, hopefully three games when, uh, they win the whole thing next Wednesday. That's my prediction. Um, so we're, uh, we're trying to take as much advantage of the race still being here as we can. Um, also sports, the Bucs, uh, maybe not having quite such the season as the Rays, but, um, what we've been doing with the Bucs is we've been leaning into the visiting fans. So while we're the official beaches of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, we really use that to leverage the fans that are coming down here, uh, to visit. So one of the things we did recently was partnered with Tradewinds and we set up two beach parties. One couple of weeks ago when the Packers were in town and Brian was there with that one with his cheese head on the whole thing. Um, and then last weekend when the Steelers were in town. Um, and this is just a couple of pictures and video from those events. Um, we were very happy with the Packers event. I think there were 150, 200 people on the lawn at Tradewinds and then the Steelers showed up. There was 450 Steeler fans on the beach, lots of black and gold. And if anybody watched the end of the, uh, the game on Sunday, it looked like you were actually in Pittsburgh, not in, uh, in Tampa. Um, they, they got more than a hundred room nights at Tradewinds just from the Steeler fans coming down to stay there. So working with hotels, figuring out ways to bring those fans and let them know that staying at the beach and going to Raymond James is a much better weekend plan than, than, uh, staying, uh, you know, closer to the stadium. So we're going to continue to focus with the Bucks on how do we get those away fans to stay on our side of the bridge. Similarly, uh, the Bolts are playing and our tactics there are very similar. Last time we were, uh, in the hockey season, we talked a little bit about the lightning speed dating that we're doing. We're continuing to do that. That's a great in-stadium opportunity for us to showcase some of the Pinellas County, uh, things you can do. So we always give people a prize that is dinner at one of our restaurants or an activity coming up. Uh, I think the next one is going to get two tickets to Country Fest in St. Pete. So always things that people can come over to our side of the, at the bay and take advantage of. But if you're watching on TV and you're not in Pinellas County or you're not in the Tampa DMA, then you will see our ads on the boards. They are not there in, in, uh, Benchmark Arena. They're only visible on TV, but they highlight the fact that we are the beaches of Tampa Bay. Um, and obviously highlighting that it's where hockey fans come to thaw out. So again, letting those of visiting fans know if you're coming down here to watch the lightning, you should be staying at the beach. And then we had for the opening of the season, we had Thunderburg out at Pier 60, showing everybody all the great things that you can do in and around Clearwater. Um, these ads are working. It's the short version. Um, in addition to our regular TV ads, these are some of our targeted campaigns and just in September alone, more than 130 million impressions between the ocean race and the NFL visiting campaigns and Canada. Um, so really happy with where the way the targeting is working and the creative is working. Um, and we're seeing some really good results. So, you know, you can see just some of the numbers here, the site engagement from our ocean race campaign, or as I mentioned, the number of hotel searches. And as it turns out, the number of room nights that we've driven from the, uh, the NFL program. And we're actually starting to see interest from Canada, uh, which, you know, given what we've been through for the last couple of years is really encouraging. Um, with Canada, our strategy has been to target those people who are already in Canada and searching for something in the U S. So rather than trying to convince the Canadians that maybe don't want to come down here for whatever reason, target those people who have expressed interest in coming to, to either the U S or to Florida and then try to get them to come to us. So very, very targeted. And we're seeing some really good early results from that. Um, we're going to continue to test. We've got, uh, one of the great things about working with envision it. They're always pushing new initiatives and new ways to think about it. We're working with United airlines and this connective program, um, where we're getting our ads, uh, in front of United on their TVs. Um, Spotify, we've been doing a lot with podcasts there and starting to see really good retention as people listen all the way through our spots. Um, I'm not going to talk too much about influences cause Jason's going to come up and talk more about that, but we're having a lot of success with influences, um, meta ads, driving people who are requesting our hotel searches or they're requesting our guide, um, uh, uh, debate destination magazine. And then we've been doing a lot with Tik TOK and starting to get involved in the Tik TOK travel ads. So this is just to show basically we're doing lots of stuff and we're not resting on any laurels. We're going to continue to test and find new campaigns. Um, in addition to traditional paid advertising, we're continuing to create, create content. Um, you may remember a few months ago, we showcased a thing called pallet and pallet. It was our chefs going up to New York and cooking a meal at the, uh, James Beard foundation up there. And then we turned that into a seven minute sort of mini documentary where the chefs and the museums came together. Um, working with that same company, we, uh, we, uh, decided to dig into our beaches and what makes particularly a clear water beach and our beaches, what makes them so unique? Well, it's the sand. And where does that sand come from? And why do we have the best sand in the world? And so, uh, working with a production company, um, they've put together a seven minute video. I encourage you all to watch the whole seven minutes because you'll learn a lot. Um, here's just a short, uh, clip on where our sand comes from. You can see on Google maps that the famous white sands of Clearwater beach are visible from space, but that sand doesn't even come from Florida. One of the most common questions people come and ask us is where does the sand come from? And we said, oh, it's coming from the Appalachian Mountains. And then people thought I would be joking, but it is, it actually come from the Appalachian Mountains. And the clue is in the sand itself. What makes Clearwater's white sands unique is that other beaches are mostly shells and dark minerals, but the Gulf Coast sand is almost entirely pure quartz crystal. And to understand how it got here, we have to travel back in time. Millions of years ago, the Appalachian Mountains were a jagged, towering range, similar to the modern Rocky Mountains. Over millennia, weathering in water slowly eroded those peaks, grinding the light-colored quartz rock into fine powdery particles. Quartz is a very interesting mineral because other sand from the Appalachian Mountains take a very long route and get to us. All the minerals over millions of years get weathered away. What's left would be quartz crystal because it's the most resistant. The result is Clearwater's Exceptionally pure, fine, rounded granules of quartz. This is what gives it a sugar-like look and texture. And because quartz reflects solar heat, you can comfortably walk on it barefoot in the middle of summer. So when you're standing on Clearwater Beach today, you're sinking your toes into the pulverized remnants of the ancient Appalachian Mountains. So we think this is a great way to tell our story on places like YouTube and other social channels. We're going to continue to look for other really interesting stories that sort of reach an audience that are not necessarily just looking at our advertising. Again, there will be a seven or eight-minute version of this on YouTube, well worth a watch to learn more about where our sand came from and why it's so unique. We're hiring. I don't know if anybody's been following the news stories recently. I'm not sure whether it was Brian thought he needed a new executive team or what, but we actually have three C-suite positions that we're hiring for at the moment. We have the Chief Flavor Explorer, the Chief Vibes Officer, and the Chief Sunset Curator. And these are three positions that we dreamt up to help us tell the beach culture story. And so the team and the agency and Lou Hammond group, we also got together and brainstormed this idea. And we weren't sure, frankly, whether we were just a little crazy and that this was actually resonate with people. And so we started running some ads. We've got ads on LinkedIn. We've got actually a billboard in Times Square. We've got all sorts of social ads. We've got an influencer. And turns out lots of lots of people noticed. We now have more than 3,000 video submissions. Everybody had to send in a two-minute video describing why they should be one of those positions. More than 100,000 website views to check this out. It got picked up by lots of channels, Travel and Leisure. Good Morning America picked it up and not only talked about it, but spent a good couple of minutes going around the table discussing who on the show would be which position, which was money can't buy that kind of publicity. And just bear with me as I go on a small tangent. The reason it ended up on Good Morning America ties back to something that Jason had arranged, which was another dinner at the James Beard Foundation where we brought some New York media. One of those people worked for Good Morning America. So then when we reached out and said, hey, we've got this initiative, the connection clicked, and they were able to get us on the show. So it just goes to show that sometimes you're laying that groundwork with a great James Beard Foundation dinner then paid off in unexpected ways with Good Morning America and the C-suite here. So applications close on the 22nd, so tomorrow. You are not eligible to enter. Sorry. You have to stick with your day jobs. But we have already got a short list of some really interesting candidates. Those people are then going to come down here and they're going to spend 10 days in the destination. They're going to go to all the events that are going on during that time. They're going to go to music and they're going to go to art and they're going to eat the food. And then they're going to tell the world about it. And then after that, we'll see what happens. We'll have these three people that we can tap into and allow us to tell our stories. Just from the PR alone, we think we've got more than $1.3 million worth of value. And that's just the earned media. That's not anything else. So very excited with how this has come to be. And just goes to show sometimes those crazy ideas really do work. Talking of national television and exposure, we have two big national TV moments coming next month. Wheel of Fortune, if you were here last year, you may remember there was a special week of Florida episodes on Wheel of Fortune. We're repeating that. It was such a great success last year. So our episode airs on Tuesday, November 10th. As you can see here, we're on the wheel and you know, the same every the four Florida destinations all have a day. During that day, they promote us. We are the grand prize. And then the viewers during that episode can also enter to win their version of the prize. So tune in on Tuesday, November 10th, if you want a sneak peek of what happened. Katie was at the recording and she can tell you who won or who didn't win. And then really exciting. The following week, live with Kelly and Mark will be recording from Clearwater Beach. So that is a whole week of episodes that they're recording. We have 1000 seats per episode. And I think we're oversubscribed by at least two or maybe even three times right now on the number of people who want to come and watch that show on the beach. So very excited to have them down here. In addition to actually filming the four shows on the beach, they're also going to be around and about in the destination. We're still working with the team at ABC on exactly where they're going to go and what they're going to do. But the goal here will be to have Kelly and Mark experience the destination and then showcase that as part of the show as well. So very excited that we could bring that down here. It was about two years in the making, I think, to get them down here. So huge kudos to Jason and Katie, who would be working tirelessly on getting that to happen. And last but definitely not least is art everywhere. So this is an initiative, I think we may have mentioned it before, if not quickly explain it. In partnership with Creative Pinellas, and I see Margaret over here, she'll pop up in a second and tell you more about it. We wanted to turn November into Arts Month in Pinellas County. There was already a lot going on. And so we wanted to amplify that. And so Creative Pinellas has worked with local artists, I'll let Margaret talk about that, the museums and galleries, they're all participating. And we've built out a website and the same mobile app that we use for 727 Day and for Funshine, we've created an art everywhere version of it. So as you go and check out the different art installations during the month of November, you'll be able to check in. And then ultimately, if you check in at three places, you can get a custom art everywhere t-shirt designed by a local artist. There's a whole wide range of stuff to do from painting to dance. There's a dancing at the McClellan glassworks, which I think is like dancing and glass going together sounds interesting and potentially dangerous. And then you've also got theater and a whole host of things. So to tell you a little bit more about it, I will cede to Margaret. Good morning, Margaret. Welcome. Good to have you here. Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. So art everywhere kicks off in less than two weeks. And I am so excited about this. I did want to go back and talk a little bit about how the funding happened. Well, not how the funding happened. But when we announced this in early June, we did not anticipate that we would receive $3.6 million in funding request, which goes to show me that our artists and our cultural community and arts organizations are really invested in making sure that Pinellas County remains an arts destination. And we only have room to grow from this. So as Steve said, we have a number of events throughout the county. And we made sure that we really invested this money strategically. We have, we are opening the festival. We are opening art everywhere with Museum Week, which was not happened in St. Petersburg in forever. And it's something that all of the museum directors and even our new museums have expressed interest in. So Museum Week, we have the Dali, of course. We have the MFA, the James Museum, the Holocaust Museum. Actually, the Holocaust Museum, it is spectacular what they have planned. They are premiering an opera at the Holocaust Museum. And I want to give a lot of credit to the directors at the museum there for their foresight and their passion in bringing this project to Museum Week. And then we're also working with the brand new Beatles Museum as part of Museum Week. They're going to have Beatles cover bands and the museum will be open and free admission for the community. So I'm really excited about that. During Art Everywhere, we will have, as Steve said, we have dancers dancing in front of class, but we also have people performing art on beaches. We have a theater week where we'll be premiering new plays. We have musicians playing. We have a number of visual arts experiences. And then the other thing that's exciting to me, and I want to thank Brian and Steve and the VSPC team for this, we're also including art organizations and experiences that weren't funded by this program in our Art Everywhere umbrella. So even if they weren't funded, we're still able to include them in this fabulous passport so that people can go and see and learn more about the arts that are happening here. That's pretty cool. And then to kick it off, we are hosting a day-long event in Coachman Park. We're working with the City of Clearwater and Sister Cities to host a Japanese Lantern Festival, which is going to be spectacular. We also have family events throughout the entire day. All in all, this has been a wonderful experience for Pinellas County. It has been really wonderful for us to work with VSPC on this. And I'm just really heartened by all of the enthusiasm that our cultural leaders and our artists have expressed about this program. So thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Any questions? That's awesome though. That's beautiful. I think it'll be a fun month. And this, I love this calendar too. Thank you. Thank you. Letting people know there's all kinds of activity all over the county and just, you can't, you can't love the arts and not find something that just absolutely, you know. It's really, I mean, I was at Safety Harbor Art and Music Center two days ago and they're doing a carnival type event. They're doing an umbrella parade. They've got Selwyn Birchwood playing. There's just so much to see and do from St. Pete to Safety Harbor. Commissioner Lavala, did you have a question? Okay. Okay. Anything else? Anybody else? Thank you. Okay. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate your being here this morning. Have a wonderful day. Bye. Any questions for Steve before we? Yeah. Commissioner Lavala. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you were talking about all the influencers, got me thinking that if you needed a local influence to target senior citizens around the country, I wanted to nominate my good friend Dave Eggers. And because he is a county employee, you don't have to pay him because he's already on the county payroll. Duly noted. But on another note, I was looking on the slide that had to do with the different ads that y'all are targeting. And I saw that the ocean race was number one. And it looked like there's a significant ROI on that. Since the ocean race is worldwide, how do y'all determine how those ads are targeted? So for the ocean race particularly, we are focused, yes, we are the national, the only stopover in North America. So theoretically, anyone in the U.S. that's interested in sailing, we are going to be the place they want to come. So our primary focus has been places with a strong sailing community or a strong sailing interest. So the East Coast, whether it's from Newport down to New York, but also, as I said, like Chicago, we've been working with the various yacht clubs. And because of the way the ocean race is set up, we're sort of a one-quarter partnership, if you will, between ourselves, the City of St. Pete, University of South Florida, and the St. Pete Yacht Club. So we've been able to lean on the St. Pete Yacht Club, for instance, in this case, to get us connected with more than 300 yacht clubs around the country to make sure that people are aware of this. So a combination of specifically targeted digital advertising, outreach through the yacht club, that's how we're sort of hoping to. Now, the next phase of this, well, as we start to get a bit closer, and particularly once the race starts in Spain in mid-January, is then to sort of start building the excitement for those that are, we'll say, sailing adjacent or sailing curious, not necessarily those that have a boat, but like the idea of the spectacle of this event, because there's going to be a whole host of things going on during that two-week period that the boats are here that, frankly, the boats will be a part of, but they won't be the main thing. There'll be music. There will be various cultural things happening. There will be a running event. There'll be all sorts of things happening during that time period. So we'll then start broadening the message to bring in those people who are just sort of curious about this event and want to come down here. So we're excited. There's going to be a lot going on in St. Pete, particularly during that time. It was announced after I put this presentation together, but the Savannah Bananas are coming at the same weekend that we've got the Ocean Race here, and we have the Valspar Golf Tournament happening the same weekend. So yes, if anybody needs a hotel room in May, I would book it quick. Thanks. Thank you, Commissioner Latvala. Dillon. The C-suite thing, that was an awesome idea. Really, really interested in that. Are you guys limiting it to one per person or one per slot? Are you guys talking about opening it up because you have so much interest? Yeah. So for now, we're going to just hire one per. Frankly, we did not expect 3,000 plus completed applications. I mean, there's been close to 17,000 people have started down the process. So it's pretty insane. I think this has shown us that we've got potential to do more with this kind of thing. We've already started separating those people. We had a lot of people who lived in Pinellas County in St. Pete, this area. That's not really what this program was about. It was about bringing people in from other places so that they could experience it. But now we've got a great list of people from this area that we can also reach out to. So yeah, we're still going through all the applications. I think there's definitely possibility to do other things. I mean, there's, you know, we were just talking yesterday. There's one person we're like, maybe not right for this job, but we could do a lot of other things with this person. And so it's just really opened up the doors of lots of really interesting people to work with. Yeah. You've created quite the list of qualified influencers. And, and my, I may say some very unqualified ones too. Yeah. That's awesome. Anybody else for Steve? Yeah. Yes. Come here. Yeah. Steve, um, you totally blew me away. Every month that we meet, I think, well, what's he going to do this time? It just seems to keep getting better and more exciting. And, uh, it's just amazing. I think you're doing a great job and I appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. I think it's Eddie right to tell you how this is all working. Yeah. Eddie's next to give you an update on, uh, he's going to actually do back-to-back presentations. The first one's going to be an update. We've gone through a complete, uh, website overhaul. It's exciting. Eddie and the team have been working on it for quite some time, and we're excited for him to roll it out to you today. So yeah, I think, you know, I do presentations so nice. They asked me to do it twice, right? Uh, anyways, uh, I wanted to give an update on our website. Um, we recently, you know, we, we had a version of our website, um, that launched in 2020. So it had been about, uh, over five years since we had updated the website last, um, within the industry at large, there's a huge debate, you know, kind of raging on what's the value of, of a DMO website. What's its place for people when they're planning a vacation and when they're planning to stay? We've conducted, um, a website ROI study with future partners. Uh, we conducted it in 2025. We actually had conducted it for the past five years. Um, and the 2025 numbers that I'm sharing right now are the best numbers that we've gotten in the whole duration of the study. Um, and actually each year our website incrementally grew in terms of its total economic impact. And that's due to the fact that our website grew in terms of the total number of visitors visiting the website. So, um, in 2025, visit St. Pete Clearwater drove 110,000 incremental trips to St. Pete Clearwater. How this study is conducted is, uh, in waves of surveys. The initial survey, um, is while they're first browsing the site and we kind of bucket them into, have they already decided to take their trip? Are they interested? Are they considering a trip? Are they not interested in a trip? So we categorize these different, uh, buckets of, of website visitors. And then we understand their influence. Did the website make an impact on their decision to visit? And then when they visited, we, uh, send a follow-up survey to understand how much they actually spent on their trip. And that's how this study is conducted. So within this framework of this study, uh, we report $191 million in economic impact generated from visitstpclearwater.com. As I said, 110,000 trips and, uh, over 288,000 room nights generated in Pinellas County, um, influenced by their visit to visitststpclearwater.com. So that's a real, uh, economic or an economic impact per real website visitor. And that's what we're recording is not just any sort of traffic, but actually real recorded engaged visits of $63 and 91 cents. So yes, a website is important. However, people's behaviors online are dramatically changing right now. Um, people are using agentic AI to help their planning process. My 70 year old father-in-law, uh, when planning a vacation to Jackson Hole coming up in May, the first thing that he did was ask, you know, chat GPT, you know, what, what some recommendations for where to stay was. Um, so we have a new front door based kind of on this understanding and this, this, um, study, you know, that, that we've been thoroughly kind of conducting on people want the authenticity of our website, the authority and the information and, and, and the value that's there. They also want personalization to their trip and the type of trip that they're taking and who they're coming with and what that looks like. And so, uh, this iteration of our website really addresses those two items in, in a unique way. Um, a couple of things that we focus this website on, it's simpler to navigate understanding in the study who the actual real visitors were that are coming to our website tends to be an older demographic. So we really took a close look at how our website is broken out and tried to make it as helpful as possible in terms of being able to navigate where to go and what to find. Um, one thing that we've implemented is AI search across our website. So, uh, this helps essentially lets visitors ask a question in plain language to get a summary of links to our best content. Um, and we, this is technology that's new to our website. We are continuing to work on and improve this, uh, personalized components. So there's various AI components across the site that essentially help people based on what their needs are, um, have a personalized experience when they're visiting our website. Um, and most importantly in enrich profiles. We've done this a number of ways. We've done this through ripe, uh, enhanced profiles. So we're able to actually pull in rates and other pieces of information when people are browsing different hotel properties and, and, um, other accommodation services. We also have pulled in, uh, reviews and recommendations, um, from online sources. So we're able to provide people with helpful information about positive experiences that people have had during their time and visit. Um, and in addition to that, um, uh, an enormous number of other features, we really re-envision how business profiles look. Um, and one of the reasons behind that is we've seen a tremendous, uh, oh, and there's a little video here. Uh, we've seen a tremendous amount of, um, usage from AI agents to business profiles and, and them grabbing and digesting that content and surfacing it, um, during people's experience to their website. So we know that, um, these profiles are going to take an even more important step in kind of the next five or six years of our website. So, um, as I sort of bring that up, uh, on the AI site search on the left, that's how people are using our site. And this is within the first two weeks of our data. Um, people are using, you know, there's more places where AI is available throughout our site and, and people are using that, you know, much, much more progressively each and every week. On the right side is the understanding of how AI assistants are using our website as well. And this again is, is growth, um, that we are seeing, you know, just from the site launch. So, you know, we're really understanding that the way that we've sort of reframed and reformatted, reformatted our website is oriented towards not just people using our website, but AI agents as well. And one of the important things that we're noting here is that partner referrals per a hundred visits to our website, um, AI assistants are, are surfacing a lot more business partner referrals than normal search engine visits and across all visits. So, um, one thing that I would, um, you know, ask, uh, all partners to do is, is help us by making sure that your business listing profiles are up to date, are accurate, um, are improved with new photos and imagery, what, whatever you can be doing, um, please help us so, so we can have the best website possible to help our visitors. Uh, on the other side of it, um, we are working to improve our AI tools across our site. This was always kind of the project is making sure that each week we kind of get better with the results that are being surfaced from this, that they make sense to us. Um, and so that's, you know, with the real feedback that we're getting now, uh, we're able to help inform and improve those. Uh, we're also working behind the scenes to independently improve business profiles, um, by conducting audits and, and reviewing the information materials, um, independent of, of partner assistance, but to just make sure that we have the most useful, most accurate and reliable source of data, uh, for businesses, you know, that are in the tourism industry in, uh, St. Pete Clearwater. A brief website presentation, but I'm happy to take any questions before I jump into destination metrics. Questions for Eddie. Well, I'm just glad you're embracing this AI thing that, you know, some of us older timers, uh, fight. So I'm glad, I'm glad we're doing what we need to be doing and, and bringing us into the, well, into the 21st century. So thank you for, for all of that. Yeah, it's a, it's a new world. Mr. Chair, just on that note, um, Eddie, in addition to, um, the initiatives that he showed you in the use of AI on the website, Eddie also leads, um, in partnership with Ray on our team, uh, they are spearheading our AI efforts throughout the organization. And so we've brought on a consultant, a technology consultant to evaluate our business practices, what we do, how we can do it more efficiently. And a lot of it is not that outward facing fun stuff. It's that behind the scenes work that is, uh, increasingly time consuming, uh, the stuff that maybe folks don't enjoy doing. Uh, we want to identify where we have efficiencies and can use technology to plug those to free up staff time to do those fun, innovative things, um, that we love to do. So Eddie's leading our efforts on that, uh, and beginning, um, in two weeks, we start, um, throughout the organization, everybody will be doing a 12 week, uh, training course, uh, weekly courses and, uh, how we integrate that into our business practices. So, uh, thanks to Eddie for, for leading those efforts. I'm glad I'll be taking that class too. No kidding. Yeah. Well, I think you'll start to see some of the fruits of that, um, in the destination metrics, um, in other places, you know, some of the stuff that AI is allowing us to do is, is essentially, um, some of the data analysis, uh, work in terms of, you know, putting our sources of data together and understanding if there's any mismatches in, in, in that data and, in any alignment. And, um, obviously with the way that we've been investing in data and bringing in a variety of sources, um, this is, this is tremendously going to help us understand the patterns of visitation behavior and, and kind of what's going on and how we can correlate and connect visitor profile data to transient occupancy and, and other things like that. So, it will really help us kind of, um, further enhance the ability that we're able to report accurate destination data to this TDC. Yeah. Uh, Dylan. Um, was Envisionit the leader on the website remodel or where did that come from? Oh, thank you. Uh, I'm sorry. I, I meant to give a huge shout out to Miles Partnership. Um, working with them throughout this process has, has been, you know, really a, a positive thing. I mean, we, we've been focused on how AI is going to be a part of, you know, the website from, you know, talks back in January to building it. So it's, it's, uh, again, wanted to give Miles Partnership a shout out. They've, they've done tremendous work. We've been really happy with the product that they've had. So Miles was the one who did up the website and did all this, uh, AI. That, that, yeah, that's correct. I mean, our agencies all work together. So like, you know, in terms of the design look and feel and outlook, you know, obviously that information was, um, provided with Envisionit. The way that we are talking about our audiences and audience profiles, we had to sort of understand, okay, well, what does that mean for the website? How do we think about, you know, how we're going to be building out pages? So, you know, input comes from all these different sources, but Miles Partnership was the lead to develop this website. Anybody else? Yes, Doreen. I just wanted to say kudos to the whole team to bring this forward and, um, kind of chuckling over the, uh, senior consultant, uh, position that you've suggested with, with the commissioner. You would not qualify for that. Oh, well, you know, but maybe I could be a sub agent there, but to the point that, that in it, there's such great fear about AI, the negativity and, you know, taking over the world and all those other things. And, and I, I've seen this in other aspects of our business over the last 20 years for me in terms of vacation rentals and so forth. And you have to embrace the positives. And I, I see this as being, um, a tremendous, you know, way of moving forward and utilizing what we're not going to stop it. We're not going to change it. So we have to, you know, look at how we can control and, and use it to everyone's best advantage. So, um, appreciate that. And, and, you know, doing a presentation like this kind of puts that all into the right frame of mind. And, um, also to appreciating that we all need to update our business profiles. And I would just ask that as you're auditing those, um, please let us know, uh, because I'm sure that with your expertise, you're going to see things that we should be doing maybe differently with our business profiles and how we can better work with you. So any info, um, please pass that along. And I heard Trish say that, can we come take the course, you know, thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Thank you, Eddie. All right. Uh, well, I'm the next guy. So moving, uh, into destination metrics, um, we have a, uh, solid August month to report about two and a half percent over 2025, uh, just a sliver over 2024 by half a percentage point. You can see in the past couple of years, we've had this really tight window of August TDT that hovers around 6 million to, uh, you know, maybe up to 6.2 million percent. Um, it's a very consistent month of, of performance for us. And it also sort of begins to mark the shoulder season in terms of our, our tourism season. Um, looking at this, you know, with all the cities and communities in our destination, you kind of see, you know, because of this tightness, a little back and forth in the various communities, um, in terms of TDT performance, vacation rentals, uh, pulling in a lot more than fiscal year 2025, but a little bit before fiscal year 22, 24, Clearwater, Clearwater Beach, the opposite, St. Petersburg, both up a couple of months, St. Pete Beach, you know, up above 2025, a little bit below 2024, and then the various communities kind of going back and forth. So it was, um, a slower month in terms of year over year growth compared to June and July and the earlier numbers, this summer. Um, it does not necessarily indicate that we are going towards a slower season of growth though. And I'll touch on that a little bit at the end. Um, year to date, we are up 8% from fiscal year 2025 and above, uh, fiscal year 2024 by 2.3%. So, uh, with one month to go in terms of the fiscal year, we're at about 94.7 million in terms of total TDT collections. Um, and as I said earlier, you know, if you look at August numbers, they're closer to October, November, December numbers than they are towards July. Um, so we are, uh, kind of in our shoulder season at this period. As we look at, uh, the monthly industry metrics, um, in terms of recorded, uh, an estimate number of visits from Placer of visitors who stayed at least 90 minutes in our destination, we are just above 2.6 million. Um, that's above last year by 6%, a little bit below fiscal year 2024. Um, our hotel occupancy is a little bit below, uh, both those numbers, but it's, it's very close to fiscal year 2025 and 2024 at 60%. Uh, hotel ADR is, uh, $160, uh, a little bit below last year above the year before. So you can kind of see this theme of we're kind of hovering, right? You know, in the middle, these numbers get very close to each other. Our vacation rental occupancy looks like it's, it's very high compared to the past couple of years. I'm going to put a footnote there and touch on why that is in a couple more slides. Um, but the vacation rental ADR is also showing very strong positive numbers compared to fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2024. So again, today, as we look at the, the Placer estimated visits of at least 90 minutes in destination, we're at about 15.4 million visitors, um, up almost 10% compared to fiscal year 2025, still a little bit below fiscal year 2024. Our hotel occupancy again is around 68%. Um, that's lower than it was in fiscal year 2025 when we did have that displacement from the storms, but positive from our last kind of regular year in fiscal year 2024. Our hotel ADR is, is really kind of very close to where it was the past couple of years, uh, vacation rental occupancy up, um, compared to the past couple of years and then vacation rental ADR much higher than it was, uh, these past couple of years. So what's the highest for the year that we've ever been? The highest for the year in terms of TDT is around, uh, $98 million in total TDT. So this, this, this, we've never hit the triple digit, right? Uh, we have, we have not, uh, and you know, we don't know what September's TDT is going to be, but in terms of the other metrics of performance, we had a very strong month for September. So, you know, you might read between the lines here. Pretty amazing. Yeah. Anyway, go ahead. Thanks. Um, so what moved the numbers in, uh, in August? Uh, well, we had a increase in hotel supply by about 3% and we actually had greater demand than the previous year by a one and a half percent. Um, so our occupants, the, the demand pace did not keep up with the supply pace. So the occupancy had a little bit of a dip. Our, our rate, uh, was a little bit lower. So that total room revenue for hotels on the hotel side of things, a little bit lower than it was the past year because of those factors on the vacation rental side. Uh, we, um, and this is data scraped from Airbnb. So we had 11.9% fewer active listings, which is why we've had this boost in our hotel occupancy by a tremendous amount. There's just been fewer listings online. So that occupancy number as a result has risen up where the demand is actually fairly similar to the previous year. Now the ADR for our vacation rental, um, industry has increased quite a bit. So the total amount of revenue coming from that vacation rental side of things is higher, which has been kind of the deciding factor in why this August TDT has been higher from the previous couple of years. Um, or that's what this information seems to indicate. Um, in terms of that origin market data where, you know, coming from Placer, we had about 2.6 million, uh, in terms of visitors, about half of those total visitors are coming from kind of our home base, our home area outside of Pinellas County, but still within kind of the Tampa Bay area. Um, 18.3% makes up the rest of Florida. So predominantly coming from Orlando, Miami, Fort Myers, those bigger, uh, population centers in the state of Florida. And then about 31, 32% are coming from out of state. Um, and those are mostly coming from, as you can see on the graph, the table to the right, uh, major, uh, metropolitan areas in the Northeast and Midwest, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, of course, is in there as well as, uh, DC. This is a new source of data that I'm excited to share. We've, we've kind of been working on this for a while, but we acquired, uh, visa spend signals, which is in-market spending from visitors, uh, using visa cards. And we were able to capture in the month of August, um, across trips to our area, uh, nearly 90, over $91 million in sort of trip expenditures. So we can kind of see how people aren't just, you know, uh, visiting hotels and, and, and spending there, but how they're spending, you know, and other things throughout the destination. So we've recorded this information from over, uh, 318,000 trips, uh, domestically. And, um, very importantly, we're able to see international trips to our area, too, through this data set. And that was one of the primary reasons for why we wanted to collect this data set, is it kind of gives us the, the best viewpoint in terms of understanding actual international travel, um, into our area. So we can see, um, and again, uh, on the left, we have our domestic markets that align very closely to the information that we're seeing in place, uh, in placer. And then on the right, we can see our international markets, um, Canada is still remaining our, our top market, the UK, uh, Germany, Puerto Rico, France, uh, and, and down the list. So what we've, um, been able to sort of see is, is growth in our Latin markets, um, other markets holding, you know, strong to where they were the year before, but also we should note that the year before it was not a great year for us in terms of international visitation. So we are better than a bad year. We're not necessarily better than where we were, um, prior to that. Looking ahead, uh, to our pacing. So this was taken in early October. I think that what we're going to see is our October numbers in light of the World Series news, um, being even higher than what this data represents compared to the previous years. But, um, looking at sort of our pacing over the next three months, including this month, uh, we're seeing really strong visitation in the month of October, um, very strong visitation in the month of November. Uh, and that is almost certainly supported by the tremendous amount of events that we have in our area. Um, none, you know, of course, including art everywhere in that. But, you know, so many things are coming into our area in November. It's, it's very exciting. Um, and we're also seeing this pace through the vacation rental pacing data that we're seeing as well. So strong months ahead of us, um, based on the data sources that we have available to us. Wow. Okay. That's a lot of information. Any questions? Uh, yeah, we'll probably have some as we absorb more and more of it, but it's a lot to absorb. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. And, uh, hitting cleanup is going to be Jason. Uh, and he's going to go over some of the, um, influencer partnerships, uh, that we've had, uh, recently. Hello. Good morning. Uh, Jason Latimer, director of public relations. Um, good to see everybody today. I haven't been up here in a while. Good morning. I've been traveling a lot. Just got back from London where we met with media, uh, and heading out to Canada again, just to kind of reinforce the message next week, uh, with our Canadian friends and media up there. Um, just how great it is to visit here. So glad to be able to slide this in between. Um, as Brian said, just wanted to kind of give a little bit of overview, uh, to some of the content creators and influencers we've had come into the destination, uh, as we've seen in, and Eddie's great stats, um, how important and influential, uh, it is, uh, for folks to find inspiration on social media. Um, so we've taken a little bit more proactive stance this last year. Um, one of the, the main things that we did was partner with Stellar, uh, through Envisionit. Uh, this was, we've teased this a little bit with some of the influencers and shown you some of this content. Uh, but the Stellar partnership is, uh, it's kind of a larger platform. Uh, they have a, uh, stable of influencers and content creators that they work with, uh, that they vet and, and bring into their system. And the, the idea is not necessarily just to bring somebody in, they create content and then they leave. It's how do you actually, uh, incite some booking and some further interest. And then also how do you retain that conversation on our channels? Um, so some of the, some of the other, some of the other objectives that they brought in, um, in this partnership was creating website itineraries that we can put on our website. So as Eddie was talking about the new layout, uh, we actually have, um, some of these influencer agendas and itineraries on our website that can then be searchable, um, and then instant bookings as well, uh, for some of these activities. Uh, they also supplied us some video assets. Um, we can never get enough content. Uh, so being able to get some, some content that we can use in perpetuity, uh, was also a nice addition to this. Um, and then also repurposing in their channels. Um, they are tapped into very, uh, travel motivated group. Uh, so having that, that, uh, as part of the, uh, as part of the package as well really helped. Uh, and then also having the access to promote, uh, through paid social, the influencers, some of those influencers that came in. Uh, so overall we had 16 content creators that we targeted, uh, they were from across different levels. So your high tier, we categorize them as, as such high tier, mid tier and low tier, your high tier being more followers and your lower tier being fewer followers. Uh, and then also categorizing then in between our personas that we wanted to target, uh, between those millennial families, uh, the Gen Xers, the, the young Gen Zs, the urban explorer, and even the mature couple who, uh, obviously are on social media as well. And then a third layer was the market penetration as to where, uh, their followers were, uh, to make sure that we were hitting our, our target markets, uh, and the, and the demographics that we wanted to bring down here that we knew would be interested in our area. And then we, you know, we, we took kind of a different lens as well. We didn't want to just find people that traveled and that was what they posted on their, on their, uh, social channels. We got a little bit and we challenged them, uh, to get a little bit out of the, out of the ordinary, um, you know, bringing folks in that maybe were crafting families or there was a couple guys that really liked the eighties, um, but they have hundreds of thousands of followers. Um, so how can you integrate their followers and inspire, um, their community to want to come and check out our area? And all this was, was to identify beach culture through their channels and really leading up to, as Steve was saying, now everything is, is out and in, and all the markets, this was that nice teaser through social media to get everybody and wet their appetite a little bit as to what beach culture really is. Um, so some numbers, um, goals, 28 million impressions. Uh, we wanted to get the content across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. Um, and we wanted to try to get out in the community as much as possible and show as much of, of the destination as possible. Uh, the results, we actually, at the time that we prepared this, we had almost everybody. We had one influencer left, um, to post. So we're not quite finished yet. Uh, but as you can see from the numbers, we've already surpassed, uh, our, our number of impressions, uh, by more than 2 million. Um, you see the, the total reach and the, the 2.8 million video views. And then, like I said, that other little notch that really makes it a little more pivotal to us was the fact that, that you had itinerary requests. So as these influencers posted, um, they had automatic DMs, uh, set up so that if you, uh, came in with a keyword, you know, comment SPC, they would automatically send you their itinerary. Um, so we had 500 requests of those. And then just overall engagement rate was about, uh, 10%, uh, which is just about double a good amount. 5% is a, is great engagement. So we've got almost double of that. Um, and then the value of about $2 million on earned media value. Uh, so these were a couple of the ones, um, just picking out. As I was saying, um, these aren't typically just travel influencers. These are folks that create good content that we thought, uh, would inspire travel to the destination. You see the, the prompt to guide for the full itinerary. And this was a crafting family. So we had the 16 influencers. They came in over, uh, probably about three months over the summer. Um, so it was good to, to, we, you know, we had great weather for most of the time that they were here. So we were able to get some great content out of that. Um, and this is just some more additional, um, added value, uh, to the partnership. Um, like I said, that DM automation, um, having the itineraries on the video content on our website, which is the, the bottom where it's to soak up the sun and so much more. Um, this is on our things to do on our website right now, uh, where these panels cycle through. Uh, and then also in that stellar network, um, that's the, uh, the section on the left there where we get featured. And, um, there was some dedicated newsletter content that came out, uh, of it as well, um, that created really good engagement and click through rates on that, uh, about 10%. Um, and then also, you know, taking over their app for the day again with this, it's a very travel minded community, uh, to show inspiration. Um, then we wanted to extend our reach a little bit. So we went over the pond to, uh, to London and we found three brothers who are the cheeky golf club and we brought them over, uh, to play some golf and show off the destination. Uh, they are, uh, they have a unique method, uh, to their madness and, uh, they actually go out and find two golfers in the community here and challenged them to play golf with them. Um, so it was a really unique way to actually get them out into the community where they then found these golfers, uh, and created, uh, probably, I think it's like a 20 minute YouTube piece, um, where they played Dunedin Country Club, uh, and they also played at the Feather Sound Country Club. And we tied in the Skechers World Champions Cup, uh, into that mix, uh, to help promote that event, which Europe won, uh, and then tied in a giveaway on top of that, uh, where we received nearly 1,000 entries, which is again, these are folks that we can then retarget, uh, for coming over and spending time in the destination. Uh, I pulled a short clip just so you could see. I find it funny. Hopefully you do. You're right. Uh, so they, this was actually a gal at the, um, a young lady from the Dunedin Country Club that they came and she played with them. Yeah, great shot. Fairway. Fairway finders. So where do you like to go in St. Pete, Clarewater, what's your favorite part about living here? I mean, it's nice that St. Pete is divided by two. So you have like the beach and then you have the downtown. Yeah. So if you guys, you guys are on Madera Beach. Yeah. Uh, but just south of that, St. Pete Beach has like a lot of fun beach bars. The undertow used to be like the old college spot back in the day. Is that where we went last night? Like that area? Um, I think you're downtown. Yeah. So downtown is like more on the bay side, New Tampa. And that whole central block is just like a whole bunch of bars. Like you go around, there's jazz bars, there's live music. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. A lot of fun. Yeah. We've got one five five. Do I have to get up? Yeah. You're heading. So that was just one segment. Just wanted to make sure you saw the, you know, talking about the destination. They were actually out in the destination and I didn't want to show 20 minutes of video, but it's great. Uh, they did content across YouTube and Tik Tok and Instagram and it got, uh, uh, just about a million views on everything. And then the final piece just to, to throw in, this was more of a local play. Um, obviously we had our six, uh, Michelin guide selections. Uh, they provided us the plaques and gave us the opportunity to distribute them however we, uh, felt we would like to. Uh, so we tapped into local foodie influencers and actually had them go deliver the plaques to the restaurants so that we could use their platforms and their networks to promote these restaurants and also show the diversification of our Michelin guide restaurants and the destination. Um, so this is, I pulled one clip here just so you get an example of Jen. She's in the middle, uh, where she's delivering to sushi, sushi show Rexley. Um, and you can see how, um, we went through the pattern with everybody of, of delivering the plaque, identifying they were Michelin guide, uh, rated restaurant, and then also explain a little bit about what that experience would be. We are headed over to St. Pete to make a very special delivery. I have an official plaque here from Michelin and we're going to be delivering it to a St. Pete restaurant that was recommended in its 2026 Florida selection. So we're going to take you with us and of course we're going to eat. We are here at sushi show Rexley in downtown St. Pete and they opened in 2018 as St. Pete's first from the class a style dining experience. Hello, so excited to present you on behalf of Michelin and visit St. Pete Clearwater with the Michelin guide plaque. It means a lot to me. I didn't expect like the Michelin guide will come to this area. It's 2018 we first started to introduce the omakase to the area. Not that popular at the, at that moment. We just try to introduce the more traditional way that we serve the Japanese sushi. You can see like how sushi supposed to be reserved like piece by piece in front of you because sushi is like better to eat it fresh. When I say fresh it's like real fresh. Just make it right off the hands. That's the best way to eat sushi. I just try to do my best. I mean like I stay in this area. Every customer come I just treat it as like the Japanese have a sayings like one encounter one meeting. You come here everything is new for you. Even though you are a repeat customer every time you come is supposed to be a little difference. So we gave them free reign to create the content that we like just with some parameters of kind of what we wanted to accomplish. So they were each able to use their own voice in doing this and it resulted in just under a quarter million views across all six pieces. So that's what I got. Awesome. Awesome. That's beautiful. Talk a little bit about that relationship with Canada. Well we had we took a few hits in different areas across our country from that relationship. Talk a little bit about how I know you're you say you're going back. Yeah so we we went up in July. I think Brian and I went up to a game in July. We had a full suite. I thought it was a very positive meeting. It was super interested in coming down still. I didn't experience any sort of hesitancy or animosity towards us at all. I'm interested to see you know when we go back up next week. But to me the conversations are always fruitful. It's always nice to be able to talk about the Blue Jays. That's a great way in for us to discuss and we definitely have a leg up against some of our other uh competitors in the in the destination in the state here. Thank you. Yeah Dylan. Uh the Stellar partnership. So they managed the influencers and they kind of helped you guys choose them and the Instagram automation the DM automation they they managed all that for you guys. Yeah that was that was a huge help and a huge lift. We we did the itinerary basically. Yeah. To make sure we hit on the areas to show beach culture um but they really handled a lot of the other lift on that. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Thank you Mr. Chair and just got a few things that I want to hit on. One um we've got a two a new team member uh with Visit St. Pete Clearwater since last time we met. Um so we are fortunate to have with us this morning Dennis Zuzan who is our new uh director of global uh trade strategy and uh Dennis if you'd like to come up and just introduce yourself we were fortunate to bring him all the way across the country from west Hollywood um so Dennis can can introduce himself to you this morning. Yeah good morning um everyone yeah I am very happy to have joined um this amazing team um and now I can call this area home so uh I came from California I spent uh over um seven years with another destination marketing organization uh visit was Hollywood in um in Los Angeles I was looking after international travel trade um partnerships uh with um industry partners uh and prior that I worked for several international airlines um uh for the brazo studio tours worldwide so I'm very excited to bring this experience to the team um and um also happy to continue working with uh our travel trade partners and uh increase our international presence and I also would like to thank you the commissioners and TDC I'm happy to be here thank you well welcome good to have you on board um next up uh last time we met you all we brought forth some recommended changes to the tourist development council bylaws you all recommended those um at last month's board of county commissioner meeting they did uh approve those so those have been incorporated in the bylaws and as a reminder those will allow for uh any any non-elected member of this board from who represents either the accommodations category or the tourism related category once they hit that 12-year term limit at the board of county commissioners discretion they do have the opportunity to appoint them to an additional up to two-year uh term as a non-voting ex-officio member so we've got two members uh that um are coming up on that so those will go to the board uh at the october 27th uh commission meeting along with the other um board appointments that are up next uh just a heads up uh to you all and the folks watching on tv and across the the universe um capital project funding cycle is open now it opened about a week ago we had our uh opening information session last week um kylie led that and thank you to amanda coffee for answering all the legal questions that come up on on the capital side of things and those uh we're accepting applications for projects through january 15th so we had a good turnout from our municipal partners and some of our cultural institution uh partners from around the destination so we're excited um to get those projects in and review those to you next um the board of county commissioners was busy last month and um they adopted their fiscal year 2027 budget and uh which is where our budget lives and uh just wanted to update you on two changes uh to our budget since that was uh approved by you all um those two changes they increased and and i i gave you a heads up that it was something being considered they um there are two positions that are in public works and these two positions are coastal management positions and their job uh is uh is overseeing the beach nourishment project that's what they do um and so um we are going to be using uh tdt uh to fund those two fdes along with the associated work they do there are some inlet management studies and some other permitting requirements from the army corps that they oversee so those will be coming out of tdc moving forward to help offset some of those general government funds over in public works and this is just such a good tie into how visitor spending can take some of that burden off the taxpayers so that's a total of seven hundred thousand seven hundred and forty six thousand dollars and that'll come out of the capital side of the tdt since it's supporting beach nourishment and then the second change was uh you all uh recommended and the board of county commissioners approved an additional three hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars in elite events for this year only they did also include that they added that to our budget so that changed since last time it came to you so just want to give you a heads up on that and last but not least uh also at our last meeting um captain hubbard brought up um the topic of peers and using tdt for peers so went back and conferred with the county attorney's office and peers would potentially be eligible uh under the existing statute and under the existing tourist development local plan here depending on the pier where it's located it may qualify under a beach park facility or may qualify under a public facility so i just wanted to let you know um so that wasn't hanging out there from the last meeting and mr chair that's all i've got for you today appreciate it um any questions for brian any questions for brian um and so here we're at the end of the meeting any additional comments or discussion points or anybody wants to bring i have a comment if i could make one go ahead trish so um a bunch of the uh city um i should say this stakeholders from clearwater beach got together to create a campaign during the holidays um under amplify we've created a campaign to bring folks to uh downtown clearwater and clearwater beach during the holidays um for the entire month of december starts in november it goes all the way through it's something we're called holiday and lights um 35 reasons to visit clearwater in in during the holidays um it's filled with activities and events um we're bringing together the community um to host all of their events anything any business is doing in from downtown to clearwater we're inviting them to share their events so that we can help advertise and bring folks to clearwater um there's two reasons two ways that they could do it they sign up to be a partner and then they tell us all the events maybe drink specials anything that we can do to help our business community um during a time that we need it the most um so that the website is holiday and lights.com and um and they just go and they sign up as a partner so we just want to share that with the community and of course invite all of our partners to join us in our efforts to light up clearwater nice very nice yes thank you mr chairman um there's not a whole lot of baseball going on around town um other than the world series uh but on saturday right down the street uh usf is playing fsu at bay care ballpark at one o'clock if uh you want to go out and watch them uh before the rays uh play that night and milwaukee so thank you i'm sure the mayor will be there because he's always out and about in clearwater go bulls anybody else all right meeting next month is uh november 18th um and uh with that this meeting is adjourned thank you