Assembly Meeting Set On Visitor Services

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Category: News

Created on Thursday, 19 September 2024 15:03

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By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
    The Assembly will hold a work session tonight to review a draft request for proposals on a contract to provide visitor services for the city.
    The Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit organization, currently holds the convention and visitor services contract, as Visit Sitka.
    The Assembly work session starts at 6 p.m. at Harrigan Centennial Hall and is open to the public.
    The Chamber’s Visit Sitka has been the visitor service provider since 2015. The contract is funded mostly by the city bed tax paid by those staying at hotels, motels, lodges and short-term rentals. Visit Sitka also does its own fundraising and has memberships.
     The Chamber’s current Visit Sitka contract started January 1, 2019. The term was for three years with up to five one-year extensions. The Assembly earlier this year decided to issue a new request for proposals, one year before the final extension.
    The city said the planned RFP is to request proposals “to provide professional services to operate Visit Sitka, the City and Borough of Sitka-owned brand for destination marketing, destination management and convention services in relation to the visitor industry in Sitka.”
    Assembly members have said a new contact is needed to take into account changes in tourism over the past few years, particularly with the sharp increase in cruise ship numbers. Other new factors are the Sitka Tourism Task Force’s recommendations, the establishment of the new Tourism Commission, and the addition of tourism manager as a position in the city government.
    The work session will have a number of discussion points, including the term of the contract, and extensions; services the contractor will be required to provide; and the evaluation system for proposals.
    City Planning Director Amy Ainslie said the purpose of the work session is to make sure city staff members have accurately captured the scope of services the Assembly wants to see in the new contract. Ainslie has been working on the RFP with Assembly members JJ Carlson, Chris Ystad and Kevin Mosher.
    The discussion on the RFP also will include evaluating the point system for core services and optional services that the Assembly wants to see in the new contract, Ainslie said.
    One of the primary considerations for inclusion in the new RFP is that the contract terms align with the city’s fiscal year cycle which runs July 1 through June 30.
    “We’re trying to get everything on the same time frame,” Ystad said, noting that the base contract at present is on a different timeline than the city funding cycle.
    The contractor’s proposed duties are in the category of destination management, destination marketing, meeting and convention services, and reporting, and destination management. Each category has a list of duties, with the responder required to fill in cost estimates for such services as developing the tourism management program, managing the Visit Sitka brand, promotion of Harrigan Centennial Hall, maintaining the cruise ship calendar.
    One of the requirements in the RFP is to “be able to track the percentage of effort and cost attributable to cruise passengers. Exact methodology will be mutually agreed upon in the contract; proposers need to demonstrate capacity to track/record.”
    “Right now we pay for services out of the Visitor Enhancement Fund, which is the bed tax,” Ainslie said. “We’d like to use more CPV (cruise ship head tax) funds to pay for some of the expenses related to support for cruise ship tourism. There is more work to separate out those expenses so we could justify them under CPV.”
    Some optional services the contractor may provide are in the category of Destination Management, such as managing the Lincoln Street closures to vehicle traffic, providing public access to restrooms in the visitor center, economic data collection and analysis and pedestrian safety in the downtown corridor.
    Mosher said he is interested in giving the staff “more clarity” on the RFP at tonight’s meeting. He said the reason for pushing it ahead one year before the end of the current contract is not due to any dissatisfaction with the current contractor.
    “We would’ve been doing this next year, with the renewal, but we’re doing this now so we have a plan in place for when the new tourism director is hired,” he said.

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