As part of our continuing biweekly webinar series for U.S. destination organization CEOs, Destinations International invited four speakers to discuss strategies for how destinations organizations can weather the storm brought on by COVID-19 and to showcase some positive stories from destinations that have found new ways to give back to their communities.

Key takeaways from this webinar are presented below:

Bryan Grimaldi, Of Counsel, Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Brian Grimaldi is a NY-based attorney who represents corporate clients, trade associations, destination marketing organizations, and public-private partnerships on general corporate legal matters, advocacy, government relations, transactions, marketing and communications. He has been active on Capitol Hill fighting for relief measures for destination organizations throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Limited Options for Destination Organizations

Since early March, there have been a series of legislative initiatives to provide relief to businesses and non-profits, many of which apply to destination organizations. The largest of these bills was the CARES Act, which was signed on March 27. The act provides a number of relief programs for the tourism sector, including access to low-interest and forgivable loans, tax incentives to keep workers on the payroll, and increased unemployment benefits for affected workers.  However, some of these programs do not apply to destination organizations structured as 501(c)6 or as arms of municipal or city governments. There is an effort underway to expand these programs to include destination organizations and to create new programs for destination organizations in upcoming legislation.

Unclear What’s Coming Down the Pike

There is still a good deal of uncertainty about what may be included in future stimulus or relief legislation. Some provisions that Grimaldi is tracking include:

• Paid sick leave bills
• Unemployment insurance coverage
• Tenant protections
• Suspension of certain contractual obligations
• New taxes to cover budget shortfalls
• Programs to eliminate the gap (funding clawbacks)
• Executive orders and emergency powers under those orders

Congress will be back next week to consider next round of legislation.  Destinations International, Grimaldi, and other partners are working to make sure that DMOs are included in whatever legislation is proposed.

Julie Hart, President, CFO by Design

Julie founded CFO by design in 2012 with the vision of supporting executives and organizations by using finances as the foundation for organizational excellence.  Since then Julie has had the privilege of working with DMO’s and associations across the nation. 

Federal Relief Is Coming (but Slowly)

A huge amount of money was allocated through the CARES Act, but there are limited options for destinations international, and even those programs applicable to destination organizations have limited funds. The response to claims through these programs seems to be slow. Julie is aware of anyone who has received the $10k grant provided through the EIDL loan program. It’s clear that the government simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to process the volume of claims these as quickly as it wants to.

Cash is King. Protect It.

Cash management is crucial in a crisis. Destination organizations must know how much cash you have on hand—and how it can be used; for a lot of organizations, cash comes with restrictions, e.g. operational expenses. You need to abide by the terms by which you received revenue. Understand payables and debts—and start negotiating now. Use your vendors for cash flow. Get very granular with cash flow, know how much is going out in weekly increments. Everything is changing rapidly—know what your decision points are. If shelter in place extends to May or June, know what that means for you and your revenue stream.

Brace for Cuts

Start having conversations with elected officials now about what you’ll need to lead the city out of this. Even if the recovery begins in Q3 of this year, next year’s budgets may be down 30% or more against 2019. There will be long-term implications of the pandemic. This means that you must face difficult decisions today. What programs can and must continue? What are the expectations for stakeholders? What staffing level is required to support these programs? What is the true cost of maintaining staff at all costs?

Furloughs May be Necessary

Under these circumstances, furloughs may be a humane option by allowing staff to maintain benefits including healthcare, while enabling them to collect federally backed unemployment benefits—which seem to be flowing quickly. This relieves your organization of these costs and to save resources to be in the best place to come back in a strong position. If you qualify for the payroll protection program, then you can reinstate the employee and be reimbursed for their pay

Craig Davis, President and CEO, VisitDallas

Craig T. Davis is President & CEO of Visit Dallas, the city’s sales and marketing organization. He directs and manages all of Visit Dallas’ strategies, operations, activities and staff of more than 80 individuals as the nonprofit organization works to achieve its mission: generate convention, trade show and leisure travel business for the City of Dallas, which greatly impacts the economy and helps support more than 65,000 jobs.

Pivot Your Purpose

Destination organizations like Visit Dallas are finding new opportunities to serve their communities. For example, in Dallas, they coordinated with the American College of Emergency Physicians and the city’s accommodation providers to find hotel rooms for emergency healthcare workers, some of whom were sleeping in their cars. Visit Dallas was able to find rooms for these workers, including free rates for doctors and inexpensive long-term residential options. At the same time, major brands like Hilton and Marriot are committing millions of dollars worth of room-nights for essential healthcare workers.

MC Genova, Director of Partnership and Visit Denver Foundation, Visit Denver

Genova is responsible for the development and direction of strategic programs and relationships related to business development, membership sales and retention, advertising sales, events and other activities to drive business growth.

Support Your Community As You’re Able

Visit Denver worked with Simpleview to retrofit their restaurant week website to feature local businesses remaining open through the crisis. In 3 days, they were able to create the site, which now includes 886 partners and has generated 141,000 pageviews in 3 weeks. They are promoting the site through social media, paid search, media relations, complementation print & digital placements.

At the same time, they have launched a program called Virtually Denver which collects and promotes digital offers from partners through a new category called “virtual online”. There are now over 80 virtual experiences available. Anyone can submit a free event. This is promoted through a newsletter to 100,000 opt-in, subscribers

They are also running a campaign called Love this City Denver to remind locals that we live in an exciting and vibrant city and showcase partners. In the near future, they will launch a Discover Denver & Social Sharing contest which will give away prizes (restaurant gift certificates, etc.) they are buying from local partners.

 Keep Up to Date with Destinations International  

This webinar is recorded and available online on our Learning Center here. 

Destinations International is committed to keeping you up to date as COVID-19 continues to disrupt our industry. Join us for our weekly COVID-19 update webinar series, led by industry experts from around the world.  Register here.