Sonoma County Tourism
Rotary Club of Windsor Meeting April 12th, 2022
All hail guest president Bill Arnone!Guests of Rotarians:
Cindy Foreman – Division Chief and Firemarshal for Sonoma County Fire Dept
Kate Smith- Youth Ambassador heading to Japan
Rotarian of the Month for April – Doug Williams.Announcements:
- Sue Nelson presents the $7000 fundraising for a Demonstration Fire Safety Garden to Cindy Foreman. Garden will be on the corner of Old Redwood Highway and Hembree Lane. It will be an example of what residents should look to do for their own yards to promote native species, low water usage and fire safety. There will be a ground-breaking so stay tuned for that!
- Bill Bolster demonstrated with Wally and Kurt to the First Choices project to engage students and encourage them to go into further education to better their prospects for the future.
- Sandie is looking for home hosts for our incoming Youth Exchange students – August – November
Fines:
- Maureen Merrill birthday fine
Bill & Kurt’s Excellent Adventures:
Highest Fundraiser Net in the last 7 years. 3rd highest gross, low overheads really helped boost the club.
Leah and Maureen did a great job for sponsorships
Tom Boylan for support with logos and advertising
Sandie and Catherine on the auction site
Pegi’s amazing work with the charcuterie
Barbara McChesney for the auction lots
Susan Cole for videos and great writeups
JB, John Nelson, Dev for the livestream work on the day
Carol for herding cats throughout!Guest speaker for today, Johnny Westom, Vice President, Business Development, Sonoma County Tourism. Jonny has been a senior executive at various organizations in other locations: Dana Point, Sonoma Valley, and Palm Springs. – Sonoma County – Life Opens Up
Works in destination management tourism and for Sonoma – sustainable tourism. Sonoma County Tourism is a non-profit organization to help the growth of tourism in the county without adversely affecting
The ToT tax – Transient Occupancy Tax is a tax on hotel stays and is the primary way that many services in the county are funded including Sonoma County Tourism. Sonoma County Tourism was the first multi-jurisdictional endeavour to attempt this. The County has a broad variety of attractions with Redwoods, Wine and Coast. SCT is here to promote these attractions without overloading what the county can support. 1 in 10 jobs are Tourism-related. $112M in tax revenue.
Visitors to Sonoma County are more than 50% day visitors with a $59/person spend by day visitors this goes up to $165 for overnight visitors. The impact of the pandemic was significant, although many urban areas were much worse hit.
Hotel occupancy has already bounced back to almost pre-pandemic levels which is great news. It’s still low but recovering!
Top Feeder States are California, New York, Texas, Florida and Arizona – this tracks with the Wine Club membership rates in the county.Final quote of the day: It’s last day to vote!
Thank you to:
Set-up: Kurt Mitchler
Greeter: John How
Song: Bill Bolster
Scribe: Dev Sodagar
A/V set-up: Mitch Grandi
Zoom team: Michael Juric