Oro Valley’s March 31 termination of a $410,000 operating agreement with Visit Tucson has heightened activity and amplified conversation about ways to attract travel-related business to the community.
Numbers, varying interpretations of those numbers and three-letter acronyms have flown about. Representatives of the town’s two major resorts, and at least one vocal member of the Oro Valley Town Council, have expressed strong reservations about the immediate change in direction.
What’s certain is this:
The town of Oro Valley is now the community’s official Destination Marketing Organization (DMO). The town council resolved 6-1 on April 17 to make that designation, which means Visit Tucson is no longer Oro Valley’s DMO
Town staff is ramping up its ability to drive group travel business — conventions and meetings — to Oro Valley, and primarily to El Conquistador Tucson, A Hilton Resort. It wants to generate leads, strategically attend trade shows and do what it can to generate long-term corporate meeting and convention business for El Conquistador Tucson and the Westward Look Wyndham Grand Resort and Spa. Both resorts are, at least for now, skeptical of the town’s near-term ability to do so
Visit Tucson is not displaying the El Conquistador and the Westward Look among the “places to stay” on its website.
Removal of the resorts from that site “caught us by surprise,” Paul Melcher, Oro Valley’s community and economic development director, told the town council.
Felipe Garcia, Visit Tucson president/CEO, said, “members have to be from entities that financially participate,” and Oro Valley is no longer paying Visit Tucson. “It’s an issue of fairness, and a standard practice,” Garcia said.
“They’re trying to get us to pay for something they say is good for them,” Councilmember Tim Bohen said of the resorts. “Why don’t they just join on their own?”
Through it all, Town Manager Jeff Wilkins and Visit Tucson’s Garcia have pledged to find ways to work together.
“We want to have the doors open,” Garcia told the town council.
“It’s been a good relationship, it’s been a long relationship,” Wilkins said. “We will continue to support them, and try to find partnerships.”
GMs were surprised
General managers for the Westward Look and El Conquistador Tucson were each surprised by the town’s decision to part with Visit Tucson.
“I didn’t know it was going to terminate immediately,” Westward Look General Manager John Ault told the town council.
In an April 12 letter, El Conquistador GM Shelby Francom said he learned of the decision to leave Visit Tucson on March 18, two weeks before it happened.
“Our two big partners were never contacted prior to this decision,” Councilmember Steve Solomon said. “They found out after the fact.”
Francom urged the town council to “reconsider the decision to sever ties with Visit Tucson.” He said El Conquistador Tucson generates $1 million a year in bed tax and $800,000 in sales tax for Oro Valley. The year 2023 was “a record-setting year” for the resort, Francom said. That “would not have been possible without the investment of Visit Tucson.”
Ault, relatively new to the Westward Look, has worked 38 years in the hospitality industry. He’s been in communities that have done their own destination marketing and believes that direction can work.
“I’m excited that there’s a change, that we want to move forward as a town, but maybe it’s not the right time right now to do that, because the infrastructure is not set up just yet,” Ault said. And, he said, Oro Valley and Visit Tucson can and should collaborate in attracting travel business to the region.
“I think now is the wrong time,” Ault said. “I don’t support it right now.”
‘Incredibly disastrous decision’
Before the vote to designate Oro Valley as its own DMO, Solomon said the town council was about to make an “incredibly disastrous economic decision.”
“Visit Tucson is a proven entity,” Solomon said. After listening to a presentation by Wilkins and Melcher about the town’s plans to do its own marketing, Solomon said, “Everything we see here is on paper.”
“We are already behind the game,” he said. “This is a wish list. If this goes wrong, what are the consequences? It may be good a year from now, but it’s not ready. We would have needed this to be in place and fully operational on the day we left Visit Tucson, and it wasn’t, and it isn’t now.
“We have no plan, we have no expertise, and we just pulled the rug out from under our two biggest partners,” Solomon said.
Francom said Visit Tucson has booked more than 40,000 group room nights into Oro Valley properties over the last two years. Those bookings had an estimated economic impact (EEI) of nearly $11 million annually, Francom said.
“It’s critical we have group business in those doors every day to keep our employees gainfully employed,” he wrote to council.
“We spent $410,000 to get $10.4 million” in activity, Solomon said. “That seems like a pretty good ROI, doesn’t it?”
To call Visit Tucson “the sole reason anybody comes to this community” is inaccurate, Bohen said. “I am fully supportive of giving” staff the ability “to do what Marana is doing.” Marana pulled out of Visit Tucson years ago, and “Marana is booming,” Bohen said.
Vice Mayor Melanie Barrett agreed with the idea that Oro Valley could do something similar to — and perhaps in conjunction with — Marana to promote the community as a destination.
“The hope isn’t that this is just gone, that any economic impact is gone, but that we can replicate or potentially improve upon” what has been done through Visit Tucson, Barrett said.
They’ve been talking about it
In the two-year strategic plan it adopted in 2023, the town council identified an objective for staff to “complete a comprehensive analysis of the return on investment and benefits derived from the Town’s partnership with Visit Tucson and bring options to council regarding the Town’s tourism and attraction plans.”
That evaluation was performed, staff determined Visit Tucson was not meeting certain performance metrics, and Wilkins decided to end the agreement.
“This is something we’ve had conversation on for quite some time,” Barrett said. She is seeking a return on investment for “the level of marketing and service we’re looking for, for the amount of taxpayer dollars that are being invested.”
For years, Oro Valley’s agreement with Visit Tucson had been renewed annually. Last July 1, it became a six-month agreement through Dec. 31. Then, on Jan. 1, the term went to three months while Oro Valley worked to “continue the evaluation, and have discussions with Visit Tucson,” Wilkins said. The contract ended March 31.
Councilmember Josh Nicolson, who has represented Oro Valley on the Visit Tucson board, said he was unaware of the six-month and three-month extensions.
“I want you guys to make as much money as possible,” Nicolson said to resort managers. “I don’t want to see your revenue drop. I agree with some of the concerns you have. Our town’s not in the business of tourism, and I agree with you, and want to work with you guys closely” to grow the visitor business.
And, said Nicolson, “I failed you in some respects” with regard to sharing the town’s thinking. “Part of this issue is communications, one way or another. I will take the fall for some of that.”
In an April 25, interview, Wilkins said he spoke with council members about the Visit Tucson agreement during the regular one-on-one meetings he has with mayor and council. “This was a debated topic,” he said in the interview. And, at the council meeting, Wilkins said “there wasn’t a council member who said, ‘Let’s put it on the agenda and renew and extend.’”
Solomon found it “a little bit concerning” that Wilkins terminated the Visit Tucson agreement without a full, public conversation.
“We adopted a budget with a specific amount of money for a specific organization or item for that whole year,” Solomon said. “I don’t understand how that’s not carried out ... without coming to council.”
Attorney David Hindman of Mesch Clark Rothschild, serving as town legal counsel April 17, said Wilkins, in fact, had the power to end the agreement. “We do have contracts that expire, and terminate, all the time,” Wilkins said in the interview.
And, of Visit Tucson, Wilkins said “I didn’t want to see them get grilled” publicly. “We value them as a partner. I thought this was the best mechanism to continue a working relationship with Visit Tucson in the future.”
Attracting sports-related travel
Town government staff said it believes Oro Valley can do better than Visit Tucson has done in terms of booking room nights for sports events. Its goal for Visit Tucson in 2022-23 was 6,500 nights; the town said 3,136 nights were booked through Visit Tucson during that period, 48% of the goal in its agreement.
“We felt this was an area we had a bit of an advantage, a niche, an opportunity to improve on,” Wilkins told the town council. “We feel like we could grow there. The aquatics center is definitely a great venue.”
To “possibly tweak the agreement,” Wilkins presented an option to the council that would have reduced Oro Valley’s annual contribution to Visit Tucson from $410,000 to $328,000, with the lower sum intended for Visit Tucson’s recruitment of group business. In turn, the town would have taken the remaining $82,000 to increase sports-related business by bidding for swim, pickleball, tennis and golf tournaments, and to expand events like the Tucson Bicycle Classic.
The town council didn’t take up the idea. Solomon put forth a motion to renew Oro Valley’s agreement with Visit Tucson for one year, and to work with Visit Tucson to explore a hybrid or integrated marketing model for the future.
It failed for lack of a second.
“We can always work together,” Wilkins said. “What’s that definition? What does that mean? Is it $410,000? Can it be a redefinition? Right now, we have to at least continue with this. We have to have the DMO to get on those (marketing) platforms. The DMO has to happen.”
Travel promotion is “regional,” Solomon said. “Going back to isolationism doesn’t work very well.”