Tourism buoys county

The Carbon County Visitors Council (CCVC) did not meet in November but did have a meeting in on October 13. All board members were present with the exception of Casey Shinkle, the Carbon County CCVC representative. The meeting was held a week early due to the Tourism and Hospitality Fall Summit which several board members attending on October 21 to 22.

The Carbon County Visitors’ Council is currently out of printed recreation maps designed in 2018. Additionally, the county geographic information system (GIS) data used to make the printed, smart device, and interactive maps is out of date. Great Outdoors Consultants (GOC) stores this data and is looking to update the system. This project is to address both problems with the primary goal of providing CCVC with the best version possible of printed maps delivered prior to May 2022. Secondary goals of this project are: validate and update the GOC GIS database with accurate route, point-of-interest, and symbology for all map features; incorporate scenic/historic data supplied by CCVC; update and re-release the electronic maps including story maps, map apps, Avenza, and Zoomify versions; update metadata, repair broken links; move map development to current ESRI software – ArcPro, ArcGIS OnLine, Zoomify; and enable CCVC staff to perform basic edits to on-line map metadata such as point features, photos, and captions. A proposal with the expected scope of work was to be emailed to CEO Leslie Jefferson by October 18.

Lodging Tax Revenue: $286,287.41 for all Carbon County lodging properties reporting on or before September 30. This was the largest amount the CCVC has ever received. The majority of this came from Carbon County which brought in $230,729.66. Rawlins contributed $48,552.30 and Saratoga $4,949.10.

Although there wasn’t a meeting this month, the lodging tax for November came in at $132,886.70. Again Carbon contributed the most with the funds coming in at $85,791.50 with Rawlins adding $37,907.90. Saratoga was busier this month than the month before, bringing in $6,148.40. Ten percent of the lodging tax is distributed to the different contributing municipalities.

New photos are being submitted from photographers. The board approved investing in a marketing bundle with the Great American West, an agency that promotes a five state marketing cooperative. A video showing hiking, ATVing, fly fishing along with winter videos will be released throughout the next couple of months

The board welcomed Medicine Bow representative Sally Mihalek.

The Governor’s Conference for Tourism and Hospitality will be held on February 27 to March 2 at Little America in Cheyenne. The board approved the idea to combine the November and December Board meetings into one online meeting scheduled at 10 a.m. on December 8 via GoogleMeet.