The Crookston Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) met Thursday morning inside the Crookston Inn Shoreroom. After the Call to Order, the board began the meeting by approving their meeting minutes on February 9.
Hockey Tournament Review
CVB Secretary Laurie Stahlecker and Chairperson Bob Magsam first reviewed the 15U A Olympic Regional Girls Hockey and Squirt A District tournaments that had happened last weekend. Over 172 players participated in the tournament, and even more came as spectators and guests. All of the hotels were full of guests, to the point they had to bring out extra cots to house many of the guests.
Despite the success, the CVB believed they could have advertised the spaghetti dinner better as they only had guests who stayed in the Crookston Inn attend it. Two businesses from downtown Crookston had reported they advertised specials for the tournament weekend, where they got six new customers to attend their specials, but mostly local customers came for the deals.
Ellie Koepp from Happy Joe’s noted they did not see any significant influx in guests despite the many visitors to the city.
While the event was a success, they believed a few personal improvements could still be made. “We had a little bit of a discussion before the event of how we can promote Crookston, get the word out of what we have to offer, and try to get these visitors to our community out to our businesses to spend some money. We do have some legwork to do there, but it was great. We did visit with the Chamber and did a partnership with them to get the word out,” said Chairperson Bob Magsam. “Do we have room to grow and get better? Absolutely, but this was a really good starting point as this was a really unique kind of hockey tournament that came to town with two mini-tournaments rolled into one, and to add to it, UMC had games in between. The arena was crazy, the town had a lot of people there, and we just have to move forward by taking what we want to get better and working to get there. I think we certainly can as we move forward with future events.”
Grant Request
The Bureau discussed a grant request of $3,000 from Waun Vetter of Rochus Amusement for the Dart Divas tournament held at the Crookston Inn ballroom in April to help advertise the tournament.
“He made a grant request for some advertising to still get the word out to more throwers. It has been a successful event in the past. I anticipate it being a successful event and bringing a lot of people to town. Typically we can expect 70 to 90 rooms to be rented in town for that tournament alone in the last week of April. So kudos to Waun for getting the effort out there for this tournament. We want to help everybody we possibly can to market the area and get him some funding for advertising themselves to bring people to town and stay in our hotels.”
Last year’s event had 123 participants, with many participants from outside of the city, with a goal of reaching 140-50 participants this year. After much discussion, the bureau chose to award him a grant of $1,500 for the tournament.
Marketing
The bureau began discussing the decision they made of marketing with KVLY. Magsam had delivered proposals they had with advertising to the rest of board and asked their thoughts on which one they should choose. They currently had two commercials showing the various businesses and shops in downtown Crookston, and the other advertised the hotels around the city. Koepp shared her belief that they should focus their advertisements on smaller commercials or ads for social media and websites like Facebook, as television is not as popular in advertising as it used to be. They had heard of Bo Broby taking drone footage of local businesses that were getting a lot of attention.
“The primary mission of the CVB is to market, and probably with a lot of these board members, we don’t know the best ways to do it. We have some ideas, so we’re still wading through those waters of what’s the right and wrong way and how we can be more effective in marketing our community for tourism and helping the businesses out. We chose to currently table the KVLY presentation decision that we had last month until next month. They do a lot of television, which is great, and a little bit of digital work. Some of the discussions that were brought up are that we have local talent that can produce advertisements and commercials to heavily promote the different things that Crookston has to offer. So, we’re going to reach out to those people, get some information, and try and spur a conversation of what they can offer to all of us and bring that back to the board so we can make a firm decision and what we’re going to do with our marketing dollars moving forward.”
Magsam and Jess Bengtson proposed a meeting with Broby to discuss plans to make smaller ads on social media for certain businesses.
KROX Marketing Presentation
The bureau then welcomed KROX General Manager Chris Fee to give a presentation on who they chose and ran advertisements on their website. Fee reported that the website saw 19 million unique page views in 2022, with anywhere from 4,000 to 7,000 unique devices checking the site each day. Their top area of views was in the Metro area of Minnesota, with the Fargo area being close after, as well as certain spots in Arizona during the winter and even in Germany during sports games. Their next highest viewed page was their Obituary page, which could have advertisements placed on it. Fee said they had the CVB’s guide on their Community tab’s dropdown menu and the Local News page, which got them a good amount of views at no charge. He noted that one potential reason why the site wasn’t as viewed as it could be because people did not know you could click on the advertisement to learn more about it, as some ads can redirect to a new page rather than just be an addition to the page. The CVB decided it would review its finances before making a final decision on whether it would continue with its current deal or upgrade it to be seen more on the website.
Treasurer’s report and bills payable
The bureau then approved the February Financial Report from Bureau Treasurer Dean Adams. The bureau had a beginning Balance for the month at $83,283.01 and made their annual payments of $250 to KROX, Consumer Cellular, and Inuit Business Services. They also completed their Tax Payment to the IRS for $1,058.50 and to the Grothzone Chamber of Minnesota Association for $390. They had received nearly $9,000 this month for their lodging taxes to increase their balance to $90,138.12, which along with their ending balance of $15,463.26, gave them a grand total of $105,601.38. They did have two checks they still needed to be approved for their payment to KROX and Adams’s payment.
Board Reports
The board finished the meeting by hearing board reports. Magsam reported he had furthered a discussion of creating an internship with UMC working with the bureau and had to work with it more once the school returned from spring break.
Ellie Koepp reported that the Crookston Eagles was hosting the Crookston Blue Line Club’s Spring Bash on Friday and was inviting the Johnny Holms band to play for the guests.
The Crookston Visitor’s Bureau’s next meeting will take place on Thursday, April 13, in the Crookston Inn.
