Tc Convention & Visitor'S Bureau

“Membership of the visitors bureau consists of area businesses that operate within the local tourism industry”

“The visitors bureau consists of business members that elect from among themselves individuals to participate on the board of directors”

“Form 990 is reviewed by the executive director when presented by the bureau's auditing and tax preparation firm and made available to members of the board upon request”

“Conflicts of interest are reviewed annually as well as on an as needed basis during a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing board”

“Upon the completion of each year, the board of directors selects a compensation review committee that evaluates the organization's performance, as determined by the audited financial statements, against the goals and financial objectives as defined by the board. The results of this evaluation help determine the compensation of the executive director.”

“The board approves the annual operating budget which includes a review of staff compensation costs. For staff positions, the executive director evaluates compensation in comparison with information provided by "destination marketing association international- and the "michigan association of convention and visitors bureaus".”

“No documents available to the public”

“In an effort to build our shoulder and off-season time periods we balanced our advertising spend throughout the year spending 25 percent of our budget for winter promotion, a combined 37 percent for spring and fall shoulder seasons and 38 percent for the summer season. We also directed 64 percent of our marketing spend to out-of-state markets to support our objective to grow our non-michigan based business. Tct also participated in a number of consumer tradeshows throughout the year including: novi golf show chicago golf show grand rapids golf show chicago adventures in travel show west michigan women's expo union station event in addition we partnered with the west michigan tourist association (wmta) at additional consumer shows where they distributed our traverse city marketing materials. In the international market, collaborating with travel michigan and great lakes usa, we participated at itb in berlin and joined the fall german sales mission where we presented our product to a number of german tour operators and travel agents. Tct also is very active with public relations efforts. We regularly send press releases about new destination information to the travel media as well as produce feature length stories that we allow travel media to use in whole or in part for destination stories. Throughout 2015 we also hosted 67 travel writers in the destination to allow them a first-hand destination experience and distributed 20 feature stories and 18 press releases about traverse city information. In 2015 tct also engaged in some advertising in meetings trade publications specifically ones that target our state association market. In addition to the consumer shows listed above, tct also participated in a number of trade shows to attract the meetings market to our destination. These 2015 shows included: sgmp annual education conf. Michigan meeting professionals int'l sgmp annual meeting circle michigan nat'l assoc. Sports commissions collaborate marketplace pcma annual meeting michigan meetings expo destination michigan showcase connect marketplace american bus association org pro asae annual connect sports pure mi sports sales mission teams”

“In addition to the web traffic results the lodging assessments collected by tct in 2015, which is a gauge of overall market lodging revenues, increased by 7.8% over 2014. In our group sales efforts, tct generated 311 group leads for our member lodging properties in 2015. These leads represented 67,692 room nights. Our visitor center assisted nearly 60,000 visitors in 2015 offering assistance with information on things to see and do while in the traverse city area. This includes assisting in making lodging reservations as we have found a significant increase in visitors arriving in the destination without having made lodging reservations. Tct produces a variety of marketing collateral pieces to promote our destination with the primary marketing tool being our annual traverse city area guide. In 2015 we produced and distributed 340,000 of these magazines to consumers interested in receiving information about the traverse city area.”