Snohomish County Issues Marketing RFP
The Snohomish County Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism (SCPRT) is re-envisioning Destination Management Organization (DMO) services. The SCPRT seeks proposals from qualified firms to discover, plan, organize and provide DMO services with the SCPRT in-house team in a joint service partnership referred to as the Snohomish County Destination Alliance (SCTA).
The SCTA is a single, industry-facing title that shall represent a host of DMO functions, committees, workgroups, initiatives and services that shall grow and evolve to service the industry over time. It is an umbrella term. The SCTA shall be organized to serve the visitor regions of Snohomish County to promote visitation externally; build internal industry capacity through collaboration and education; and support a variety of partnered efforts with the Snohomish County Sports Commission.
The County is looking for a multi-disciplined marketing and tourism development team to build new ideas, strategies, approaches and capacities with the SCPRT in-house team, and establish new regional DMO services through the Snohomish County Tourism Alliance (SCTA).
Snohomish County is growing and projects an additional 200,000 residents to locate here over the next 20 years. Commercial air service is now available at Paine Field in Everett, servicing the West Coast, Phoenix and Denver. In 2018, four experiential visitor regions were established to; differentiate over 2,000 square miles of land base with both urban, rural and forested wilderness and; to assist regional resource coordination and promotion of 20 cities and towns and; to mutually align county-wide destination development priorities.
Priorities:
The Snohomish County Lodging Industry places the highest priority on the County obligation to use and invest Snohomish County Lodging Taxes to promote overnight stays, and to profitably power the sustainable growth of this emerging destination. The County takes this obligation seriously.
County Team and Partners:
County led-tourism programs are managed and administered by the SCPRT, and funded with Lodging Taxes collected and expended annually. In the current five (5) year plan, $1.0 M is designated for destination management organization (DMO) services in the year 2020. This is in addition to in-house staff. The final budget will be determined through the 2020 Annual Budget process which began in June 2019 and will conclude in November 2019.
Opportunities:
In 2020, the SCPRT and successful proposer shall organize and provide services for the Snohomish County Tourism Alliance (SCTA). These DMO services shall have a regional focus to support a growing destination.
The SCTA began in early 2019 to implement 2018-2022 Snohomish County Strategic Tourism Plan (STP) Strategy 2.1 Regional Destination Development. This Strategy was ranked as the most important of all STP Strategies and deemed essential to overall success of the STP.
Three (3) SCTA industry conferences and Summit are being held in 2019 to gather program and priority feedback about new SCTA programming and DMO services.
The SCTA mantra is to “connect communities and visitors through love of place” and adheres to industry best-practice approaches that consider destination development (experiences/product) and marketing as inseparable elements, and aligned with County industry-adopted principals for sustainable tourism. SCTA conferences provide an industry-wide forum to share, and interpret marketing initiatives and progress, are informed by big data, and creative content placed programmatically through digital and organic social media.
Respondents may find materials on the Snohomish County Parks, Recreation and Tourism, SnoCoParks.orgTourism section of the website, and on the Industry Resources Section of the SeattleNorthCountry.com website.
Scope of Work:
The County is looking for a multi-disciplined marketing and tourism development team to build new ideas, strategies, approaches and capacities with the SCPRT in-house team, and establish new regional DMO services through the Snohomish County Tourism Alliance (SCTA).
The contractor shall be integral in the discovery, design, development and operationalization of prioritized SCTA services and; the County transition from traditional DMO service approaches.
This work shall establish functional visions, strategies and service delivery approaches for regional SCTA operations that include, but shall not be limited to:
• Stakeholder engagement, education and tourism development programs
• Lodging industry
• Collaborative marketing investment programs
• Federally recognized tribal engagement
• Point of contact and day to day services
• Tourism marketing, promotions and communications to external visitor audiences, and to industry stakeholders
• Measurements, success, and progress
• Program budgets
Due Date:
August 5th, 2019.
Address:
Snohomish County Purchasing Services
Robert J. Drewel Building, 6th Floor
3000 Rockefeller Avenue, M/S 507
Everett, WA 98201
Relevant PR firms include Hunter PR and Coyne PR.
