Provide professional services to promote and coordinate tourism within the city. Work includes following elements: A) General duties: Direct, manage, or coordinate the promotion, marketing, and advertising designed and implemented to attract tourists to the city of Union Gap. B) Specific duties: The duties identified below are representative of the services that may be required under this contract. The city reserves the right to require performance of some, all, or additional related duties as reasonably necessary to achieve the objective of tourism promotion. 1) Direct, manage, or coordinate the marketing of the city to professional meeting planners, and promote familiarization tours for interested meeting planners. 2) Attend tourism industry trade shows as needed, where contact with tour operators, tour brokers, convention and meeting planners, and media provides direct opportunities to market Union Gap as a tourist destination. 3) Create or coordinate with allied agencies a database to evaluate and track why persons visit the city of Union Gap, the purposes of their stays, and whether they engage in any tourist activities while in the city. 4) Conduct familiarization tours for interested groups to showcase the city's tourist attractions and to showcase the City's overnight accommodations. Coordinate with hotel and motel operators to facilitate such tours. 5) Conduct public relations related to tourism, coordinate and promote tours for media groups, and work with media to highlight tourism in Union Gap. 6) Design, create, or coordinate promotional materials and campaigns highlighting events and attractions within the City. Develop budgets for promotions for city review. 7) Coordinate with other groups and agencies engaging in promotion of tourism within the Yakima Valley, including but not limited to Central Washington Agricultural Museum, State Fair Park, Yakima Valley Tourism, and Yakima Valley Sports Commission. 8) Maintain a web and social media presence for the city of Union Gap for purposes of tourism. Facilitate links with other websites related to tourism in the Yakima Valley. Maintain a current-events calendar and a list of attractions on the website for internet access. 9) Create or coordinate a reproducible calendar of events with tourist related news to be distributed on the web, in hard copy, and to media and promotional outlets. 10) Create community relations by establishing a speaking schedule to appear before affected business groups, local jurisdictions, and other potentially interested groups within the city of Union Gap and Yakima Valley to make determinations about destination marketing needs and explore creative ways by which to promote tourism to Union Gap and the Yakima Valley. 11) Engage in any other activities that would help to promote tourism to the city of Union Gap. 12) Promote open lines of communication with the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee and report on a monthly basis to the Committee regarding results from various efforts under this contract that can be reduced to traceable criteria or statistics. 13) In accordance with RCW 67.28.1816, provide an annual report with an estimate of how the lodging tax funds will increase the number of people traveling for business or pleasure on a trip away from their place of residence or business, including travelers staying overnight in paid accommodations, traveling 50 miles or more one way from their residence or business, or traveling from another country or state. Recipients must also submit a report describing the actual number of such travelers generated by the funded activity. 14) Work with Union Gap event coordinators, such as the Valley Mall, Central Washington Agriculture Museum, the Genealogical Society, and others, to promote and advertise their events to maximize attendance and attract out-of-town visitors. 15) Create, build upon, coordinate, and attend Union Gap signature events, such as Burger Week, Haunted October, Asparafest, and others.
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