After the city of Sedona spent the last three years declining to fund destination marketing through the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, Sedona’s hoteliers have decided to take their future into their own hands and are preparing to launch a new marketing campaign to attract long-stay visitors as the city’s economic slowdown continues.

The campaign is being organized by the Sedona Lodging Council around the theme of “Rediscover Sedona.” It will aim to attract high-income visitors from Phoenix and southern California by promoting Sedona’s dining, shopping, cultural activities and art scene using digital advertising. Geofenced ads, social media posts and email messaging will target potential visitors ages 35 and up with household incomes of $250,000 or more. These ads will be triggered at locations where there are likely to be high numbers of potential visitors, including Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, car rental agencies, high-end restaurants and art galleries.

While the initial proposal for the campaign also included provision for a possible billboard along I-17, Lodging Council Vice President Cheryl Barron said that the billboard idea has since been dropped.

The Lodging Council’s marketing effort will be a slimmed-down version of the “Meet Sedona Again” campaign that the chamber proposed to the Sedona City Council on Jan. 24.

The earlier campaign proposal would similarly have targeted affluent, multi-day visitors interested in indoor activities and was budgeted at $225,000.

Council rejected the chamber’s request for contingency marketing funds to carry out this program of work.

Councilwoman Jessica Williamson had stated, “What we really want is the number of people coming to Sedona to be cut way, way, way, way down.”

At that time, Councilwomen Kathy Kinsella and Melissa Dunn and Vice Mayor Holli Ploog also questioned the utility of marketing to Phoenix residents, whom they described as being more likely to visit as day trippers. Ploog said most Phoenix residents have probably been to Sedona already.

Sedona’s hoteliers disagreed.

“You all have told me that Phoenix is your number one market,” Chamber President Michelle Conway noted at the April 11 meeting of the Lodging Council, adding that such feedback from the people on the ground was the chamber’s justification for advertising in Phoenix in the past.

Seventy-one area businesses have made voluntary contributions to the Lodging Council’s marketing fund through the newly-formed Sedona-Verde Valley Marketing Alliance. The estimated cost of the campaign is $122,738; as of March 21, the alliance’s investors had pledged $129,900 to support the project. The funding will be administered by the chamber, which the Lodging Council has hired to administer the program.

“We’re moving forward. We’ve got the funding,” Conway said. “We’re having to modify the plan just a little because of the funding level, but we are proceeding. The invoices have gone out.”

The campaign’s details are still being finalized, including the proposed website. “Do we create something like a list format, infusing the different investors, businesses into that list?” Conway asked. “Or do we just create a story about how to experience Sedona and meeting Sedona again?” Individuals ads will also be adjusted during the course of the campaign based on the results they produce.

The Lodging Council expects to review the final proposal for the campaign at its next meeting on May 9 and launch the first phase on May 15. This will be followed by a second long-term campaign funded by ongoing business contributions, with the goal of raising $35,000 per month and $420,000 per year to support consistent marketing.

Al Comello, chairman emeritus of the chamber’s Board of Directors, described the campaign as being about pursuing an improved quality of life, which, he reminded the council’s members, is an inclusive term: “The ‘quality of life’ is defined as everybody. Residents, business owners, people who work here and those pesky old things like tourists.”

Elizabeth McIntire, general manager of the Inn of Sedona, commented that the City Council has “been so against marketing or anything for two years … and as soon as we hand them divorce papers, for lack of a better term, the city’s ready to go out and [market].”

McIntire added that she didn’t know if hoteliers could get businesspeople elected to council, but “I think we should try.”