Experience Olympia & Beyond interim director outlines marketing push, flags mixed FIFA projections

Sean Stewart, interim director of Experience Olympia & Beyond, told the Thurston County Board of County Commissioners on Jan. 21 that sustaining the visitor economy is a priority during an executive transition and outlined a mix of marketing and sales initiatives aimed at keeping Thurston County competitive. "The visitor economy generates $572,000,000 in direct visitor spending annually in Thurston County," Stewart said, adding that tourism supports "over 4,000 direct jobs" and contributes about "$56,700,000 in state and local tax revenue."

Stewart said his immediate role is "to provide stability and support" for staff and local partnerships and described programmatic work on targeted advertising at SeaTac Airport, programmatic digital buys, official visitor guides, and an active website strategy. He told the board Experience Olympia & Beyond is designing three tailored chatbot "GPT personalities" to be embedded in the organization’s site for trip planning and newsletter signups. "Part of accessing these GPTs will be signing up for our newsletter," he said.

On FIFA 26 and a local fan zone opportunity, Stewart said Experience Olympia & Beyond is partnering with the Thurston Chamber of Commerce to promote a local fan-zone and target visitors planning trips to the Seattle region. During Q&A a participant cited a Deloitte analysis prepared for Expedia and Airbnb that revised earlier West Coast FIFA projections from an expected 700,000 visitors to roughly 149,000 across the entire West Coast market and estimated about 900,000 room nights over six weeks; the presenter cautioned the number includes routine travel and is not purely incremental FIFA arrivals.

The board praised staff coordination with the VCB and broader regional partners, and members discussed using fan-zone programming and marketing to draw new visitors to Thurston County. The presentation concluded with a board request for continued updates and a note that Experience Olympia & Beyond is hiring a group sales manager to expand meetings, sports and group business.