TAB hears winter campaign attribution numbers and bed‑tax split; staff reports hotels account for about 60% of collections

Staff reported provisional results for the winter destination campaign and walked through how attribution data are calculated. The staff presentation said the winter flight ran from Oct. 17 to Feb. 15 (campaign attribution was turned off Feb. 15 per vendor settings), produced roughly 20 million impressions and around 173,000 site users attributed to the effort, and generated hotel overnight revenue tied to paid advertising. Staff said the campaign returned a higher reported return on ad spend for winter compared with the prior summer campaign, and described the attribution methodology: geofenced pixels around hotel and short‑term rental locations, combined with third‑party modeling to estimate incremental impact.

Board members asked technical questions about methodology, ROI calculation and data sources. Staff said hotel ADRs and short‑term rental averages come from Smith Travel Research and short‑term rental platforms; attribution uses a geofencing/pixel approach combined with modeling from their agency partner. Staff cautioned the TAB that some transcripted numeric phrases were garbled in the meeting transcript and recommended relying on the final May report for precise audited metrics.

In a separate analysis presented during the meeting, staff said the lodging revenue (bed‑tax) contribution across channels through November 2025 was approximately a 60/40 split: about 60% of bed‑tax dollars came from hotels, timeshares and online travel agents, and about 40% came from short‑term rental listings/platforms. Staff said the split was calculated from confidential taxpayer remittance data and stressed month‑to‑month variability due to payment timing. Staff also provided approximate counts used in their analysis: about 1,800 hotel rooms, ~1,000 timeshare rooms and roughly 1,700 short‑term rental listings (totaling roughly 4,500 keys across channels).

TAB members pressed staff to clarify whether split patterns change seasonally; staff said hotels tend to capture more peak‑season revenue (spring) while short‑term rentals rise in off‑peak months. The finding that short‑term rentals contribute materially to bed‑tax receipts was presented as new, actionable information for lodging and tax policy discussions; staff indicated they will share a fuller lodging performance report with the lodging council and the TAB.

Because several numeric values in the live transcript appeared garbled (for example, one line shows the winter paid advertising budget as "$2.50" which is inconsistent in context), this article flags the need to verify final figures in staff’s written report before use in decision documents.