Ad panel to consider budget, marketing

The Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission will meet Monday to consider approving a digitally focused 2020 marketing plan and a “conservative”

2020 budget, Steve Arrison, Visit Hot Springs CEO, said.

“We always budget very conservatively — so we’re just budgeting flat, which we know we will be up because we’ve been averaging up in collections 2-3% on average per year,” Arrison said.

The commission will meet at

3 p.m. Monday at the Hot Springs Convention Center.

He said Visit Hot Springs has had a great year with tax collections, and even though it just projects flat revenues next year, “we expect 3-5% growth. But that’s just us being conservative, we’ve always budgeted our tax revenues

exactly what they were the year before. Rather safe than sorry than over (projections).”

He said aside from the bond payment for the Majestic Park Baseball Complex, the rest of the 2020 budget will basically be the same.

Arrison said the “major capital project” Visit Hot Springs will pursue in 2020 is a $1 million expenditure to fund a new fire safety and security system.

The first phase of the convention center expansion project, which included Horner Hall, formerly the Hot Springs Convention Auditorium, and the new exhibit hall, is nearly 22 years old, and “it’s time to replace our whole fire safety and security system because it’s no longer supported by the manufacturer,” he said.

Arrison said the capital expenditure is a “big deal.”

“We’re always criticized for having money in the bank, but it’s for these types of capital items — you’ve got to have the money in the bank,” he said. “It’s not like just replacing a fire safety system in your house or in a small store. We have 360,000 square feet, so that’s why we have that money, for things like this. And we’re looking at things in the coming years. … It’s just part of having a building this size, you have to deal with things as they come up.”

Arrison noted there are smaller capital projects that Visit Hot Springs will also pursue in 2020.

“It doesn’t leave a whole lot of money to do anything else with if you’re honest about it,” he said. “The following year we’ll be looking at other things, but this is our most pressing need so we’re going to take care of that.”

The 2020 marketing plan will be presented during the meeting by CJRW and Bill Solleder, Visit Hot Springs’ director of marketing, along with his team.

“We’re going more digital this year and just adapting to the changing marketing environment,” Arrison said. “Things are changing more quickly, we’re doing a lot more video things. … We had a great year, so we’ll continue with TV and the various things we’re doing, but we are putting more into the digital.”

Arrison said some images will change from last year’s marketing plan, but the marketing plan will remain the same. He said the same locations will still be heavily marketed to: Texas, Tennessee, Memphis and Louisiana.

Arrison said the Oaklawn expansion will be emphasized, as it gives Visit Hot Springs “more product.”

“Not only the hotel being built, but the casino expansion, I think we’ve seen that impact on our numbers this year already, and I think it will only get better,” he said. “I think we’re seeing an impact on the numbers of what the city is receiving as well.”

Arrison continued, “We’ve got the Northwoods project, we’ve got the national park, downtown, just look around, there’s so much for us to promote and people love coming here.”

He said there is a lot of “new and exciting product in the city.”

“We have the new hotel product with the DoubleTree opening in January, which is the Clarion on the Lake that’s rebranding as the DoubleTree,” he said. “There’s so much going on. We’ll be ramping up for 2021, which is the 100th anniversary of Hot Springs National Park, which will be the year after, but we’ll be working on that throughout the course of the year, too.”

Arrison said that, all-in-all, the 2020 marketing campaign will be similar to the 2019 marketing campaign.

“It was so successful you hate to not ride the horse you’ve been riding when it won the race for you,” he said. “We’re looking forward to a very strong 2020, but as usual we (will) budget very conservatively.”