The Spokane Valley Tourism Promotion Area (TPA) Commission held its regular meeting on August 13, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. at Spokane Valley City Hall. Commissioners reviewed the financial and administrative reports, discussed the launch of the TPA Opportunity Fund, and considered the frequency of future reports. No public comments were received.
Okay. I think we can call it 10 a.m. Um do we have uh any opening comments? No one signed up via Zoom, and also just for the record commissioner Hoffner Hoffert has not signed in, so I don't believe she will be in attendance. Well, I guess we are calling to order and then jumping into a financial report that looks like is Terry's hat. It is, it is so good news. Revenues for May were up over last year's revenues. Yay, cooking in the right direction. So year to date, well, excuse me, that's a five point four five percent increase may uh come comparison, and then year to date, we're looking at about a five point six overall year to date uh over last year's. Now just remember that main numbers here are probably visitors that you saw in your properties back in March as those revenues come in. Did you fix my volume? Thank you. It was loud. So do you have any questions for me on the financial report? I don't. No. As we're moving through the admin report today, I would like to know feedback from you on which of these reports you would like to see every month, or if we should consider doing some of these items more quarterly or even annually. I know it becomes a pretty large packet for you as we move forward. So keep that in mind as we're reviewing it. And then after we're all done, you can let me know how you feel about it. Uh on the co-star data, couple of things that I want to point out. Uh the hotels experienced a half a percent increase in occupancy. So right now we're looking at an occupancy rate of sixty-four percent. The daily average rate is still down two point four percent over last year at one oh eight, but it held steady from April to May. And then the next thing in your packet, Mr. Lee, because I forgot it last time is that listing of the hotel data. I won't get into that in depth. And then next in your packet is a quick little one sheet market update on our campaigns that one sixteen in West is working on. And then following that is the in-depth analytic report for the website and what activity we're seeing there. Now, I'm gonna tell you that the next report is your domestic travel and tourism report from Placer AI. But yesterday, Placer AI sent us a message and told us not to pay attention attention to the uh total visitor spend. And this is what their message says. A bug delayed the ingestion of the enhanced transaction data into the visitor spend report, causing some markets to display inaccurate or lower than expected spend figures. I had to laugh at that. So they said they're going to be issuing a new report in the near future. So I will add that to your packet next month, if you would like. So yesterday was a soft launch, and then after today, it's official. So let me see. Here's my clicker. So we took council adopted the ordinance back in May. I started in May. I started immediately working with legal and figuring out how to align the code, the municipal code with best practices, and some of the research that Leslie had done for application process, created the application, created a guidebook for the applicants to follow, and then we also built the web page. Johnny, if we could open that up. So the web page just has a brief overview about what the fund is. Then it has the purpose and the goals, and then it talks about the review process. And then uh down below, you have the application to download. You can click that open if you'd like. So they just fill it in. They also should contact us before they start an application to make certain that what they want to accomplish is going to be eligible. And then that is also stressed in the application guidebook.