Oregon Tour & Travel Alliance
E-Newsletter
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Message from Your President
Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to our March General Meeting. It was wonderful to see so many of you in person and on the Zoom. This was our first attempt at a hybrid meeting, so if you have any feedback about the experience, please email me or Stephanie so we can try to smooth it out for future events.
Special thanks for our speaker, Jarrod Lyman, with Oregon’s Mt. Hood Territory who spoke about the rapidly changing social media landscape as well as offered tips on how to keep strategies relevant. My takeaway, reels are really important. :)
OTTA will be hosting a networking event on May 12th at Bullwinkle’s in Wilsonville. Registration for this will be coming out shortly. This will be a casual get together (no formal programming) for us to enjoy each other’s company and hopefully provide a needed breather from the daily grind.
I wish you all the best and hope to see you in May!
Tammy Thompson
OTTA President
Hotelco, LLC
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May Networking Event
May 12 • 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Bullwinkles in Wilsonville
$25 per person
Includes bowling, snacks, and one drink ticket
Join us in reconnecting with your fellow tourism partners at this informal networking event. Thursday, May 12th from 5:30pm-7:30pm Bullwinkles in Wilsonville 29111 Town Center Loop West - Wilsonville, OR 97070 $25 per person Includes bowling, snacks and one drink per person Friends are so much better in 3-D! We hope to see you there!
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ABA Leads
ABA 2022 Marketplace leads were emailed out to OTTA members on March 9th. As a reminder, please do not add these contacts to your direct email marketing distribution lists. These leads require highly targeted and personalized communication for follow up. If you are unsure how to respond to these leads, please reach out to your local DMO for assistance.
to make sure we have the correct contact information for you and/or your property.
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OTTA Hybrid Spring Meeting on March 14
Thank you, Jarrod Lyman, Founder of Mt Hood Marketing, who shared his experiences in the social media landscape that changes at a rapid pace, the latest tips to keep your strategies relevant, and also re-examined some tried and true practices that still work today. Lyman provided practical information based on his vast experiences and award winning ways in the tourism industry. Quality over quantity is still the norm for social media. In the ever-changing social media world, the big three are Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram. Find your voice so that you can get specific in your ads. Engaging with people is still key and those stories are still relevant and impactful. He waded through the jargon and provided definitions for those of us not quite current in those social media skills. What spoke to me (Chris Chester), Tik Tok is a time sucker!! She can’t add her grandkids on Tik Tok as they would blow up her computer.
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OTTA Raffle Baskets
Thank you to everyone who supported OTTA by either donating items or purchasing raffle tickets for our primary fundraiser, the regionally themed raffle baskets sold at the Governor’s conference. This year we raised $2,800 which is amazing with the reduced capacity of this year’s event. A very special THANK YOU to our DMO’s and RDMO’s for their extraordinary assistance in procuring items from their regions. We really couldn’t have done it without you! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
Congratulations to our lucky winners:
Portland Region - Ashley Cates with Market Rogue
North & Central Coast - Mandy Morgan with Portland Spirit
Eastern Oregon - Julie Hurliman with Tillamook Coast
Southern Oregon/Southern Coast - Julie Hurliman with Tillamook Coast
Central Oregon - Meg Trendler with Travel Lane County
Mt. Hood/Gorge - Kristen Dollarhide with Travel Pendleton
Willamette Valley - Jorden Grant with Meredith Lodging
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Are You Willing to Serve?
A great way to enhance your membership is to participate on a committee or join our Board of Directors. Board terms are for two years and we meet one time a month, typically via Zoom, to discuss our programs and goals as well as share updates about what is going on around the state. This is a great opportunity for you to expand your tourism knowledge and network within Oregon. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to anyone on the Board.
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Northwest USA Spotlight: April 24-26
Rapid City, South Dakota
Vice President, Kristen Dollarhide, will be attending the Northwest USA Spotlight on behalf of OTTA. This show is taking place in Rapid City, SD April 24-26. During this show, OTTA will have a table set up with information about what we do and some of our profiles. If you would like to have any of your branded, promotional items at that table (eg., pens, note pads, phone chargers, stickers), please send 25-40 of the items to Kristen by Monday, April 18th (she will be packing an additional suitcase to take, so nothing too heavy, breakable or liquid, please).
Pendleton Chamber of Commerce
Attn: Kristen Dollarhide
501 S. Main Street
Pendleton, OR 97801
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EOVA Seeks to Fill Outreach & Grants
Coordination Position
This new, part-time position is an exciting opportunity for someone looking to work with a dynamic and growing organization in the field of tourism and community outreach. The position will support the implementation of the Regional Cooperative Tourism Program and will also be responsible for supporting the administration of EOVA's Regional Grants Program.
The ideal team member has excellent project management and organizational skills, strong command over written and verbal communication, performs well under deadline, is detail-oriented, and has excellent interpersonal skills.
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Buses for Sale
Sylvia Spaulding of Quest Treks has unfortunately had to close her doors due to Covid-19. If anyone is interested in buying a 25 passenger or 18 passenger bus, please call Sylvia at 503-910-6888
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Member Profile: Order Order, Anna Mehrer
My name is Anna Mehrer, and I have been providing marketing services to small businesses, artists, and non-profits for almost 15 years. I am a member of the Better Business Bureau, local search engine marketing group SEMPDX, and OTTA. I got involved with OTTA after the Covid closedown because I wanted to connect with tour operators, hospitality professionals, and anyone looking for someone with marketing expertise who knows what it’s like to be a tourist (which is not a dirty word to me!). A strange time to connect, yes, but as I am a fantastic planner, I knew the economy would come back and people would need to satiate their voracious travel appetites understarved by travel restrictions. I am an avid traveler myself and have lived abroad. I speak fluent music and German, which was my major in college. I grew up mainly on the East Coast, but have also called Bonn, Germany home (was there when the wall fell!), studied at Hanover College in Indiana, and lived in Chicago before making Portland my home in 1999. I chose Portland because I wanted to live somewhere where I wouldn’t need to purchase a car, preferring to put mileage on an Airbus. The clincher was looking at a map—yes, it was a paper map back then, lest I reveal my age (see above where I lived when the Berlin Wall fell)—and seeing all these lovely green spaces where I envisioned reading in the grass under sun-filtered trees. Ok, so the reality is that happens only during a select number of months, and I discovered through allergy testing that the Willamette Valley is the largest grass-growing region in the country. Nevertheless, having lived in a variety of regions and environments, I love my Portland home. One of the things that might surprise you is that I volunteered with Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery where I was a tour guide for their annual Halloween event, Tour of Untimely Departures. My partner and I love metal detecting and are in The Ring Finders directory, which occasionally provides opportunities for regional travel.
I heard about OTTA through the American Marketing Association emails. See? Email marketing works! The live webcast with Rick Steves was one of the first events I attended. I was not only impressed with how clean his kitchen was, but how personable and insightful he was with the audience. I also learned he was instrumental in Oregon’s marijuana legislation, which, regardless of how that aligns with your values, has been a significant legal tourism revenue stream for Oregon.
With all that is going on in the world, it is important to remain informed without letting events become so internalized they distract from enriching one’s personal life. Focus on what you can control, as difficult as it may be. To that extent, I donate to charitable causes such as Wounded Warriors Project, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, Gun Violence Survivors Foundation, Meals On Wheels, Saving Mothers, and volunteer annually with Transition Projects at their Veterans Stand Down on September 11.
Personal Travel Trivia: My favorite luggage brand is Tutto, a company out of San Francisco. I have used their line for over thirty years. After accruing over 250,000 miles with United Airlines by 2003, I vowed to pay extra to avoid ever traveling with them again, but also to avoid O’Hare. I have been on two cruises with the Celebrity line: once in the Galapagos Islands and the other around the British Isles. The best tip my first boss ever gave me was to always have a bag packed in case I needed/wanted to travel spontaneously. She is also the one who advised getting a mink coat, “Because you’ll always get excellent customer service,” but I just stuck with the ready-to-go tote, and it has served me just fine.
Please visit my website at OrderOrder.net where you may contact me for my Great Granny’s Butterscotch Pie recipe. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in person soon
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August 20, 2022 – Helix, Oregon
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Calendar of Events
April 24-26 – Spotlight, Rapid City, SD
May 11 – OTIS Training
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Oregon Tour & Travel Alliance
503.626.8197
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