Message From The General Manager

Laura Chastain

Happy New Year!  Congratulations on a busy winter break. NPS is showing a 4.75% increase in visitation for November this year compared to last and 2.37% increase year to date(November). Click here for the link to the current NPS Reports.

I'm hoping all of you took the time to comment on the NPS proposed changes to both the Visitor Fee increase and the Commercial Use Fees.  Click here  for our official comments.  We will continue to monitor the outcomes of National Park Services decisions as they will have a huge impact on our local economy.

At our December Board meeting we drew the name of the Winter Sweepstakes winner - Jennifer J. of Tucson Arizona.  I had the honor of meeting Jenny in person.  She has lived in Arizona since 1990 and has never come to the Grand Canyon.  She is super excited about the package and trying to figure out a schedule to come up.  We had 2384 entries with 1544 unique email address. We have had over 24,000 hits to our Experience the Winter Majesty webpage since going live in June of 2017.  I want to thank the following businesses for their donations that made the sweepstakes possible:  Canyon Plaza Hotel for a 2 night stay, Big E Steakhouse for dinner for 2, Plaza Bonita for dinner for 2, RP's Stagestop lunch for 2, Grand Canyon Airlines flight for 2, Paragon Skydive 2 naked skydives, and National Geographic Visitor Center for 2 movie tickets.  Also a special shout out to Visit Tucson for hosting the photo opportunity.

Our Grand Canyon Visitor's Guides are a huge hit.  We are in our final planning stages for the 2018 Visitor Guide - we have room for only one more ad so please contact me immediately if you are interested in placing an ad in this very popular publication.  We plan on printing 200,000 for 2018.  We have requests from visitor centers all over the US - just tonight I had Idaho Falls - Eastern Idaho Visitor Center contact us because they had run out.

Membership renewal is due next week - please make sure you get your renewal in to ensure your listing in the Visitor Guide.

Our VR project we still continue to receive good feedback on our project but I'm sad to announce we didn't make it to the finalist level in South by Southwest film competition.  I am proud that we were recognized as a semi-finalist.

Our website - we notices a glitch with a recent update that made some businesses not seen on PC's and Android phones.  We have fixed the problem and appologize for any inconvience.

Board Election

Congratulations Romy Murphy of Pink Jeep for joining our Board.  Courtney Dixon with Grand Canyon National Park Lodges will also be continuing on our board as well as Clayann Cook with Big E Steakhouse.  We are still working on a date to determine officers. 

December Recap

FAM Tours

December 10 - Chinese Trade & Media FAM Tour

VA Van was here December 12th and 13th 

Santa made several appearances throughout the Grand Canyon - Thank you to all for making it so special for the local children and the visitors!

Coming soon...

We will be holding Customer Service classes in February.  Class will focus on basic customer service and also serve as a way for participants to learn about other Chamber Members and what they offer.  More details will follow soon.

Vanessa  Ceja-Cervantes  is working on the 3rd Annual Founders Day Community Event - Celebrating the Grand Canyon's 99th Birthday with a Safari Expedition theme.  The event will be Thursday February 22 from 4 pm to 7 pm at the Canyon Plaza Atrium.  All businesses and organizations are invited to have a table at the event with the opportunity for outreach, share resources, give-aways, games etc.  If you are interested please email Vanessa at vanessa_ceja-cervantes@nps.gov - please send primary business contact, logo and how you want to participate no later than January 31st.

Current Marketing efforts

Facebook - December Recap

28 Posts with 6829 views and 247 clicks

We also ran two ads

Come for the Bowl stay for the View 

reach 14,270, 23,432 impressions with 404 clicks

The National Park Service Comment Period

reach 1662, 2026 impressions with 49 clicks

Winter Marketing campaign with Madden showing great results! Total campaign impressions is now at 90,619.  The Facebook campaign contributed to 1,210 clicks into the website in December.

We have almost doubled the views of our VR Experience the Winter Majesty with a whopping 19,498 views since we launched in June - last month we had a little over 10,000 - that's over 9,000 views in December alone!

Facebook / Instagram - Jan plan

Daily Posts Facebook

Madden Media Campaign - canvas ads, carousal ads, VR video promotion 

USA Today Banner Ads  

AOT Rural Marketing Plan

Quantcast Banner Ads: Nov and January

USA Today Geo-Targeted Banners: Dec, Jan, Feb

Video Distribution: Sep - Feb

AdWord Campaign - Oct, Nov, Dec

Facebook Ads - Sept - May

Discover Arizona: Canadian insert Oct/Nov

Via Arizona: Winter

AOT State Map listing

AZ State Visitor Guide 1/2 page color

Experience AZ Fall/Winter Full page 

Grand Canyon Journal November Issue 1/2 page color

Play Ball Jan-Feb 1/2 page color

Additional Advertising:

DriveGuide 1/2 page each issue

Northern AZ Exposure Map

Experience Sedona

Canadian Guide to AZ

Canadian Explore

Current Print Advertising in circulation:

Winter Drive Guide – circulation 200,000
1/6 page ad in Experience Sedona guide – circulation 275,000
1/3 panel Northern Arizona Exposure Map – 275,000 circulation

1/4 panel Grand Canyon South Rim, Tusayan, & Northern AZ
Plus our Visitor's Guide I40 corridor certified racks