Experience Olympia & Beyond tells Yelm council it’s using AI and targeted advertising to drive overnight stays
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Summary
Shauna, interim CEO of Experience Olympia & Beyond, briefed the Yelm City Council Feb. 3 on regional tourism metrics, a $1.4 million operating budget, new AI ‘chat personalities’ for the tourism website, and plans to refresh a Yelm visitor guide; she noted Yelm’s 2026 LTAC contribution of $7,000.
Shauna, interim CEO of Experience Olympia & Beyond, told the Yelm City Council at a Feb. 3 study session that the regional destination marketing organization is focusing on converting day visitors into overnight stays, introducing AI tools and refining visitor materials to increase lodging tax revenue for Thurston County. “My name is Shauna and I am interim CEO,” she said, describing a nine-month interim contract while the organization recruits a permanent executive.
Shauna said the organization’s operating budget is about $1,400,000 and that Yelm’s Local Tax and Accommodation Charge (LTAC) contribution for 2026 is $7,000. She described the funding mix as primarily lodging tax and tourism promotion assessments, with some private revenue, and noted the organization currently has five staff members and an open group-sales-manager position to recruit meetings, sports and event business.
The presentation included 2024 regional figures that Shauna attributed to the organization’s sources: she said Thurston County saw about 3,390,000 visitors in 2024 and $572,500,000 in direct visitor spending, which she said supported roughly 4,076 direct jobs and generated about $56,700,000 in state and local tax revenue.
On marketing strategy, Shauna said Experience Olympia & Beyond is concentrating advertising outside a roughly 50-mile radius and targeting origin markets such as Vancouver, Portland, Seattle and Longview. She emphasized the organization’s priority of “heads and beds” — encouraging overnight stays because overnight visitors generate a disproportionate share of spending.
Shauna also described digital investments: the organization’s website receives about 400,000 unique visits a year, and staff plan to deploy three AI “chat personalities” tied to the site that users will be able to add into their own GPT clients. “We are going to be integrating chat personalities on our website,” she said, explaining the personalities will be gated through the newsletter list to allow ongoing marketing and nurture campaigns.
She said Experience Olympia & Beyond will continue PR outreach, influencer programs and visitor guides (print and digital) and that a refreshed Yelm community guide for 2025–26 is in production with layout changes to make information easier to scan.
The council asked about staffing events and visitor centers; Shauna said the organization can supply brochures and materials for local events but that staffing in-person booths is constrained by current staff capacity. Council members and staff described ongoing coordination between the organization and the city on event promotion and LTAC-funded activities.
Experience Olympia & Beyond expects to share the new AI personalities publicly in the next one to two months and to continue reporting visitation and campaign performance to municipal partners. The study session moved on after a short question-and-answer period.
