Emery County travel staff warns marketing budget tight after new TRT rules; events estimated to have generated about $1.9 million
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Summary
Travel office staff told the Emery County Travel Bureau on Feb. 10 that state changes to TRT spending rules and lower TRT receipts will constrain county marketing (approx. $31,000 this year) even as staff estimated supported events generated roughly $1.9 million in visitor spending.
Travel office staff briefed the Emery County Travel Bureau on Feb. 10 about how recent state legislation and local revenue trends will affect the county’s transient room tax (TRT) spending and county marketing.
The presentation, given by travel staff (Speaker 2), explained that the travel office functions as the county’s destination marketing organization and that recent statute changes created revenue tiers that change the required split of TRT spending for counties of Emery’s size. According to staff, Emery’s tier requires roughly 23 percent of the county TRT to be used on establishing and promoting (marketing) and 77 percent on projects.
Staff said the county’s dedicated county marketing budget for 2026 is about $31,000 and that the office will need to make strategic spending choices this year. "So we're gonna be pretty tight unless we wanna change some things," the presenter said during the overview of the proposed budget and renewals.
The travel office also summarized event-related work it supported last year. The events coordinator (Speaker 6) told the board that, based on survey follow‑up for 40 events the office supported, "the estimate from the 40 events is $1,900,000 — just over $1,900,000 from these 40 events that we supported." Staff said the figure is an estimate derived from survey responses and attendance data and that higher survey response rates this year (about 200 responses) improved confidence compared with prior years.
Board members and staff discussed contracts that support marketing and visitor analytics, including a two‑year contract with PlaceYourAI and Placer analytics data. Staff said the PlaceYourAI contract cost was $12,000 in the first year and $13,000 in the second year and that the office can pull multi-year visitor reports from Placer; several board members urged staff to tailor future data pulls to show return on investment. Staff noted that some event data pulls currently return insufficient data for specific events and that addressing that gap is a priority.
Staff listed several ongoing uses of TRT and mitigation funds that are not direct advertising: a funded sheriff’s public-lands position, a Green River-based road department employee, EMS support, trails crew and visitor-center/museum support. The travel office also said it budgeted $30,000 for a county-administered trails grant cycle and that one‑time special-project funds remain available for projects that meet TRT allowable uses.
The travel office said the combination of the new statutory spending split and reduced TRT receipts will require the board to prioritize projects and marketing buys and to consider moving some items to event budgets where eligible. Staff urged board members to flag any obvious errors in reports before those materials are published to the public.
Next steps: staff will provide more detailed Placer/PlaceYourAI reports when available and will return with proposed marketing allocations for board approval.