Visit Stillwater presents semiannual marketing report to Stellar EDA, highlights airport partnerships and visitor metrics

Christy Morrison, president and CEO of Visit Stillwater, and colleagues presented the organization’s semiannual marketing and airport report to the Stellar Economic Development Authority on Feb. 23, 2026, outlining recent campaigns, partner work with the Stillwater Regional Airport and data the group uses to measure visitor impact.

Morrison said Visit Stillwater maintains an active digital presence—"over 40,000 followers" on social media and an e-newsletter approaching 10,000 subscribers—and that the site hosts an events calendar and interactive maps used to promote local businesses and visitor experiences. She described two shop-local campaigns that, in the presentation, were reported to have produced $85,000 and $77,000 in local sales and noted the group runs incentives designed to steer visitors to fly through Stillwater Regional Airport.

Why it matters: Visit Stillwater ties its work to local economic impact and says the organization helps hundreds of hospitality businesses plan for visitor demand. Morrison told trustees that fiscal-year visitor taxes have generated "over $7,000,000," with "over $2,100,000" earmarked for visitor development and residential amenities; she said additional revenue could support wayfinding and other visitor infrastructure.

During the presentation, Morrison described a Community Marketing Partnership Program grant — coordinated with the Chamber and airport — that Visit Stillwater plans to use in part to reimburse travel costs for out-of-area job candidates who fly into Stillwater, an incentive the group says may help employers recruit talent. She also outlined a transportation plan the organization will fund on April 11 so event attendees can move among Boone Pick-N-Stadium, OSU athletics activities and the city’s core commercial districts.

Morrison explained the methodology behind the visitor counts: the third-party platform Zartico counts a device as a visitor until it has been in market for two weeks and also defines visitors as devices originating from more than 50 miles away. In response to a trustee question, she said, "You will be a visitor until you've been back for 2 weeks," noting that those rules skew metrics in college towns and that some nearby communities (Perkins, Cushing, Drumright, Yale) are functionally visitors to Stillwater despite proximity.

On airport work, Morrison told the authority Visit Stillwater provided roughly $400,000 in paid and earned marketing services for the airport over the past six months and highlighted a "Win Your Wings" program offered to local chambers; five chambers had agreed to partner (Guthrie, Cushing, Sand Springs, Stillwater and Enid), with incentives tied to boarding-pass collections and a $500 marketing payment to partner chambers.

Kelly Reid, airport director, thanked Visit Stillwater for the marketing support and said the partnership helps with air-service development and building relationships with carriers, praising the Visit Stillwater team's ideas and execution.

Trustees asked how to access the semiannual and annual reports; Morrison said the reports are posted on the Visit Stillwater website and that current and the previous two years’ materials are available there. Trustees thanked the presenters before moving to the resolutions portion of the agenda.

The authority did not take formal action on Visit Stillwater’s recommendations during the meeting; trustees received the report and acknowledged the organization's planned projects and partnerships.