Updates You Should Know

• The 2020 Kansas Tourism Conference Registration Grant program has been developed to assist Kansas tourism organizations in the cost of attending the 2020 Kansas Tourism Conference, Oct. 19-21, 2020 in Liberal, KS. 

  2020 was a year of unprecedented challenges for the Kansas Tourism industry.  The Kansas Tourism division of KDWPT realizes that these challenges have budget repercussions that will limit the ability for our tourism partners to gather this October at our annual conference. This year, more than ever before, it is imperative that we join together to provide support and expand our recovery education.

  Kansas Tourism as developed a grant to cover registration costs of our Kansas tourism partners to attend the annual conference to 2020.  Watch for registration information to be released soon that will also include information on the grant. 

• Governor Kelly has released, "Ad Astra: A Plan to Reopen Kansas." Make sure to also pay attention to local health mandates, as well. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Bridgette.

• The payment deadline for 2021 Travel Guide Listings has been extended to December 15, 2020. We know that budgets are being examined closely, so we have extended the payment deadline for 2021 Travel Guide listings by almost 6 months. The deadline for submitting your listings still remains the same, June 15, 2020. The early-bird rate for submitting your listings is open now.  All prices, deadlines and instructions are available on TravelKS.com. If you have questions, please email Andrea.

• Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism and the Travel Industry Association of Kansas hosted the fifth Kansas Tourism Industry COVID-19 Virtual Meeting on Wednesday, featuring representatives from the Department of Commerce. You can find the recording here.

• We will continue hosting this meeting weekly over the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Please feel free to share the recordings or to invite other stakeholders to participate in the calls. While the virtual meeting is capped at 250 participants, we will continue to release the recording shortly after. The details for next week's meeting are as follows:

• Topic: Tourism & Hospitality Industry COVID 19 weekly update - Discussions on the Road to Recovery. 

May 6, 2020 - 1 p.m. CST

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/144561519

Meeting ID: 144 561 519
One tap mobile
+13462487799,,144561519# US (Houston)
+14086380968,,144561519# US (San Jose)

Sunshine in the Sunflower State

• The Franklin County Historical Society is hosting a Facebook Live Trivia Night (featuring Franklin Co. History.) What a creative way to help locals learn a little bit more about their community!
• The Kansas Sampler and Kansas Explorers Club hosted a fantastic Facebook Live highlighting some unique and secluded spots across the state that are ripe for exploration! Take a look to see if there's a location featured in your community!

Preparing for Travelers

• Take advantage of our free marketing webinars! There's over 350 hours of educational content waiting for you. 
•  Now is also the perfect time to earn your Kansas Destination Specialist certification from TIAK! We are encouraging our staff to pursue this designation and would encourage those who also may not have it yet to do the same. 
• SimpleView has also released a COVID-19 research hub. They have sampled 200 DMO websites for analytics statistics. This week's update: Growth continued this week, at a slightly lower rate than last, with 2.2% increase per day on average and 16% for the week. Regionally, the recovery has been strongest in the US South, where several states have begun to end the shutdown. Recovery is stronger among visitors from fly and drive markets than locals, although all types have shown improvement in delivering sessions to DMO websites.

Things You Can Do  

• Treat 'Em Right has released Hope at Home, a free e-learning site focused on skills-building for unemployed hospitality and tourism workers. 
  
  No Fee - Access to:
  Hospitality at Home
  These 3 lessons are the latest in how to exceed guest expectations.
  Whether you are a server, work in a ticket booth or front desk when you learn and use these skills you will enjoy your job more and be more profitable. Taken by over 40,000 workers so far!
  
  Coaching Skills - 
  For the last 15 years Coaching skills has been the number one desired skill by employers.
  By helping improve the performance of others you become more promotable yourself.
  These 3 short lessons contain the essence of coaching. 
  
  Features:
  - You can sign-in and learn at no charge 
  - Quiz after each lesson
  - Printable completion and graduation certificates immediately
  
  
• Travel Information Centers (TICs) are gearing up for when travel returns. If your location has any new brochures or updated their brochures, now would be a great time to get them approved and sent to the TIC's. 
• We encourage you to update your local listings as you are able. The great thing about our extranet is you can access it from anywhere, so it's a good item to work on if you are working remotely. Now is also a great time to get comfortable in using our extranet. You can find our extranet training center here.
• Please make sure you are a member of the Kansas Tourism Industry Facebook Group. This will be the easiest, quickest way we can reach out to industry members over the next two weeks. 
• Continue to let us know the impact of cancellations and lost business in your community.
• Continue to update events on the TravelKS.com websites as more cancellations or reschedulings roll in.
• Continue to monitor your social media postings and website updates during this time. If there is a question about whether something is appropriate for the circumstances, please air on the side of caution.