Updates You Should Know

• Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism and the Travel Industry Association of Kansas hosted the first Kansas Tourism Industry COVID-19 Virtual Meeting on Wednesday. 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

  Time: Apr 8, 2020 01:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada) 

  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)

• If you are a 501(c)(6) organization, U.S. Travel Association has created a document that should be helpful in understanding what 501(c)(6) organizations ARE able to access now from the CARES Act and what they expect you'll be able to access in the short term.

• We asked our marketing agency Bajillion to share some recommendations for action to the Kansas Tourism Industry during this COVID-19 time of restricted travel.
• The Attraction Development Grant timeline will continue as scheduled. Please continue to submit applications before the April 30th deadline.
• On Friday, April 2nd, the early-bird period for submitting listings for the 2021 Kansas Travel Guide will open and run through May 31st.  During this time, a general listing will be $80 and a highlighted listing will be $120. We are currently updating forms and our site, those will be available next week on TravelKS.com. If you have questions, please email Andrea. 
• Kansas Tourism staff have been following Governor Kelly's directive of social distancing since March 23. Starting on Monday, our staff will be working full-time remotely. Please continue to reach out to us. It may take us a bit to catch up but we are continuing to work on your behalf. 
• Kansas State Parks and public lands remain open to the public. KDWPT staff is limited, so offices are closed to walk-in traffic. Signage on the front door will give a phone number that will be responded to M-F, 8am-5pm.

Things You Can Do  

• 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. Our website provider also launched a new feature that allows extranet users to update business information in regard to the crisis. You are now able to add things like 'Temporarily Closed', 'Offers Delivery', 'Offers Take-Out' and more to show what options are still available (or not) in your community. Now is also a great time to get comfortable in using our extranet. You can find our extranet training center here.
• We also want to encourage you to take some time and pursue obtaining your Kansas Destination Specialist certification from TIAK. We are encouraging members of our staff who have not obtained the certification yet to pursue this opportunity over the next few weeks, and we'd love to see you do the same. The great news is the KDS program partners well with our marketing education webinars through E-Learning U. Even if you miss the weekly live webinar, we have an archive of 350+ hours for you to catch up on. These webinars are absolutely free to you with the code 'Travel KS'. If you need assistance with E-Learning U please reach out to Jordan.
• 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.