Updates You Should Know

• Governor Laura Kelly announced a new phase in her plan to reopen Kansas: Phase 1.5. For more information on the reopening plan, please visit the official Kansas COVID-19 website. 

• 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. Watch for registration information to be released soon that will also include information on the grant. 

• Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism and the Travel Industry Association of Kansas hosted the Kansas Tourism Industry COVID-19 Virtual Meeting on Wednesday, featuring Kansas Adjutant General David Weishaar and from US Travel on the recently introduced H.R. 6697 the "Local Chamber, Tourism, and 501(c)(6) Protection Act of 2020" and a TIAK Update. 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: Agenda will include an update from the Kansas State Fair General Manager Robin Jennison on the 2020 Kansas State Fair and a presentation from Karyl Leigh Barnes, President / Tourism (DCI) Destination Counsellors International on how to engage media / travel journalists during COVID 19. 

May 20, 2020 - 1 p.m. CST

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

Meeting ID: 144 561 519
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Sunshine in the Sunflower State

• Catharine Hamm, travel editor for LA Times, had some great things to say about Kansas (one of her favorite domestic travel locations) on the Travel Itch Radio podcast. Skip ahead to 14 minutes in for the Kansas shoutout! 
• The Shop Kansas Farms Facebook group has gone viral! With over 100,000 people interested in purchasing locally grown food, many page followers have expressed interest in road trips! We are working with page admins to put together some regional roadtrips for people to enjoy. 

eLearning U Webinars

Next Webinar: 

10 Things You Can Be Doing To Your Website and Web Presence During This Time to Increase Leads 

Some people are finding they have some extra time on their hands these days - and we wanted to give you 10 insights and tips on how to use this time wisely to invest in your web presence.

In this session, we explain what ‘search engine optimization’ means, and present an overview of a successful SEO strategy. We provide a foundational understanding of various factors that affect SEO, including onsite (technical), offsite (public relations, list building, Google Maps, Youtube). We’ll guide you in how to audit your current website’s status with Google and explain which tools are the best to use to track and monitor growth. For those who have outsourced SEO we’ll give you the questions to ask and the tools to use to either bring SEO in house or be able to better monitor your vendor.

Date: Thursday, May 21
Time: 1PM Central
Registration Fee $49.95 FREE when you use the coupon code provided above

Upcoming Webinar: 

5 Non-Obvious Megatrends That Matter For Travel & Tourism Pros

How can paying attention to longer term trends help anyone working in travel and tourism to survive the current disruption? In this session Rohit Bhargava will share key insights from more than a decade of trend research into how five specific megatrend predictions might offer an unexpected path forward for smart travel and tourism marketers to continue building their brand and connecting with quarantined travelers even at a time when they cannot travel, while also preparing for the future.

Date: Thursday, May 28

Time: 1PM Central
Registration Fee $49.95 FREE when you use the coupon code provided above