And this didn't require enabling legislation in Sacramento, correct?

Nothing.

No.

You don't need enabling legislation because it's a contract between you and the hotels.

You could contract with anyone you want, right? So if a hotel agrees to do that and they sign the form, then you're in business, and it takes it completely out of the public domain, 100%.

Again, it, because it's a percentage, it's not a fixed rate, we both share in our success.

I do better for the hotels, then my organization does better.

What have you experienced as you watch our sector announce things like, "We're rebranding," uh, you know, "We're gonna create a new brand, we're gonna update the brand"? What did you write about that has been embraced, and what have we in DMO land misunderstood?

So how do you right now, you're probably getting the same kind of questions I'm getting from my stakeholders about what are we doing differently? How are we tackling the shifts? What are you communicating to your stakeholders about what the value proposition, the reason that the DMO exists? What do we do in that community that they can't do without us?

Well, if you look at a lot of hotels right now and the great consolidation that we're seeing out there, you know, hotels by and large are not having their marketing budgets increased.

They're being decreased.

Their salespeople aren't able to travel as much as they would have liked.

You know, a director of sales and marketing is really a director of sales with a marketing name attached to it.

Marketing might mean buying ads somewhere, but they're not real marketing people.

And I think that the DMO has to be able to kind of look at its community and say, am I just additive? Am I a nice thing to have? Or am I essential to the business proposition of all of our stakeholders? To the point where if you went to a stakeholder, say in the DMO world, your largest hotel, and said, if the DMO went away tomorrow, It's the old story of, you know, if a tree falls in a forest and no one's there, does anybody hear it? Same with the DMO.

Do you have some tangible… specifics of where you think things are shifting that DMOs, the audience listening, the destination listening to this need to be thinking about? Where should they be placing bets right now in terms of future relevance and future performance for DMOs?

Mm

... you know, dark red leather booths, um, superb food, uh, in a very traditional setting.

That's, um, uh, you know, I, I love being able to go into these dark little, you know, places and have a martini with a nice steak or an outstanding hamburger.

It's terrific.

Um, 21 Oceanfront is literally on the sand.

Um, I guess, um, the, the decor is Victorian, I'll be polite here, Victorian bordello, um, kind of, uh, design.

But you have these spectacular views of the water since you're on the sand, and it's very upscale, French continental.

... um, means that it's a destination that everybody can enjoy.