Eureka City Council Awarded State Trophy for “Best Public Relations Campaign”

Photo caption L-R: Council member Scott Bauer, Mayor Susan Seaman, council member Leslie Castellano, council member Kim Bergel

[On March 15th,] at the city of Eureka’s City Council meeting the tourism marketing agency of record, Eddy Alexander, presented an update on the community’s marketing, placemaking, and promotion efforts.

Eddy Alexander reported Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT), a measure of local tourism traffic and revenue, had increased 130% between the start of their contract in 2019 and the end of calendar year 2021. This improvement was driven in large part by a measurable increase in the average length of stay for visitors leveraging area hotels and accommodations.

They also noted that the city was doing a better job increasing the number of assets that visitors enjoyed while in the area and attracting more people from more places, a shift that can both be attributed to the disruption of the pandemic and one that an Eddy Alexander representative said, “positions the city for continued growth as a destination in the years to come.”

In the last year, the city of Eureka, and its new Redwood Sky Walk attraction, have been featured in more than 200 outlets achieving an estimated viewership of 3.73 million people, racking up 108,000 article social shares – across 11 different countries and six languages. High profile placements include The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler Spain, Lonely Planet, National Geographic, and the current cover of Sonoma Magazine, which Eddy Alexander President Jennifer Eddy shared during the presentation.

The firm reported that they had worked with more than 200 media outlets and more than 2,000 freelance travel writers, bloggers, and influencers and had facilitated Eureka features across more than 400 radio stations. The total estimated value of the recent earned media attention exceeded $4M and the efforts helped increased traffic to the Visiteureka.com website by ~600% year over year.
At the end of the presentation, Eureka City Council was presented with a Visit California Poppy Award for “Best Public Relations Campaign” which was recently awarded at the California Tourism Outlook conference in San Francisco.

Visit California recognizes the leading tourism marketing efforts that have best contributed to the state’s reputation, economy, and standing as a leading global destination over the previous 24-month period and the city of Eureka was honored for the campaign to open the new Redwood Sky Walk at Sequoia Park Zoo.

At the same event, Eureka and Eddy Alexander were also honored as finalists for best Overall Destination Marketing Brand.
The full recorded City Council presentation includes additional details about Eddy Alexander’s recent and upcoming projects and will be made available for public viewing on the city of Eureka’s website.