Guest Bio
Mark Everton is the CEO of Explore Seattle Southside, an organization dedicated to promoting tourism in the Seattle-Tacoma area. With over 35 years of experience in the hospitality industry, Mark has managed hotels for prestigious brands like Four Seasons, Marriott, Hilton, and Joie de Vivre across the west coast and Hawaii. In 2016, Mark transitioned from hotel management to destination leadership, taking on the role of CEO for Visit Oakland. Later, he moved to Seattle Southside, where he rebranded and re-imagined the region’s tourism efforts. Under his leadership, the organization has received accolades for its innovative marketing strategies and its ability to promote a destination that hosts 52 million visitors annually but lacked name recognition.
Show Summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, Jason Elkins speaks with Mark Everton, CEO of Explore Seattle Southside, about his journey in the hospitality and tourism industries. Mark discusses the role of Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) in shaping tourism, the challenges of marketing lesser-known destinations, and the importance of creating memorable experiences for visitors. They also explore unique projects like the UFO Trail and Bubble Tea Trail, which have helped elevate Seattle Southside’s profile. The conversation highlights the importance of collaboration with local businesses and the impact of innovative marketing on tourism.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Explore Seattle Southside is a unique DMO – Focused on promoting the Seattle-Tacoma area to a global audience.
- ✓ DMOs can be funded through a variety of sources – Including hotel assessments and public funds, essential for effective tourism marketing.
- ✓ Effective marketing strategies are crucial – Helping local attractions reach a wider audience and enhance their visibility.
- ✓ Engaging with travelers before and after their trips – This creates a more complete and enjoyable experience for visitors.
- ✓ Themed trails can spark interest – Projects like the UFO Trail and Bubble Tea Trail can drive curiosity and tourism.
- ✓ Collaboration with local businesses is key – DMOs work best when they partner with local businesses to create authentic tourism experiences.
- ✓ Mark’s journey in hospitality – Began at a young age and led him to his current role in destination leadership.
- ✓ Understanding numbers and financials – Mark stresses the importance of financial management in DMO operations.
- ✓ Creativity in marketing – Can lead to innovative projects and engaging experiences for visitors.
- ✓ DMOs can offer free marketing resources – Helping local businesses thrive by increasing their visibility and reach.
What You’ll Find at Explore Seattle Southside
- ✓ Unique projects and themed trails like the UFO Trail and Bubble Tea Trail
- ✓ A collaborative approach with local businesses to enhance tourism
- ✓ Creative and innovative marketing strategies to boost destination awareness
- ✓ Support for local businesses through resources and free marketing
- ✓ A dedicated team committed to growing the Seattle Southside region as a top destination
👉 Visit Explore Seattle Southside Official Website to discover more about the region and the exciting travel experiences it has to offer.
Learn more about Explore Seattle Southside and connect with Mark at:
https://www.seattlesouthside.com/
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Jason Elkins (00:01.058)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. Today we’ve got a special guest from Seattle. We’ve got Mark Everton. Mark is the CEO of Explore Seattle Southside. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Everton (00:16.624)
Thanks very much, Jason. Thanks for having me on this morning.
Jason Elkins (00:19.756)
Well, it’s a real pleasure. We had quite a conversation before I pushed the record button and we were sharing all kinds of things. And I thought, you know, let’s go ahead and get this started. So we pushed record. We’re jumping right in. Mark, tell us real quick. What is Explore Seattle Southside? Just so our listeners kind of get a feel for that. And then we’re going to jump into more of your story.
Mark Everton (00:40.828)
So Explore Seattle Southside is a DMO, a destination marketing organization. So very similar to other DMOs that a lot of your listeners have in their area, whether it’s visit California or visit Seattle or something in New York or in the South. So we are concentrated in the area right around the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, CTAC, and that is the three cities of CTAC.
There’s actually a city seat of SeaTac, Tukwila and Des Moines. And this area has about 52 million visitors a year that are passing through there, through here because of the airport. And it was important for us to create a destination marketing organization to be able to communicate with them about things to see and do within this area as they’re kind of transitioning to other, to other areas.
We also see this a little bit, similar organizations to ours would be around San Francisco Airport in San Mateo. People fly into San Francisco thinking they’re flying into San Francisco, but they’re really not. They’re not even in San Francisco County. They’re 25 miles south of the airport in San Mateo. Atlanta, Hertzfield Airport is the same situation. People fly into Atlanta thinking I’m flying into Atlanta, and you’re really not. You’re quite a ways outside of Atlanta Metro. And then of course we know Dulles and we know
You know, Heathrow are both not in Washington, D.C., or in London, but have their own destinations, and there’s organizations that market them. So we’re literally or technically called the Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority. And we did a rebranding about three years ago and shortened that to Explore Seattle Southside. And we can talk more about kind of what the whole marketing focus is and why explore Seattle Southside really is kind of a good moniker. It’s a good fit for us.
Jason Elkins (02:36.576)
I’m curious and I suspect some of our listeners are curious as well. You know, you’re the first guest that I’ve had on the show from a DMO and I suspect some of our listeners DMO you touched on it, but how does a DMO kind of fit in? Is it a political organization? Is it funded by the local government? How does a DMO generally work? What should our listeners know about that?
Mark Everton (03:01.82)
So DMOs run the gamut from being a department within a economic development department of a city or a county where they are actually a part of the government to a subset of a chamber of commerce or to independent 501c3 or 501c6 organizations where they’re a standalone nonprofit and they get their funding from a variety of sources. We are very unique. There are 57 DMOs in the state of Washington.
and our organizational structure is the only one of the 57. And we’re treated as a governmental entity because we form this tourism promotion area, a business improvement district, if you will, of these three cities. And under our state of Washington law, it enables us to collect an assessment, just as you would if you were a business improvement district or a downtown improvement district. So in this case, every
hotel room that’s sold within our region, within these three cities, pays a $2 per room night assessment. That money goes to the state. The state in turn returns that to us. That triggers us to be a governmental entity because it’s all public money. And so that’s how we’re funded. Other organizations get funded as a line item in the general fund of their city or county budget.
or if they’re a part of a chamber, comes through a variety of funding sources through membership fees or through an assessment. And in some cases, they, DMOs get a portion of lodging taxes, the bed tax that’s charged by the state, city, county, and they’re allowed or enabled to get a portion of that. we’re unique and that’s hence why we have the Tourism Authority in our, or have the Tourism Authority in our official name, is because we’re a governmental entity.
Jason Elkins (04:52.086)
Okay, got it. And I suspect also some of our listeners, a lot of our listeners are actually tour operators. Maybe they have accommodations. Maybe they work with a DMO in their area. Help me understand how your organization works directly with the operators there to provide them support or do you just focus on getting the word out that it’s a great place to be or is there day-to-day interaction with the tour operators?
and the other stakeholders in the area.
Mark Everton (05:25.008)
Yeah, it’s twofold. So we use our marketing prowess and our reach to be able to, get awareness built of this region. And one of the primary vehicles channels for doing that is off our website and getting people to be aware that explore Seattle South site exists as a resource and get them to come to the website. And from there they can link up with things to do things to explore tour operators to connect with.
accommodations, attractions, retail and dining. So we’re really kind of a clearinghouse for all of that. So if you, as an example, there’s a really cool botanical garden here in SeaTac. If the botanical garden was trying to reach cruise customers that are coming to take a cruise up to Alaska, and they’re trying to reach them, it would be incredibly difficult and expensive for them to be able to do that.
We’re able to reach out and talk to people that are scheduled to take a cruise that are coming out of the southern part of the United States, which is predominantly where they originate from. And we’re able to communicate with them and they know they have a day or a half a day of free time. They come to our website and find out what to do and bingo, here’s a botanical garden that’s easily accessible, fun thing to do, weather is going to be beautiful. And so it’s a perfect fit for that.
So we’re able to supplement the marketing opportunities of a lot of our partners. we’re not a membership organization. So when I say partners, it’s anybody that has anything of interest for visitors, right? So there’s no barrier, there’s no fee you have to join.
Jason Elkins (07:08.878)
Are some DMOs more of a membership based or could you use specifically mentions that so I was kind of curious.
Mark Everton (07:17.008)
Right, very much so. A lot of them, because they’re hurting for funding, they’ve gone to a membership base. And so if you want to have a listing on their website, if you want to participate in fam trips, familiarization trips, or promotions, or things that they’re doing, you need to join. You need to be a member of that. And in fact, a couple of our larger DMOs that are here near us are membership based. And so our
or a hotel that may be in SeaTac that wants to participate in Visit Seattle, which is the Seattle Metro DMO, they need to a check for that. They need to become a member to be able to get a listing and promotion and that kind of thing. So that’s kind of a common mechanism for DMOs for membership.
Jason Elkins (07:56.408)
Gotcha.
Jason Elkins (08:02.798)
Okay. And you mentioned that you’re able to, I’m really fascinated by this. We’re going to get into your story here in a moment, I’m sure. But I’m fascinated by this. When you say we’re able to speak to or communicate with the person that’s in the South, in the Southern United States, that may be passing through on the way to go to Alaska for a cruise, tell us a little bit more about that. What do you mean by we’re able to communicate with them and speak with them?
Mark Everton (08:31.91)
So let me give you an interesting little story, little analogy of this. So there was an annual cruise conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida that I participated in. And when I first joined the organization, shortly the first couple of months, I was going to this cruise conference. And I knew nothing about cruising and had never been on a cruise ship before. mean, where I’m aware of it, but it’s not something that’s commonplace for me. So I thought,
I’m going to approach Fort Lauderdale as a cruise tourist. So I picked a hotel, not the headquarter hotel for the cruise conference, a hotel that’s near the cruise terminal and caters to cruise. So I flew into Fort Lauderdale and I got my bag and I went and waited at the curb with a bunch of other people that were obviously cruisers and got on the shuttle bus going to the best Western and did the best Western experience. And I wanted to see what that was like. So as I got on the
the van, the shuttle. was sitting next to a gentleman and we’re about the same age. you know, he’s, you know, I said, hi, what brings you to Fort Lauderdale? And he says, well, we’re going on a cruise. I said, oh, when do you, when do you leave? He goes, well, first thing tomorrow morning. I said, oh, and it was, I don’t know, five 36 o’clock. And I said, did you, did you think about coming in earlier? And he said, earlier, like when, and I said,
Jason Elkins (09:58.859)
you
Mark Everton (10:00.956)
well, like yesterday or Tuesday or maybe Monday, and you could spend a couple of extra days here. And he literally, Jason, turns in a seat and looks me in the face and says, what the hell is there to do in South Florida that you would want to come early for?
Jason Elkins (10:21.354)
OK. Uh-huh.
Mark Everton (10:22.108)
Right? mean, Fort Lauderdale is, you know, it’s a 45 minute train ride to Miami Beach. mean, there, could give you, I’m not, I’m not even from Florida. can give you a list of 25 things I want to go see and do in South Florida. And so this guy’s myopically focused on, no, we’re going cruising and we’re going home. That’s, you know, that’s our, that’s our thing. So it prompted me to begin to think about how do we, how do we break that? How do we, how do we.
Jason Elkins (10:26.264)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (10:50.822)
How do we change that? Well, one way is to talk to the travel agents and say to the travel agents, hey, you should book these people to come in a day early and you should do this. The problem that I found is that the travel agents follow what the cruise ships want them to do because they’re buying everything and packaging it under the cruise ship portal. And the cruise ship isn’t really interested in people coming early or staying later because they want them to spend their money on the ship and on their trip, on the ship. So.
Jason Elkins (11:14.27)
Exactly. I was was guessing that. Yeah, right.
Mark Everton (11:18.726)
So then I thought, well, if you can’t talk to the travel agents and the cruise ships don’t want to talk to you about this, you need to talk to the people and the people need to say to their travel agent or they need to go online on their own on Expedia or Orbit or booking.com and they need to do that extra day pre or post or days pre or post on their own. Okay, so how do we communicate with them? Well, I don’t really want to spend the money and run an ad in the AARP magazine or in the AAA magazine.
incredibly expensive and you’re throwing too broad a net. So why don’t we do some familiarization trips? Why don’t we get some bloggers, some social media influencers, some journalists and get them to come out here and take a cruise. But more importantly, why don’t we get them to experience pre and post and talk about all the things that you could do as a mixed generational family traveling or as somebody that’s got mobility challenges.
or somebody that’s got a limited budget or, or, know, whatever it might be. And so we started a whole program of bringing influencers in and having them experience this area. Hence part of the name change of explore Seattle South side, where people don’t realize there’s a there there and that there are things to go and explore and experience and do. And so we are now pushing that messaging out.
And it’s subliminally landing in the laps of people that are traveling, that are going to take a cruise. And it’s like, hey, honey, I saw this interesting thing. I read this little blurb. There’s a rhododendron garden. And I know you raise rhododendrons. And maybe we should go in on Tuesday, and we could go to this rhododendron garden, as an example.
Jason Elkins (13:12.62)
Right, so as someone that travels a lot myself, I find myself if I’m going through a place, if it’s in my mind that, that’s a cool place, there’s cool things to see and do there, then I will say, hey, if I’m gonna be there, I don’t mind having an eight hour gap between flights. I can leave the airport and go down and do something.
as opposed to like, yeah, what’s in, I shouldn’t say Cleveland, because someone’s gonna be listening to this. I know there’s stuff in Cleveland. I’m just, that’s the first thing that came to my mind. If I’m going through Cleveland and I don’t have a clue what’s going on in Cleveland, I’m just gonna sit in the airport, or I’m gonna just try and get through there as quick as I can and go on the next thing. So really your goal is to have people think, oh, there’s cool stuff around the airport in Seattle.
And maybe we should go in a day or two early, right? Really, that’s the goal is just to get people to think that way, Yeah.
Mark Everton (14:09.596)
Right. And so part of the challenge is, so let’s go back to your example, because neither of us know a whole lot about it. So you’re going to have an eight-hour layover in Cleveland. And what is there to do? What could we do? So go to visitcleveland.com and look at in
and look at what there is to do. Look at the event calendar, look at some of the blogs, and you’ll find that there’s a blog that probably says, lay over in Cleveland? Question mark. That’s me. Well, you can store your bag at the airport. You can take a $12 Uber or taxi ride to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And for 35 bucks, you can spend five hours in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and be back at the airport.
Jason Elkins (14:46.254)
you
Mark Everton (15:05.22)
Or you could sit at the Chili’s in the, you know, sea terminal at Cleveland international for eight hours. Right. It’s like, I mean, slam dunk. Yes. I’m not, I’m not necessarily going to say to my wife, Hey, we’re going to Cleveland for the weekend because no, but if I got an eight hour layover in Cleveland or I’m in a, you know, or I have an opportunity to fly in one evening and I’m not flying out till the afternoon of the following day, then yeah, I’m going to go to a.
You know, Cleveland baseball game, or if it’s the winter time, I’ll go to a Browns game, or I’m going to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And where do I find that? I find it from going to visitcleveland.com, the Cleveland DMO.
Jason Elkins (15:48.556)
So as the CEO of a DMO, anyway, it seems like you would have a lot of interest in making sure that there were cool things, not just marketing what there is, but how do we create something that isn’t even there yet? Because I mean, your market’s probably fascinating, all kinds of cool things. Let’s pick an area that maybe, you you get appointed to be the CEO of a DMO and you’re like, man,
No wonder they have such a hard time getting people to spend extra time here, because there’s not much going on. So how active do you get in creating new things?
Mark Everton (16:30.844)
So that’s a really interesting question. So the question is, are we marketers or are we developers? And I think from my experience and my take on it, that we’re more effective if we’re marketers and we’re able to support people that are good at developing things if they know that there’s an opportunity to get this marketed for them.
Jason Elkins (16:39.715)
Yeah.
Mark Everton (17:00.836)
without having to spend an awful lot of time and resources in trying to pitch it and trying to get the image out there. So we’re really very fortunate in that we’re sitting 15 minutes from downtown Seattle. And Seattle invariably ends up on one of the top 10 bucket lists of things that people want to go see and do. They want to go to the Space Needle and they want to go to where the World’s Fair was and they want to go to Pike Place Market and they want to take a ferry out to the islands.
Truly, if you haven’t been here before, Jason, it is truly an absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous city. is, it’s got water on three sides of it. And there is a absolutely magnificent, majestic mountain that’s just to the south, Rainier. And I ended up taking a snapshot, I was in a site, ended up taking a snapshot of it last night with my phone and sending it to my wife and said, you know, you forget she’s there and then you, you know, kind of look through the trees and all of a sudden.
Jason Elkins (17:34.87)
It is, it is, I have been, yeah.
Mark Everton (17:57.382)
There she is. And I was walking across the parking lot to go into a meeting at City Hall and there’s Mount Rainier off on the horizon. people are going to come here. And as I mentioned earlier, 52 million people a year traverse the SeaTac airport. So we’re not we’re not hurting for trying to get people here. What we’re trying to do is get them to pause. And so what we did is we changed our marketing focus around.
Jason Elkins (18:19.95)
Thanks.
Mark Everton (18:25.964)
in promoting micro-adventures. Because nobody comes to the city of Sea-Tac or Des Moines, Washington or Tukwila as a destination. You just happen to find yourself here because you’ve flown up to go to Seattle or flown up to get an RV and go down the West Coast or flown up to visit grandkids or your kids or, you know, or go up in the mountains or whatever, whatever reason those 52 million people are coming here.
Our need is to get them to understand that there’s something to go see and do. it could be a half an hour, it could be a half day, or it could be the better part of a day. So we’ve created trails and promoted attractions and found little niche things that people could go do. know, the first sighting of UFOs in the United States, weeks before Roswell, New Mexico, was in Des Moines, Washington. It’s called the Maury Island incident.
And there’s a whole long story. could do a whole nother podcast on the Maury Island incident, but UFOs, as you’re probably aware from a podcast standpoint, are huge. And so we’ve created a UFO trail. You can go down into Des Moines and you can see a giant mural that depicts the situ- the incident. There’s descriptions. You can go to the, to the marina and you can look out over the water. There’s just a lot of fun, interesting things that you can do in short little bursts, micro-adventure.
Jason Elkins (19:30.892)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (19:50.904)
Now I heard you say, I heard you say, we created a UFO trail. And just a moment ago, we were speaking about kind of marketing as opposed to producing or developing. So help me understand that when you say we created a UFO trail.
Mark Everton (20:07.504)
So it’s kind of back to that. Do we develop something or do we market something? Well, if it’s already there or if there’s pieces of it that you could put together, then why don’t we market it? And so we create this umbrella that encompasses it, but we’re not commissioning murals. We’re not putting up statues. We’re not putting up public art for a public art trail. It’s already there. We’re just telling the story.
around it.
Jason Elkins (20:37.47)
Okay. So it’s cause, cause I’ve interviewed people actually on this podcast that have done trail work where they actually go out and build trails and, know, environmentally friendly trails into Patagonia or whatever. but what I hear you saying is it’s more of a. Trail’s kind of already there in a sense that you’ve got, you know,
the first stop, the second stop, the third stop, we’re just putting it together almost like in a digital marketing fashion or in a marketing fashion and say, hey, you could spend six hours doing this, start at this place and then drive to the next place or take the taxi or the bus or the whatever. And you just kind of explaining to them how to get from point to point. Is that right?
Mark Everton (21:21.51)
That’s exactly right. And then going back to what we had talked about with influencers, we get people to experience it and tell it in their own words and experience what went on. So we’re not, we’re not broadcasting it. We are in a sense that, that people don’t want to hear me tell them how great this UFO trail is. They want to hear, they want to hear UFO nerds, UFO officiados come and say, hey, I went and explored this trail and this is really cool. That’s going to prompt them to go do that.
Jason Elkins (21:40.728)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (21:44.277)
you
Mark Everton (21:51.58)
So let me just share another really quick story. I invited to speak and do a presentation at an annual Port of Seattle event. And I knew that the port is spending a billion dollars a year on airport renovation and expansion over the next three years. And we’re nearing the end of that. They really wanted to get it ready for World Cup because we’re one of the host cities in the summer of 2026. And so they were going to talk about
how many thousand metric tons of concrete they’re pouring and how many urinals are being built in the airport and all of the numbers and all of the fascinating stuff. And there were, I don’t remember now, but there were a couple of other people that were gonna talk about really big projects and fascinating things and how many million shipping containers had gone through the port and 52 million people. And I’m pulling my hair out thinking,
Jason Elkins (22:32.65)
All the fascinating stuff, yeah.
Mark Everton (22:50.588)
Well, what the heck am I going to talk about? And so I decided to talk about how we become the bubble tea capital of the United States. And I started off by saying, you know, you’ve heard millions and billions and, you know, and hundreds of thousands. Well, let me give you a number. The number is 24. And you ask yourself 24. Well, what’s 24? Well, we have 24 bubble tea shops within two miles of the airport. There is eight
more intense concentration of bubble tea shops here than anywhere else. And I went on to tell this group of people about bubble tea. you know, most of them are our age, Jason, and they’re like, bubble tea, you know, that’s like a, you know, teenage thing at the mall. And it, you know, and it’s really not because it, really delves into the whole cultural diversity and what makes bubble tea. Well, what makes bubble tea is you have to have cultural diversity. You have to have a lot of people.
Jason Elkins (23:29.048)
Mm.
Mark Everton (23:47.324)
You have to have a lot of foot traffic. And third, you have to have economic viability for bubble tea. You can’t put bubble tea shops in the middle of nowhere and expect them to flourish. So I do this whole pitch. So my team embraces it and says, let’s do a bubble tea trail. And so they create a bubble tea trail, a digital passport outlining, you know, 15 or 20 of these bubble tea shops that you can go and visit. And every time you go to one, your digital passport gets
get stamped and when you’ve collected enough stamps, we send you gifts, including this really cool, I wish you’d brought it, this really cool, you know, bubble tea cup with a lid and a straw and that’s got our bubble tea logo on it, right? So, so we pitch this thing. And next thing I know, the morning, the morning talk show radio or TV show in downtown Seattle.
wants us to bring bubble tea up and they want to do a whole episode on bubble tea. And then Evening Magazine wants us to go around with us to a bunch of bubble tea shots and do an Evening Magazine piece on bubble tea. you know, yeah, so did I, you know, I have, I’ve never actually made a bubble tea. I don’t know how to make the little, you know, the, you know, the little tapioca balls, but so I’m not developing bubble tea, but we’re definitely telling the bubble tea story.
Jason Elkins (24:56.45)
That’s pretty cool.
Jason Elkins (25:04.706)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (25:12.496)
from a marketing perspective.
Jason Elkins (25:13.742)
And you had 24 bubble tea shop owners. I have to speak slowly to get that right. 24 bubble tea shop owners. Very, very happy with you, didn’t you?
Mark Everton (25:19.58)
Yeah.
Mark Everton (25:26.168)
Extremely. They’re like, I what have they been doing? You know, they got a neon sign on their window. you know, they may help out with a fun run or something in town to get their name on a t-shirt. They might, you know, put out a little coupon in the little mailer that comes to people’s homes where they buy one bubble tea, get one free. They’re like, how do we get the word out that, you know, that we’ve got the coolest green dragon?
Jason Elkins (25:51.468)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (25:54.842)
you know, matcha bubble tea in the world. How do we tell people that? That’s what we do.
Jason Elkins (26:01.73)
You know, you know, as I’m listening to you, I’m thinking if, if I am a tour operator somewhere listening to this episode right now, I think I need hear me out. You tell me if this makes sense, but I think, man, I need to get a little bit more creative with my DMO and maybe I can come up with an idea like that and take it to the DMO and pitch it to the DMO instead of just sitting back saying, Hey, DMO, what are you doing for me? What have you done for me lately?
Maybe I come up with a cool thing that maybe benefits a few other people within the area and I pitch it to someone like yourself or someone on your team. Does that happen? Would you advise listeners to do that?
Mark Everton (26:44.208)
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You can reach out to your DMO or your chamber of commerce and say, Hey, what have you done for me lately? And you’re not going to get a whole lot of response, right? But if you go to them and say, Hey, I have this idea and I’m looking for help promoting it. How does this fit into your plan? And what can we, what can we do to push this out? And all of a sudden you’ve got creative brainstorming going on and
Jason Elkins (26:54.104)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (27:12.678)
Truly some of the most creative people that I’ve worked with in my career over the years have been the people that are at Chambers of Commerce and at DMOs. They look at a shiny penny as an opportunity to do something with it rather than just put it in a jar and put it on the shelf.
Jason Elkins (27:34.808)
Yeah, because if, you I mean, you’ve, had this idea, I’m not sure how it all came together. We could probably have a whole nother conversation on that, but for the bubble tea stuff is, you know, if, I was a, you know, one those bubble tea owners, bubble tea shop owners, I could have probably come up with that idea and brought it to you guys and said, Hey, what do you think of this? You know, I’m trying to figure out how do we get more traffic? How do we, you know, and all this. And, I’m just thinking of, that’s interesting. just, I.
I hope people are listening to this because I see in social media and my groups, I’ve been in a lot of different marketing groups and groups with tour operators and there’s a lot of, you know, trying to figure out why these organizations aren’t doing things for them and they can just get a little bit more creative and go pitch it. You know, what’s to lose?
Mark Everton (28:24.056)
Well, and just one more thing and until we’re done with this bubble tea thing, Jason, we take bubble tea operators with us to trade shows. And they do bubble tea at the trade shows. So you come to one of our booths at a trade show, there’ll be a bubble tea operator there serving bubble tea. You know, some of the of the booths have got, you know, little
Jason Elkins (28:35.139)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (28:47.44)
you know, skittles or Reese’s peanut butter cups or after the trade show, you know, near winding down, they may do a wine hour or something, but come to our booth and there’s bubble tea and these, you know, these travel agents and tour operators and, and people that are coming to these shows are like, I’ve never had a bubble tea. This is, this is incredible. Right. So the other thing that, that the team has come up with is we’ve come up with a whole program called stories. And so
We’re doing a deep dive into unique people and back to our microadventures in the community. And we’re creating a video audio story, which is really their story about what makes them unique. So it’s less about the restaurant. We just did one on a gentleman that’s got a Cajun restaurant in Des Moines. It’s less about the Cajun restaurant and really more about him.
And I share this with you because we’re working on one right now on a bubble tea shop over in Tukwila called Natalie’s. And what makes Natalie’s interesting, it’s a Vietnamese family and they grow sugar cane in Vietnam and they ship the sugar cane to Tukwila, Washington, and they grind the sugar cane in their shop to make the sweetener that they use in all their bubble tea drinks. And so we’re tying this whole
Jason Elkins (30:10.085)
wow.
Mark Everton (30:14.342)
kind of cultural transition from Vietnam cane fields to serving bubble tea in Tuckwell, Washington. And what’s that family story?
Jason Elkins (30:26.87)
It’s very cool.
think the story is super, well, it’s kind of the concept of this whole podcast and we haven’t even got into your story yet. We’re getting there. This is very, very fascinating, but I think the story is so important. And an example of that is I was with a friend in Quito just a few weeks ago and we were walking down the street and there we walked by this restaurant that looked kind of weird. was like Hamburgers de la Rusty or something.
And she stopped and says, this is like where I had my first hamburger or whatever, cheeseburger. And then she proceeded to tell me the whole story of this guy who moved from the US, a gringo, that had moved down and started this restaurant. And she was talking all about his story, not the food, you know, not the building, but she knew the whole story. So that was, and it…
you know, really made an impression on her that she then wanted to turn around and share with me. So I see the value in doing that. think that’s a really, really good way of approaching that. So what’s your story, Mark? Usually this starts with how did you get from where you were to where you are now? We just discussed a lot of kind of the stuff you’re doing now, but I’d love for our listeners to have an opportunity to kind of hear your story and how did you get into this stuff?
Mark Everton (31:35.922)
my.
Mark Everton (31:53.932)
I’ll preface it by saying it’s not a terribly exciting story. I hope people aren’t on the edge of their seat. They’ll work over. It’s funny, if I can make bubble tea exciting, I should be able to make my story exciting, right?
Jason Elkins (31:59.15)
we can make it exciting. I’m sure it is.
Jason Elkins (32:08.748)
Well, I’ll tell you what, Mark, before I forget, I’m sure that anybody that’s listening to this episode, the next time they go through Sea Talk, is gonna go find a bubble tea. And hopefully not in the airport. Hopefully leave the airport to do it, right?
Mark Everton (32:19.076)
I hope they do. Right. Right. Or they go to our website and look at all the other, you know, fun little things to do. They can go find a UFO or they can go walk through rhododendron. So there’s a variety of that. So.
Jason Elkins (32:25.815)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (32:30.678)
Yeah, absolutely.
Mark Everton (32:34.556)
I was going to college, so this would be back in the late 70s, up in Humboldt State, up in Northern California, just south of the Oregon border. they have typical small college, it’s part of the California State University system, but there only like 7,000 students, 5,000 students, and they had dorms. And as soon as school shut down in whatever, June, the whole…
school seemed to just kind of close up and everybody would wait until, you know, till the fall and it would start back up again. And right about that time, somebody had pitched administration and said, Hey, we’ve got all these assets, we’ve got all these classrooms, got all these storms. Why don’t we create a conference center? Why don’t we see what we can do about filling the dorms in the classrooms and, using the commissary and using all the stuff 12 months out of the year rather than only nine months out of the year. And I happened to
know somebody who knew somebody and they tagged me and said, Hey, would you be interested in kind of heading up this program? And I was like, I don’t gosh, Jason, I had to be like 18 years old. And all of a sudden I found myself trying to manage 2000 people coming in for a National Science Foundation, you know, month long, you know, conference and trying to feed them and figuring out how to feed them and how to, you know, and how to, how to get people to clean their dorm rooms and, know, all of the things that you do from a hospitality standpoint.
Jason Elkins (33:45.687)
Wow.
Mark Everton (34:02.278)
So I ended up living up there full time. All of my buddies and friends would go home to La Jolla or Costa Mesa or whatever and they’d go spend the summer lying around the mom swimming pool. And I ended up staying in Arcata running the conference center. When I got out
Jason Elkins (34:18.978)
Mark, but I gotta ask, how did the, said you got tapped for that? How? Why did the, how did that happen? There’s more to that story. What were you doing before you were 18 that led you to that spot, to that.
Mark Everton (34:28.58)
it.
Mark Everton (34:34.716)
I had done, I just dabbled and done a bunch of things. Nothing hospitality related, just kind of, you know, scrabble along and my, you know, my dad had a distribution trucking company and I used to, my last two years of high school, I’d go down to where he had left the rental truck at, you know, 11 o’clock at night and I
pick the rental truck because I was too young and they wouldn’t rent it to me. And I drive down to the printing plant and they load it up with pallets and newspaper and then I spend the next seven or eight hours driving all over Oakland and Hayward, California, dropping bundles of newspapers off on the corner so that the distribution crew could go in and deliver them. And then I’d go drop the rental truck back and, you know, go home and shower and go to high school. And so I, you know.
Jason Elkins (35:27.822)
So you were a fairly driven young man. What I’m hearing. What did you do for fun? Besides distribute newspapers.
Mark Everton (35:39.204)
I had a really close group of friends and we would do all kinds of fun stuff. Go fishing and go get into trouble and go watch at that time the Oakland A’s and the Oakland Raiders that were playing in Oakland. Just normal kid stuff, trying not to screw up and get into too much trouble.
Jason Elkins (35:58.12)
All right.
Jason Elkins (36:07.054)
Very cool. it, but obviously, you know, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve read your bio. I’ve seen some, you know, I’m aware of some of the stuff you’ve done. You’ve done a lot of stuff. So what are the key, key things that you think were the most profound and life-changing for you? Obviously 18 being tapped to, manage this big project. Um, and I’m sure there’s some other things and then how do you tie those together? Where do you think this? I don’t know.
Mark Everton (36:35.652)
It’s funny. It’s an interesting question, Jason. my wife and I have five children. And one of the things that you try to impart on the children is a need to understand your surroundings and to be able to use deductive reasoning and to try and to find a solution to find the
the best course of action for whatever it might be, whether it’s personally or professionally. I think to some degree, maybe with the advent of AI and Siri on our computers, we’ve to some degree lost that ability of looking at A and B and deciding what’s better won’t make more sense. And instead, if a million people have said A is better, then you just naturally migrate to A.
When I was, you know, when I was 17 years old and driving a boxtail truck around some of the worst parts of, you know, Oakland and Hayward delivering newspapers, I had to figure it out. I had to learn how to read a map. need to had to had to, you know, figure out how to organize the truck. had I had to really learn it. And then when I found myself, I don’t know, whatever, 18, 19 years old, 20 years old at the, you know, running the Jolly Giant Conference Center, it
know, Humboldt State University was the same thing. It’s like, how, how do you do this? How do you, how do you, you know, how do you clean dorm rooms in a facility that that never cleans dorm rooms, because the students do it, right? So there’s no, there’s really no housekeeping, right? So I think that logic that I kind of honed is just paid benefits through the years. And going back to what we had talked about earlier, it’s like,
Jason Elkins (38:17.687)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (38:31.28)
Well, what am I going to talk about in front of, you know, the annual port meeting and, know, kind of this epiphany of saying, well, let’s talk about bubble tea. I mean, that just mean.
Jason Elkins (38:35.106)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (38:44.11)
Yeah, as I hear you speaking Mark, I think this thing that I’ve tried and tell myself often is I don’t necessarily know how to do it, but I have faith in my ability to figure it out along the way. And that’s what I’m hearing in you is, you know, some pride in being logical, but also just taking the chance and moving forward. Like, I don’t know how we’re going to figure this out, but we’re going to figure it out.
I know I need to do a presentation for the Port Authority and instead of saying, you know what, I don’t want to do it, I’m going to do it and I’ll figure out what to discuss or what we’re going to feature, you know, just that ability to figure things out along the way. I hear a lot of confidence, I guess, in your voice and the ability to take action. And I think that that’s something a lot of people miss out on is they don’t have confidence in their ability to figure things out. So they just don’t take action. They don’t do anything. I don’t know. What do you think?
Mark Everton (39:38.81)
Yeah, I think that’s true.
Jason Elkins (39:42.222)
Because I don’t want to put words in your mouth. That’s what I’m sensing from you is that, you know what? I can figure stuff out. I don’t need AI. I don’t need chat GPT.
Mark Everton (39:52.774)
Right. Well, in kind of going back to the kids, that’s kind of the objective that my wife and I had to instill in them, you know, not to, you know, not to baby and nurture them, but also don’t, you know, throw them in the water and hope that they can learn to swim before they drown. You know, it’s that balance between the two. And as I look at at all five of the kids, you know, they get it.
I, to some degree, I think it worked. I think they are exhibiting what you just described, this ability to say, if I need to make this work, I, I’m, you know, I’m, I got to figure it out. It’s not just gonna, it’s not just gonna happen to me. So they’re, I think they’re not looking at the minimum. They’re really looking at what the potential is. And I think, I think a lot of my peers do that.
Jason Elkins (40:38.35)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (40:49.924)
And when I go to these conferences and I hear about what DMOs are doing, I’m amazed. They, you know, I’m not unique. They’re very much on top of it and saying, I can’t sit on my laurels if I want my region, my city, my town, my county to be successful.
Jason Elkins (41:07.298)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (41:14.284)
Ooh, this is a…
I know if we, maybe we edit this out later if you say, geez, Jason, I don’t think I wanted to have that conversation, but do you think that DMOs, so your DMO is very much, I can’t remember the exact terminology, but it’s a government entity, and help me out. Do you think that DMOs are different than other government entities when it comes to creativity?
and thinking outside the box and that type of thing as opposed to maybe an organization. And I’m not going to mention any by name, but I feel like I should, but I won’t. That maybe just this is what we do every day, all day. We’ve got the rules. We follow the rules. We do our thing because we’re government. So what are your thoughts on that? Is that something you’d be willing to share?
Mark Everton (42:13.156)
Yeah. Aye?
I think DMOs by their nature and what they’re focused in doing forces that change from the typical economic development department in a city or a county where they may be a little more constrained. Part of the challenge that a lot of government entities have and I’ll
I don’t know if you can edit this out, but I’ll say it. No good deed goes unpunished. So if you, right? So if we, well, we have this vacant piece of land, we should put a business, a development park in there for an incubator program. And the only way we’re going to do that is by sending them by giving them some tax credits. Well, you’re going to get the wrath of God against you for giving tax credits away or.
Jason Elkins (43:04.621)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (43:13.134)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (43:13.66)
You know, why did you give them tax credits, but you didn’t give me? So they end up going the path of least resistance, right? Everything’s set up by policy. And we try in our organization, even though we’re a governmental entity and it’s public funds and we have to be accountable and we have to toe the line outside of the governmental side, we’re pretty loose without a whole lot of…
constraints and policies.
Jason Elkins (43:44.506)
Well, yeah, constraint, think constraint is the key word there to describe the different types of organizations within a government. But it feels like you’d be encouraged to be creative, encouraged to try to like, you can do a bubble tea trail campaign, people like, okay, that’s pretty cool. And maybe not have to worry about some of the backlash that you kind of described. I would think, I don’t know.
Mark Everton (44:12.23)
Right. So, so on this, on this UFO trail thing, I,
We’re looking at the different aspects of what we could do with this and promoting this. there’s a mall here in Tukwila, Westfield South Center Mall, malls are not the most popular places in a lot of parts of the country. And you read stories about malls being abandoned and malls, know, becoming pretty, pretty desolate. This mall has 16 million visitors a year. It is happen. I have spent
Jason Elkins (44:39.33)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (44:46.348)
Hmm.
Mark Everton (44:49.552)
And I’ll tell you why I spent a lot of hours out in that mall and there are there. is, it is packed midday. It’s packed in the evenings. I don’t go out there on weekends, so to speak, but there is, it’s a happening mall. And we talked to the proprietor of the mall and said, Hey, we want to do a UFO promotion. And he said, I’ve got this area that’s that I’ve got a lot of wall space and we’ve been looking for something to do with it. And if you want to take over.
a 90 foot wall into a mural, you’re welcome to, and then I got another 40 foot wall adjacent to it that you could use. So we’ve created this whole experience, this whole UFO experience in the middle of a Westfield Mall. And there is a 90 foot wall. You can do selfies on board the boat where the fisherman was that saw the UFOs. There’s a, there’s a AR experience that you do on your phone. And all of a sudden now there are, there are
UFOs flying all over your head. There’s a whole storyline that involved US Army intelligence and the crashing of a B-25 bomber that had evidence from the Moray Island incident. You got all of this stuff going on in this. And then coincidentally, I don’t know, I’m tootling along in the internet and I come across this guy who is
sister was getting married and instead of having a guest book where people wrote messages in the book, she wanted a phone and they’d pick up the phone and they could leave a voicemail greeting wish for their wedding and their matrimonial bliss as a live voicemail message off of this little princess phone. So he developed a little recording device that makes it where you don’t have to call a number, you just pick up the headset and speak into it. So he created that. So I reached out to him and said, Hey, could you
Jason Elkins (46:31.938)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (46:43.42)
Could you take this device and could you put it in a payphone? And he goes, yeah, I could put it in anything. So I go online and I find a 1960s refurbished payphone, like out of Times Square. You know, it weighs like 75 pounds. So they ship it to me and I ship it to this guy and he puts this device in it. And then I find this junkyard up in Monroe, Washington, up in the, you know, I swear there’s like banjo music playing up there way up in the, up in the boonies. And in this junkyard, there’s
Jason Elkins (46:57.518)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (47:12.742)
They got a whole, whole half acre filled with old phone booths, not the booth booths, but the, the, the, the stands, the things you’d see outside of like a seven 11. Right. And so I buy one of those and we bring it down and we clean it up and we wrap it with, you know, graphic wraps that you would put on a car or a van or whatever. And we call it an alien communicator and we slap this thing in the mall. So there’s a payphone. You go and you just pick up the headset and it says, you know,
Jason Elkins (47:17.228)
No way.
Jason Elkins (47:21.194)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mark Everton (47:39.974)
Tell the aliens, invite the aliens back. Tell them what, you know, all the great things that you’ve done to your community in the last 70 years. And Jason, we’re getting 2000 messages a month being left on this payphone.
Jason Elkins (47:57.729)
So cool. Okay, so and what are you doing with the message? I’m sure you’re gonna tell me this but what are you doing with 2,000 messages?
Mark Everton (48:01.82)
there’s a company in the, well, we have to go through them because not all of them are safe for work. You know, there’s a lot of people that there’s a lot of people that don’t like aliens and don’t don’t want to invite them back. Right. And, you know, there’s a lot of 13, 14 year old kids that want to, I don’t know that this is their only, you know, their soapbox. And so they want to talk about, you know, how unfair, you know, Mr. Green was in PE today. But the so we
Jason Elkins (48:06.83)
You don’t want to live feed it.
Jason Elkins (48:27.086)
You
Mark Everton (48:30.02)
We find a few good ones. We have an audio, I believe. I haven’t seen it. I’ve been on our website on that section lately, but we were going to put some of them on our website so you could actually listen to some of them. Then we found there’s this company in the UK that you could subscribe to and they’ll blast these into outer space. so they’re somehow by some technology, they’re blowing these out into outer space. So we’re hoping that aliens somewhere are listening to these, inviting them to come back to Des Moines, Washington and see what we’ve, know, great things we’ve done with this.
community in the last 70 years. if you go to the, I don’t know, the city of, I don’t know, pick one, the city of, you know, I’m gonna get in trouble, Grapevine, Texas, or the city of, you know, Tupelo, Mississippi, and say, hey, you guys should create a payphone and put it in the mall. They look at you like, what are you talking about? Right? We don’t have that in our policy. There’s nothing about, you know, creating
Jason Elkins (49:01.272)
That is so cool. That’s fun.
Mark Everton (49:27.386)
voicemail pay phones. So that’s the fun thing that we’re able to do. And before you hit the record button, I asked you kind of what your audience reaches and how many downloads and things you’re getting. I get a sense that if you could get 2000 people a month downloading your podcast, that would be like, yes, that’s right. So to get 2000, and I’ve been out there because you have to go out and download it and kids mess with it and stuff and you have to go out.
Jason Elkins (49:46.092)
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Elkins (49:52.61)
You
Mark Everton (49:54.992)
I’ve been out there working on it people are reaching over me and picking up the headset. I’m like, excuse me, I’m working on this thing. And they’re like, I’m sorry, I was going to leave a message.
Jason Elkins (50:06.542)
That’s so cool in so many ways, but I love just the creativity behind it. Of course, my brain is like, okay, can you use AI to transcribe it and or to fill, you know, to find the best ones or, you know, I’m going through all the processes and stuff that your team gets to worry about.
Mark Everton (50:24.028)
And I think we are. I’m not an AI expert, but I’ve got some people here that are on first name basis with Chatty and they get her to listen to those and give us a concise…
Jason Elkins (50:37.464)
probably could even take AI, you know, do a two way conversation and create a prompt for the AI to be an alien. So they could actually, you know, have a conversation, but who knows where that would go. Some people would be standing there all day. So anyway.
Mark Everton (50:55.074)
We would definitely have some not safe for work messages at that point, I’m sure.
Jason Elkins (50:58.798)
That’s pretty, that’s pretty funny. So, all right. So I want our listeners to know just a snapshot or as much as you want to discuss about your background and, you know, because I know it started 17, 18 in the hospitality industry and you’ve gone a long ways with that.
Mark Everton (51:22.214)
Well, you’d asked a question earlier, what were the instrumental things? Well, one of them was, you know, taking up deciding that said to go on home during the summer that I would hang around school and run this thing. The other one was after school, after I got out of college and I had an opportunity to go to work and I was a majored in accounting and finance in school, ended up getting an opportunity to go to work at the Four Seasons Clift Hotel in San Francisco as an assistant controller in finance.
Jason Elkins (51:25.486)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (51:50.784)
And at that time, the Four Seasons Clift Hotel was a five-star, five diamond hotel, five stars from Michelin and five diamonds from AAA. And at that point, I think there were only like 11 or 12 of them in the country, like the Plaza in New York and the Greenbrier. And so this was a really, really nice property in downtown San Francisco. And that got me an intro into the hotel business. And so then I spent the next 35 years moving from
finance and accounting in hotels to actually being a hotel general manager for a good number of years, a decade or more, and then being an area managing director, overseeing GMs running hotels in a whole variety of Hawaii and Southern California and Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. so it gave me going back to that earlier conversation we had about the need to make rational decisions. It gave me that ability.
at a little higher level in that I wasn’t dealing with the arrivals and departures on a given day or that the shuttle van had a flat tire. I was helping mentoring GMs that were dealing with those issues and they were looking for support. They didn’t need me to tell them to go fix the tire. They needed me to help them understand what the backup would be. What could they do creatively?
to make sure that they would have a functioning shuttle van or that they would be able to take the New York Knicks at two in the morning when their hotel wasn’t able to take them and how to manage that and how to accommodate it. And so that was a fun part of my life is doing that because not only was I, I think imparting information and knowledge and wisdom, I was getting that back from them because these are just incredibly.
The unsung heroes of the hospitality industry are really people that are running hotels and making those day-to-day decisions. Yes, the people that are working on the line are very important. The people that are laying awake night worrying about these things, those are the people I think that need a little pat on the back at times. But they’re so incredibly creative. It’s pretty phenomenal and fun to work with.
Jason Elkins (54:00.994)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (54:12.856)
That’s very cool. Do you think that your background or your, your education, you started out in finance, accounting, that type of thing. Do you think that that was instrumental in you getting to where you got? Or do you think you could have, could have, or would have ended up in the same spot? Had you majored in just straight hospitality or.
biology or business. I mean, you kind of did business, but I mean, I’m more interested in the finance part.
Mark Everton (54:41.584)
I see.
Mark Everton (54:47.472)
I think it helped a lot. It’s a rarity when I go to a GM’s conference and I’d sit around a table with nine other GMs and we’d all, you know, kind of talk about where we came from. Half of them came from sales and moved up to a general manager from being a director of sales because, you know, hotels are all about selling, all about marketing. And so that’s a natural. Probably of the other half.
Jason Elkins (55:01.378)
Mmm.
Mark Everton (55:13.402)
two or three of them came from a rooms background where they were running rooms and running the front desk. And a couple of them came from a food and beverage background, running the restaurants and banquets and kitchen. And then there would be me with, you know, accounting and finance background. And so it’s a bit of a rarity. I think in hindsight, I think it helped a great deal. think understanding your numbers and being confident with your numbers helps in doing your budgets and managing your financial statements and understanding what’s going on so that you’re not.
You’re not constantly surprised. You’re not being called to the map. A lot of my hotels were owned by independent owners and these were, and we were either, we were there managing it on their behalf or it was a franchise. And the owners are very numbers oriented. They don’t, they don’t really care that, you know, that you had the New York Knicks last night, you know, or that, you know, or that, you know, Taylor Swift has got a concert coming up in a week.
Jason Elkins (56:00.152)
you
Mark Everton (56:12.38)
across the street from your property. That wasn’t high on their list. What was high on their list is what’s their ROI and where’s the cash and what’s going on and what’s the current value of my property and how much have you saved me and you know, it’s that.
Jason Elkins (56:18.598)
to return on their investment.
Jason Elkins (56:25.486)
So that had to make it a lot easier for you to engage with them as opposed to I’m imagining salespeople are interesting, you know, I’ve done sales. And maybe what they’re good at is sometimes the opposite of watching numbers or finance or being detailed and analytical. Salespeople are generally outgoing, friendly. like to, you know, they like to move the needle, but they like to feel it too.
Mark Everton (56:27.792)
it does.
Jason Elkins (56:55.194)
I think it’s a lot of feeling and sometimes they don’t pay necessarily a lot of attention to the numbers that need to back up what they’ve just sold. I’m not going to get you to say that, but I don’t know. don’t know if that’s, was that your experience close to that or should we move on? Because I’m sure you have a lot of people in your organization that do sales.
Mark Everton (57:15.63)
Yeah, no, I-
You know, we were talking earlier about the need for creativity and to look at things from a different dimension. And that’s the piece that the salespeople bring to the table. And they’re not all oblivious to the numbers, but their focus is really about how do I capitalize on the creativity. Really funny story. One of the properties I was managing, had a director of sales that came and
and said, hey, you need to give me a high five, because I just did something phenomenal today. So I gave him a high five and I said, what’d do? He said, we just signed Hawaiian Airlines for their airline crews. So we’re going to be hosting all of their crews. And at that time, I think the crew was like 13 or 14 crew members. So we got 13 or 14, we have two of them. We have 13 or 14 times two, times seven days a week, times 365 days. when we do the math at the rate, it works out to being a $7 million contract. So I just got you.
Jason Elkins (58:02.254)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (58:13.538)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Everton (58:14.35)
a $7 million contract. And I said, wow, you know, that’s amazing. when, when, when do they, you know, what’s their in and out pattern? Said, well, because they’re Hawaiian, the planes take a lot of time to turn around on the ground. So one of the crews will come in at seven in the morning. And then the departing crew won’t leave until nine in the morning. And said, okay, so we, so we got to have 13 or 14 rooms vacant all night for them to come in at seven in the morning.
Jason Elkins (58:34.9)
Mmm.
Mark Everton (58:42.298)
while the nine o’clock crew is still going to be in their room. So they’re only paying for 14 rooms, but they’re using 28 of them. And 14 of them sat vacant the night before and we got no revenue on that because we can’t, we can’t turn them, even though people might check out at five in the morning. We can’t clean them between five and seven because we’ve got no staff. He goes, yeah, I hadn’t thought of that.
Jason Elkins (59:05.016)
High five.
Mark Everton (59:06.16)
Yeah. Well, for 250 days out of the year when we weren’t going to sell those rooms anyway, it was a great thing. for the, you know, for the 100 days a year that we definitely could have sold those rooms, there was a bit of a displacement factor that occurred. So.
Jason Elkins (59:20.396)
Yeah. Probably good to have a financial financially savvy guy around to bounce ideas off of. just say it that way. But, boy, Mark, you’ve got a lot of great stories. Super fascinating. This was a little different conversation than we’ve had, you know, with some of the previous guests. And I learned a lot, a lot of things that came up that I honestly wasn’t even aware of. I’ve had people talk to me about, you should.
Mark Everton (59:26.988)
One more thing. Right.
Jason Elkins (59:49.102)
DMOs this, DMOs that, and I’m like, well, I’m not really sure I know. I know they’ve sponsored some fan trips that I’ve been on, but I appreciate kind of a look into the backside of that and some of your useful tips and things that I think that people listening to this need to hear. I’m curious though, what did I forget to ask you? What should I have asked you? And what do you want to make sure our listeners know either about you or South Side of Seattle or anything else before we wrap up?
Mark Everton (01:00:19.292)
I’d like to, something that you touched on, I’d like to emphasize again that the DMOs that your audience is familiar with, the tour operators and hotels and restaurants and attractions and retailers in these communities, your DMO is a great resource and invariably it’s a free resource for you, as is your Chamber of Commerce. Leverage those, use them. It’s a great, for a lot of them, it’s just, it’s free marketing.
It’s your ability to participate. And as I mentioned, when would a bubble tea shop ever think that they should go to Las Vegas to a trade show and, you know, what’s in it for them, right, type of thing. And there is something in it for all of your listeners. So please resource, access, leverage your DMOs in your chambers of commerce.
Jason Elkins (01:01:14.434)
Very good, you just brought a lot of value to a lot of listeners. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate you. Appreciate you taking a moment out of your day to share some stories about this and it was a fun conversation. Let’s do it again sometime. All right, thanks. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Everton (01:01:18.492)
You’re welcome.
Yeah.
It was wonderful. I appreciate it. Thanks Jason. Take care. Bye.
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