Apr. 26—A group in Pauls Valley is now on the hunt to define the local aims of tourism and maybe even what the very brand is for Pauls Valley.
A special meeting came earlier this week to give all five PV Tourism Board members a chance to talk about coming up with a new marketing plan and tourism strategy for Pauls Valley.
It was what will likely be the first in a "deep dive" into what tourism means in Pauls Valley and ways to better promote the community with a more efficient use of the tourism sales tax money available.
Leading the charge was Jesse Alvarado, who like other board member members is looking to help better define the local tourism goals.
"We should not be doing this as an individual month-to-month thing, but really look at ourselves as a brand," Alvarado said about the tourism group hearing funding requests for various local events.
"What I'm hoping to get from this is changing the way we decide what and where the money goes.
"The idea is to nail down some sort of movement to get a strategy, a brand. How do we want to market our community?"
Always ready to offer his thoughts, Randy McGee agreed it's not so easy to determine what PV's brand is because there's a lot to choose from.
"You talked about marketing. You didn't talk about culture. We have a lot history here in Pauls Valley," McGee said, adding PV was established before the American Civil War.
"We have a culture. We are in rural Oklahoma, but we have some advantages," he said, pointing to the busy intersection of Interstate 35 and state Highway 19.
"But we don't have a brand. We are kind of all over the board."
McGee also agrees the group does need more "structure" when it comes to overall tourism goals.
"I think we're all in agreement we need a plan, a strategy is needed, but how do we go about acquiring it. We got by-laws but there was no strategy. We need some guidelines," Alvarado said.
"We don't know how to move forward. We could take a stab at this ourselves and all try to be on the same page, point us in right direction, or we could bring someone in to help us."
A little help is exactly what might happen as the plan is to reach out to some marketing consultants for some information, namely how much would it cost for them to provide a tourism-related analysis of Pauls Valley.
Amy Richey and C.J. Peachlyn agreed "someone to guide us a little bit" in the form of a consultant might be a good idea.
Richey stresses the board only has to listen to some ideas from consultants and is not required to take any action or spend any money.