Working for You - October & November
The Santa Rosa Metro Chamber is committed to our mission of convening members and community, empowering them with resources and knowledge, and acting together to create a connected and vibrant business climate. Here's a quick look at some of the things we did to support business and the economy through October and November in response to the recent fires and subsequent recovery efforts:
- Convened a business recovery focused Wake Up Santa Rosa discussing recovery, rebuilding and assistance efforts with California Treasurer John Chiang, State Senator Mike McGuire, Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore, and Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey
- Launched a variety of pertinent workshops including SBA Disaster Assistance, Tax Relief & Recovery, Survive & Thrive Stress Management, and Insurance Basics and Claims Process
- Created a resources and business assistance page with timely information and offers of recovery assistance from other businesses
- Conducted an outreach campaign, calling every member business to assess their status and needs
- Convened a Business Recovery & Sustainability task force, keeping the pulse of fulfilling the needs of business
- Held weekly meetings with representatives of the City of Santa Rosa Economic Development Department and Sonoma County Economic Development Board
- Collaborated with the North Coast Builders Exchange and other partners on the Rebuild Sonoma County Working Group, a coalition of leading representatives from construction, architecture, engineering, banking, insurance and business groups
- Fielded dozens of media requests related to the North Bay wildfires
- Attended dozens of rebuild and recovery meetings to represent business interests and determine all possible resources available to the business community
- Provided business resources and information from FEMA, EDD, SBA, the City of Santa Rosa and the County of Sonoma on the Chamber website, through email communication and social media postings
- Held a Gift Card Drive at the October Mixer with Chamber and YPN members, raising $2,332.15, which was donated to the North Bay Fire Relief Fund
- Collaborated with SMART on distributing 5,000 Business Relief Passes to help promote local shopping
- Continued to pursue downtown vitality including the creation and distribution of a Downtown Holiday Passport to promote shopping at local downtown businesses this holiday season
- Provided planning and logistics for a number of community events including A Hero’s Halloween, Sonoma Strong Community Gathering and Winter Lights Downtown Tree Lighting
- In collaboration with the City and County, began to hold meetings with our area’s largest employers to discuss the fire’s impact on workforce
- Performed behind the scenes work to create a district elections map that will be presented to the City Council
- Maintained Leadership Santa Rosa program dates that included Government & Politics Day and Business & Economy Day
Visit Santa Rosa working for tourism, hospitality and business
- Sent an early press release dispelling false rumors and myths, which was picked up by numerous outlets
- Sent a second press release in November with the opening of Schulz Museum, Safari West and Luther Burbank Center again being picked up by multiple outlets
- Called our hospitality members to assess their needs and made adjustments to our messaging based upon the calls
- Worked with the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber to message our partners that Visit Santa Rosa is open and working for them
- Updated our social media channels on a regular basis with correct information and an open for business message
- Encouraged visitors who had future reservations to check with their lodging provider to see if they were affected before cancelling their vacation plans
- Created special social media messages around our restaurants, wineries and breweries that were unaffected, open for business and wanted us to encourage visitors to their establishment
- Wrote a letter to the attendees of the Wine Tourism and Marketing Conference asking them not to cancel their event in Santa Rosa, and was invited to speak on a panel about crisis management and our “open for business” message
- Spoke at the Visit California Forum on wine country’s response and planned visitor messaging; Visit California has a planned spend of 2 million dollars sharing that all of wine country is open for business
- Took over Visit California’s Instagram account to share Santa Rosa
- Updated a digital marketing campaign aimed at the inspirational message for travel to Santa Rosa and planning for a vacation 90+ days out
- Posted and shared updated pictures (taken after October 16th) of attractions and business that are open to visitors
- Participated in IRONMAN Phoenix including staffing a booth where we encouraged athletes to come and participate in IRONMAN Santa Rosa 2018
- Conducted media and influencer’s calls and visits to Portland and Seattle the week after Thanksgiving to promote Santa Rosa and Sonoma County
- Regularly updated the Visit Santa Rosa website with current information to visitors
- Created a jobs page on Visit Santa Rosa to assist employees who lost their jobs due to fire damage and to connect them with hospitality businesses looking for employees
- Worked with Santa Rosa hotels on their reopening, continuously updating their availability within the community
- Coordinated messaging with tourism partners to ensure both consistent messaging and magnification of the message; partners included Visit California, Sonoma County Tourism, Sonoma Valley Tourism and Visit Napa Valley
- Worked with our destination partners to establish best practices in crisis response to visitors; partners included Gatlinburg Tennessee who had fires, Houston with the hurricane and Baton Rouge Louisiana who had to overcome flooding