Plan creates Prince William Office of Tourism, dissolves CVB

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY — An ongoing collaboration to sell the “Greater Prince William” region to travelers and businesses may soon be a thing of the past.

Discover Prince William and Manassas, the region’s convention and visitor’s bureau, promotes Prince William County and the city of Manassas as a place to day trip while visiting the nation’s capital, hold business meetings, and youth sports travel tournaments. The two localities work together under the “Discover” brand, which operates as a private 501(c)6 corporation funded, in part, with hotel taxes from each jurisdiction.

A new memo from Prince William County Executive Christopher Martino states the bureau should be dissolved, and its employees — all 10 of them, including executive director Ann Marie Maher — should become employees of the county government under the parks and recreation department at their current salaries.

“The CVB has done some excellent work over the past seven years, having earned their accreditation, garnered national awards for marketing, and contributing to marketing Prince William County,” states Martino in his memo. “However, as the audit points out, there are high levels of risk, which can be eliminated by merging the CVB into the county.”

An operational audit conducted by Prince William County Board of Supervisors found problems with how the CVB is governed, problems with its financing and accounting practices, how the organization does business, and how it maintains its revenue from taxes and non-tax revenue.

Right now, the CVB is governed by a board of directors who are appointed by elected leaders in Prince Willam County, as well as county and city staff members. That board on Tuesday voted 7-4 to approve Martino’s request for Maher to come up with a plan to dissolve the non-profit and merge it with the county by Oct. 1, 2017. If the Board of Supervisors approves, it will be known as the Office of Tourism in Prince William County.

“Dissolving the inter-jurisdictional agreement with Manassas eliminates the conflict inherent in promoting the city in direct competition with county tourism efforts,” states Martino.

That means Manassas would take on the full-time responsibility of promoting itself.

From Manassas Economic Development Director Patrick Small:

The City of Manassas values all the partnerships it maintains with Prince William County and the CVB has historically been an example of our willingness to work together. It is unfortunate that this partnership is coming to an end but we look forward to finding ways we can continue to work together to promote tourism on a regional basis. Because of the short time period the City has been given to prepare for this transition, the $65,000 annual contribution we make to Discover Prince William & Manassas was budgeted and has not yet been reallocated.

The responsibility for promoting tourism in Manassas has resided with the Department of Economic Development for the past three years. The Department was created, in part, to strengthen this work. Manassas has been very successful in promoting itself and will continue to do so through its existing destination marketing organization (DMO), Historic Manassas Inc. as well as through the work done by Economic Development.

Small and Prince William County spokesman Jason Grant are members of the Discover Prince William Board of Directors. As Maher creates a plan to dissolve the non-profit and bring tourism efforts under the county government, that’s when those partnerships to work with the city of Manassas can be identified, said Grant.

Discover Prince William and Manassas largely operated on the $1.2 million it received from Prince William County. The move would also mean more efficient operations, as a newly created Office of Tourism could tap other county government departments for help for such things are legal services and media production.

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors is expected to hear the plan on August 1.