Sean Phipps on Visit Chattanooga
Sean Phipps serves as Director of Marketing for Chattanooga Tourism Co., leading storytelling, media relations, and strategic communications that elevate Chattanooga’s national profile and drive tourism-driven economic impact.
About Sean Phipps
Sean Phipps is the Director of Marketing at Chattanooga Tourism Co., where he leads the charge in telling Chattanooga’s story to the world. With a background in journalism and a deep-rooted passion for his hometown, Sean is shaping how both visitors and residents experience one of America’s most dynamic river cities.
At the helm of the organization’s storytelling, public relations, and media strategy, Sean plays a pivotal role in positioning Chattanooga on the national stage. From showcasing the city’s vibrant food scene to promoting world-class events like Ironman races and the BlueCross Bowl, his work directly supports Chattanooga Tourism Co.'s mission to drive tourism as a force for economic growth and community well-being.
Under Sean’s leadership, the team promotes more than 230 events annually, drawing over 11 million visitors and generating nearly $2 billion in visitor spending each year. Tourism supports over 30,000 local jobs and contributes more than $179 million in state and local tax revenue—helping save each Hamilton County household an average of $1,205.
Sean is a driving force behind Chattanooga’s momentum as a National Park City—the first in the U.S.—and a thought partner in the city’s destination development strategy, which includes current studies on infrastructure, visitor experience, and event capacity. His efforts have helped secure major wins, like acquiring the International Bluegrass Music Association Festival, bringing the beloved genre “back home” to Tennessee in 2025.
Whether highlighting the city’s culinary rise—now under consideration for the Michelin Guide—or amplifying its innovative ecosystem powered by EPB’s 25-gig internet, Sean ensures Chattanooga’s unique blend of culture, nature, and progress shines through in every campaign.
Resources
Visit Chattanooga
The First U.S National Park City
Tourism Growth
Bluegrass Music Festival 2025
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Spencer: Sean Phipps, director of Communications for the Chattanooga Tourism Co.
Spencer: Welcome to Signature Require.
Sean: Hey, it's great to be here. I'm so excited.
Spencer: We are in an incredible view. So anybody that is listening to us, you need to check out the view here. Where [00:01:00] are we seated right
Sean: now? So we are at the Hunter Museum of American Art. We are in the modern building, which was created in 2006, which was attached to the original Hunter Museum, which is from 1906.
Sean: So there's kind of this like a hundred year gap, and there's a little outcropping right here. Outcropping is not a great word, but we're looking at the Tennessee River and the Walnut Street Bridge behind us that is underneath construction currently and closed, but it's still pretty to look at. Right?
Carli: Sure is.
Spencer: I like your bio. So the director of communications where you lead pr, storytelling, and media strategy to help shape how the city is seen. Tell us a story, Sean, like, what's the story of Chattanooga? You're a storyteller. That's amazing.
Sean: I love telling the story of Chattanooga. How far do you wanna go back?
Sean: You know, it began with a single tree. No I was
Carli: gonna say real size. Here's real size story. Let's story of, let's focus
Sean: on Chattanooga just as a destination for visitors, because I think that's really interesting story because we have always been kind of geographically, [00:02:00] lucky.
We are
Sean: within two hours of several major cities, Nashville, Atlanta, Knoxville.
Sean: And because of that, even prior to the, you know, the Civil War, we were a place where people. Gathered and just a natural gathering point. You've got the mountains and the river here. It just seemed like there was always going to be a city here, and I'm so glad that it was Chattanooga, right, because we've really taken our our geographical benefits and exploded it and brought in so many different great opportunities.
Spencer: I'm born and raised here in Tennessee I feel like when people think about Tennessee, they think about Music city or they think about different aspects of the state, but how do you kind of couch Chattanooga correctly without trying to draw from a city that's not your own.
Sean: Yeah. Any good tourism marketer will tell you that's what you do.
Sean: Right. You find the differentiators without, you know, taking any visitation away from the other cities. You build upon it. So we are in support of Tennessee. I want more people to visit [00:03:00] Tennessee because the more people that visit Tennessee, the more people will visit Chattanooga. But Chattanooga has some key.
Sean: Differences from those other cities. You know, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga is a, an oasis of nature. We are a city where. Almost everywhere you look, there's something interesting and a lot of it is natural. 10 minutes from where we're sitting right now. I could be on a mountain over there in Stringers Ridge walking, hiking, and not feel like I'm within a city.
Sean: Yeah, and that's a unique differentiator, right? There's also the ability for us to have that family appeal. You know, families can go to Nashville, you can have fun in Nashville, you can go to New York, you can have fun as a family. Is it easy? No, it's easy in Chattanooga. The hotels are downtown. It's walkable.
Sean: There's plenty for kids to do. We're very family friendly, and so yeah, other cities have nature. Other cities have family activities. Other cities have great attractions, but ours are different and it's important to focus on. [00:04:00] Those
Carli: are other cities, national park, cities.
Sean: Oh man. Yeah, that's a big distinction.
Sean: Right? I was
Carli: gonna say, 'cause you're the first in the United States. In North America, right. North to get that distinction north.
Sean: Yeah. Right. And you know, we had, we'd first heard about that National Park City and it's accreditation program. It's not associated with the National Park system at all, but Adelaide and London are the other two.
Sean: And Chattanooga. And Chattanooga, Tennessee. And so what is it? So it's a, it's an accreditation. It's a, it's a. It's kind of a way that urban meets nature and more of a kind of mentality. I think that there were 23 check marks that we had to check off that, yeah, we're gonna do this, we're gonna plant more trees, we're gonna do this.
Sean: But really it's a, it's kind of a testament to our city and how it's been growing and how we've incorporated our natural landscape instead of getting rid of it and putting up buildings. Right.
Spencer: So the way that we like to do this is, I've got a couple questions about you.
Spencer: Okay. Okay. And then let's come out of that [00:05:00] so that way we can better understand your story for how you got here. Here we go. They're very
Carli: serious. Are you ready? I'm ready. Yeah, I'm ready. Set your shoulders back. It's time. Shoulder,
Sean: shoulders back. This is where we
Spencer: learn about the character of the man.
Spencer: Okay. This is
Sean: gonna be, this could get me in
Spencer: trouble. Okay. Alright. First question, what holiday does your family go all out for? Halloween. Oh,
Sean: okay. Tell us a little bit. So, so I have a 4-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl. We live in a neighborhood called signal Mountain. It's a it's, and it's so quaint and there are sidewalks.
Sean: It reminds me of the 1980s, and it's perfect for those kind of door to door Halloween parties. I say we do it for the kids, but really we do it for, so that the other families can get around and have. Like alcoholic beverages in the streets and just dress up like Scooby-Doo characters and go crazy for a night
Carli: Yeah.
Spencer: So what's your story? How did you arrive to Chattanooga?
Spencer: Where are you from originally? So, I'm from
Sean: the Tri-Cities. Okay. Kingsport, Johnson City, Bristol. My family I went to Dobbins, been in high school in Kingsport. And I've kinda lived [00:06:00] all over the Tri-Cities,
Sean: my family got this weird idea, they weren't the only ones but right in around 1995, they got an idea that the world was gonna end in 2000 when the Y2K. Thing was happening. I don't think
Carli: they were alone. Lots of people thought that they weren't alone. They weren't alone,
Sean: but they had enough income and enough boredom to where.
Sean: They were able to do something about it.
Carli: Such a dangerous combination. And that is
Sean: the da, right? That this is a true story. This is, no, why would I make this up? I'm not making this. Yeah. I'm not Coming on your podcast and making statements is phenomenal. That's your family right now. So, so they purchased a farm in a city called Limestone, Tennessee.
Sean: And it's limestone. It's not limestone. Sure. And we had 126 acre farm, and so I moved there when I was 15. We had 16 of our family that were on there, and we had a 10 year supply of food and ammo and cows and chickens and and then nothing happened. Right. So were you
Carli: happy nothing happened or were they kind of a little devastated?
Sean: I knew nothing was going to happen. Right. Okay. We were told that for years that nothing was going to happen. Like this was [00:07:00] a consistent kind of Okay. Message that was ignored by my family. No, this is real. You got
chickens. Yeah.
Sean: This is real. That's what happens when people don't understand how something works, right?
Sean: They get in their mind that it's, it just, this is it. So we, nothing happened. And then I, thankfully, a year later, 2001, I was able to go to college and I chose Chattanooga on a whim. 'cause a friend was coming down here and he's like, you wanna go to college in Chattanooga? And I said, yes, please get me off this farm.
Carli: Get me outta your house. And I came down
Sean: here and I love it and never left.
Spencer: How does your family reflect? I mean, Y2K, it that's formidable in my memory too, because I had that uncle, I had that uncle, we all had that uncle that also was a real Y2K believer, but the level of intensity from your family to really uproot and move and that, that is incredible.
Spencer: What was their reflection on the other side of it when
Sean: you would think that there would be like, wow, we really messed that up, but it was almost like. Huh. Oh, well, I mean, it was just kinda one of those things [00:08:00] onto the next thing, right? Yeah. What's the next, what's the next thing we could plan ahead for crisis for?
Sean: And you know, it's, yeah, it was wild. That's so funny. That's, it was so much fun though, living on a farm. I mean, that, that's the memories I have are like a fishing on the farm pond and the Y2K thing was the impetus, but it was the, this great communal family thing growing up in all. How old were you in
Spencer: 2000?
Sean: So in 2000 I would've been 17, 17, 18. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So angry, teenager, anxious to get off knowing that. The lights were gonna stay on and that we wouldn't have to revert to a barter system, trade our chickens for, you know, bullets or whatever. I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking. There was no other plan, right?
Sean: There wasn't a game plan beyond let's have this farm
Carli: Eggs and bullets would be a really good liquor brand. Just eggs for bullets. Like we should for bullets. We TM that it's, we're gonna do something. I don't know if I can fit
Sean: the story on the back of the ball. Right. I'll help you.
Carli: I feel like you can.
Carli: So you end up in Chattanooga?
Sean: Here I am. Yeah.
Carli: Where did you go to school in chat? Newton. So I went to
Sean: [00:09:00] UTCI, I came down here and I didn't know anything about Chattanooga until I arrived here. And when I got here I was blown away. Wow. And it's only gotten better since, I mean, 2001, there wasn't anything for a, you know, 18-year-old to do.
Sean: Mm-hmm. But the campus was beautiful. I made some great friends. And I really dove into my passion at the time, which was media. I wanted to be on the radio more than. Anything. And I just happened to live across the street from the public radio station and so I waited until the morning guy didn't show up one too many times and said, I'll do it.
Sean: And so that's how, that was. My first radio job was right across the street from my dorm at W-U-T-C-F-M, and I would go on there and turn the satellite on every morning and give weather at the top of the hour. It was lovely.
Carli: That's amazing.
Spencer: Yeah. So how long have you held your current role? So how did you, so I've, where you are now I've
Sean: been the director of kind of marketing for tourism for about. Three [00:10:00] years prior to that, I was a marketing manager, and then prior to that I was a journalist for 10 years. Okay. So there was, there's the kind of that big transition for me about five years ago.
Sean: And now I'm I'm still learning every day. Marketing never ends and just this kind of like overwhelming, everything's changing with AI and there's just so much to, to learn and it's been great. What type of journalism did you do? I was the lifestyle editor for a website called nunga.com, which covered Chattanooga from the lifestyle part. So it's, it was one of those things where you are, you're covering the fun things, music, and. You know, events and things like that instead of politics and crime. Yeah. Which I would not be good. That's just not my personality.
Carli: It does sound like there is a lot of fun things coming to Chattanooga and that's your background.
Carli: You love to write about it. Now you're marketing it. What are some of the things that you're really proud of and excited about?
Sean: I've seen the city go from almost no [00:11:00] events to something to do literally every night. That's cool. The. Things I'm excited about. You know, we just announced, and this is a regional thing for the South that everybody should be excited about is that the Michelin guide, is taking a look at the American South for the first time.
Sean: And that means all of us are under the radar. Yeah. I think there's six states involved. Tennessee is one of them, and so we've been saying for a long time. I hate when people come into town and they say, oh, I'm surprised you have good food here in Chattanooga. That was really good. Yeah. We've known about that for a long time.
Sean: I'm finally glad that maybe we'll get the attention that we deserve on that national scale for the great food and it's a great opportunity.
Spencer: What would be a fantastic outcome out of the Michelin guide? What would you want to see? Like, does it, is it restaurants getting some Michelin stars? Is it.
Spencer: What's a great
Sean: outcome for you? So fortunately Michelin has several distinctions that aren't just a Michelin star. Yeah. And I've heard that, you know, even getting a Michelin star [00:12:00] can be great, but in the long term you're struggling to keep the Michelin star. And so it could be this kind of like, it's kinda like
winning the lottery and bad things happening here.
Good luck.
Sean: Here's $500,000 with no, you know, management of how to do that. I think the other distinction would be great. But this first year, and you know, it's a three year. Commitment, a three year kind of adventure for them to create the Michelin Guide South. I think that if we could get a, you know, a gourmet, a bib award or one of the green stars for sustainability, I think that fits more of our vibe than a Michelin star.
Sean: A Michelin star would be great, and there are definitely chefs in town that have achieved, have worked in those restaurants, have achieved that level. But I think more of Chattanooga's vibe is. Value for your money. With a gourmet bib, and then sustainability through, through farming, through locally sourced products from a Green Star.
Sean: So that's what I would hope for.
Spencer: I haven't seen the guide before. So is it where they go through and they just feature a [00:13:00] lot of restaurants throughout the south. It's, and it's kind of like a black book of restaurants according to this one. It's so
Sean: secret. Okay. It's like one of those things where.
Sean: We found out. Okay. The Michelin guide is taking a look at the American South. Oh, by the way, they've been here for two years. Oh gosh. Inspectors, you don't know who they are. And we're like, well, obviously it's the French guy with the mustards. They're like, no, it's not that guy. Follow the mustards. You'll never know who the Michelin inspector are.
Sean: It's not ego from
Carli: Rati where you just see him coming. Exactly. It's not his.
Sean: Yes. With the pointing note it, it's not. And so they've been here and that's what we told our restaurateurs like. Just keep, please keep doing what you're doing. Don't change anything drastically because of this, because more than likely they've been here and they'll be back.
Sean: To check in and see if it's the same, because consistency is important with Michelin. Right. They're not here just once. Yeah.
Sean: And if nothing happens the first year, that's fine too. Right. We've got two years. Yeah. And even if nothing happens, Michelin was here and they [00:14:00] were looking at us and that's important.
Sean: Right. It's a great. A story to tell. It's just kind of like a stamp of approval on our culinary scene. Yeah. Which that's the way we've been trying to position it. Yeah.
Spencer: What are some other things that our feature highlights in Chattanooga right
Sean: now? I'm so excited about September 16th through the 20th this year.
Sean: This is the first year of a three year commitment we have with the International Bluegrass Music Association returning home with their world of Bluegrass event. To Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wow. In Tennessee, for the first time in 12 years. It's previously been in Raleigh. And if you don't know about this is the single gathering for old time traditional bluegrass musicians in the world.
Sean: It's the International Bluegrass Music Association. It's gonna feature a festival. It'll feature an industry conference, and then it'll feature just what I'm excited about is the hotel jams. I mean, it's a week long of people just in a circle jamming. Wow.
Carli: I wanna come. That sounds fun. Come on [00:15:00] down.
Carli: Yeah, come on down.
Spencer: What's the festival gonna be like? Obviously it's gonna be music. I mean, what's more detail? So it starts
Sean: with the industry conference that first few days where it's more focused on like, you know, literally in a convention center where you're having the conference, the corporate side of bluegrass.
Sean: But then the festival will be in Miller Plaza. Miller Park, right in the center of downtown. We're gonna have several stages and we're gonna see, what the lineup looks like. But they usually bring some of the bigger names from bluegrass, like Billy Strings, Sierra Farrell. I mean, we're gonna get some big names in Chattanooga.
Carli: That's cool. I feel like we need to bring a lot of dollars. I feel like there will be a lot of like jars and you're just gonna walk around and be like, you're amazing.
Carli: You're amazing.
Sean: Yeah. Just people busking. I mean,
Carli: yeah
Sean: we're fortunate to have great busking places in Chattanooga too, so. Even until September, I have no idea. You may see some great bluegrass music just on the streets.
Carli: Just building momentum. Building momentum for this. But
Sean: no, it's a really big deal and it was a lot from the tourism company.
Sean: Part of it, it was a nine month effort to do the bidding to [00:16:00] learn about IBMA and that, that process, I think a lot of people don't know about that. It takes a long time for them to say, Hey, we're coming to Chattanooga. I think we beat up 32 other cities. For that distinction. So
Spencer: I mean, what is some of that process?
Spencer: Can you tell us some of the, like the bidding process, I mean, for. You know, how does the city get it? Do you have to pay money for it? Is it you're showing your credentials to be able to host it? Like what does that look like?
Sean: Yes. To all that. Right. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's usually a combination.
Sean: And so the way it works I'll give an example of something that happened a few years ago. We heard about an opportunity with the new Bron Ford Bronco release. Oh yeah. It was, that was a big deal. It was the Bronco Sport and it was really sporty and cool. And they were looking for a location. To film an extended commercial, so like a 92nd, two minute long kind of vignette commercial about the experience of the Bronco.
Sean: But they were also partnering with JBL and Harmon. To show the device, right? Like the [00:17:00] music device that was in there. So there was all these wheels and they were looking for a location and we were considered, and they came to us and they said, okay. You know, do you have an investment you can make?
Sean: 'cause it was $25,000 for that investment. But what we got is the ability to be an editorial player for the commercial. So we were able to help pick locations. Okay. We had them shoot on the riverfront out at Harrison Bay. Really show off the city in this Ford Bronco Sport commercial. And my favorite thing about it is that we got to actually have VO who is a local musician, be the soundtrack.
Sean: For this national Ford spot, which is like a double win. And so those kind of opportunities, you know, working from the idea to literally on the ground with the film crew saying, Hey, this doesn't work, this works. I was in a shot, I mean, I was a background actor. It's just, it goes, those little opportunities spring up and so you have to keep, you have to keep some funding available in our budget for those [00:18:00] opportunities because you never know when they're going to happen and when they do, you have to be able to.
Sean: Kick open that door and say, let's do it. And so that's one of the things that we always make sure that we have the ability to do, is to be flexible and say, yeah, let's do that. We didn't know Michelin was coming. We're like, okay, cool. Let's do that now. And that's just how that, those kind of opportunities work.
Spencer: Yeah. What has been over time for Chattanooga, some of the big moments that have changed the trajectory of the city? Yeah, because I feel like. There's been some times where Chattanooga could have gone either way. Sure. And I just wonder, as you think back, what made it into the city that it is? 'cause you're right to say it has all the building blocks, it has the scenery, the location, but it wasn't always enough.
Spencer: So what was it that changed Chattanooga's trajectory?
Sean: Chattanooga has gone through these kind of monumental up and down changes. Yeah. And I'll just touch on a few.
Sean: You know, we had let's go back to the Civil War, right? [00:19:00] So put reconstruction, right? So after the Civil War, the South was just devastated. We had I think there was a newspaper article that said we didn't have any trees in the downtown footprint, no trees. At all. It had all been cut down to use for supplies.
Sean: Just war torn. Yeah. Yeah. Completely war torn and so. From that moment to you look at 1928. So from that year, those years building up to it, 1928 was when Ruby Falls opened. Okay. 1932 was when Rock City opened Northern Tourism coming back because they had been here during the Civil War. They wanted to come back and see what the south was like.
Sean: Because they remember it fondly. Right. It wasn't just war. They were here and they were looking and so. Setting Chattanooga up very early on as a tourism destination. From those very early legacy attractions was huge for us. And it made us a tourism city. A place that people wanted to visit, and a place that people would remember because of Rock City, Ruby [00:20:00] Falls, the incline railway, things like that.
Sean: And so you move forward and Chattanooga was an industry city. Chattanooga was dirty. The famous line is the Walter Cronkite story that he came on and he did his thing with America's dirtiest city, Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is 1969, and that's, you know, you never wanna hear that on the news. Yeah.
Sean: That's the, that's kind of a down point, right? Suboptimal for tourism. It's rock bottom. Yeah. Right. The dirtiest city in America. And so the credit goes to the city leaders who in the seventies and into the 1980s. They took a look and they said, we don't wanna live in the dirtiest city in America.
Sean: And investors got together and they created a plan to revitalize the city, and the aquarium was a part of that opening in 1992, and that really kind of brought people back downtown. We had reverse sprawl in the 1970s and eighties. Nobody was downtown. The bridge you see behind us was completely [00:21:00] dilapidated.
Sean: Thought they thought about tearing it down. It was in such a rough case. I mean, Chattanooga was a rough place. And then you had people who said, we don't wanna live in a place like that. And they revitalized it. And there was a whole plan for the aquarium, for the riverfront. And that really jumpstarted a return to Chattanooga's glory, I think.
Sean: And now in 2024 we're a national Park city.
Sean: So the headline is we've gone from the dirtiest city in America to North America's first National Park City, and I think that's pretty cool.
Carli: Well, and for a city that has so much art, right? You have all these museums, you have art, you have great food, obviously a lot of wildlife and outdoors activities,
Sean: a lot of bears and No, I'm just kidding.
Sean: Lot of don't.
Carli: No, thank you.
Sean: Big too. You also,
Carli: there's a lot of tech infrastructure that's been going into Chattanooga that I think people would be surprised with all of these other things going on. You have this infrastructure going in that makes you really attractive [00:22:00] to large companies coming in. Yeah.
Carli: Talk a little bit about that. Well, I
Sean: mean, you know, we're, it goes back to the Civil War too, logistics, right? Cracker Line, like trains. Yep. I mean, it's moving things around. And Chattanooga's done that well for a long time, and they continue to do it from a tourism perspective, that technology is a huge win for us.
Sean: We have some of the fastest internet. In North America, and we were the first to have gigabit up and down, the first to have 10, the first to have 25 gigabits up and down. Now I'm just a tourism marketer. I have no idea what you do with 25 gigs up and down, but I don't need to. Right? Sure. It's an attractor.
Sean: Right? Somebody out there is gonna figure out how to use our quantum network, how to use our incredibly fast internet speeds and. They're gonna do something amazing. I'm excited for the family who comes into town and they land in the airport and they have full wifi. They have continued full wifi all the way through [00:23:00] downtown.
Sean: Like we have this, it's easy. You know, it's easy to get on the internet and that's you take that for granted when you live here and then you go somewhere else where the internet isn't great and you're like, what is going on?
Carli: What have I done with my life? Why is this so
Sean: slow? And so I think Chattanoogans realize that they have great internet, but.
Sean: The, yeah, the technology is incredible here. We're a startup hub. We have been for a long time. Because of that reputation. People want to move here and they wanna start their businesses and they wanna learn, they wanna be mentored by the people who had done it before them. And so we see, you know, just random texts.
Sean: Gary Vaynerchuk is a good example. He came here and saw Chattanooga and said, okay, let's do VaynerMedia here. And he did. And so you see a lot of people looking at Chattanooga in a completely different way. It's not just the Chattanooga Choocho anymore. It's this place. This place is going somewhere.
Sean: Yeah. What are maybe
Carli: the choo's cool, though? Choo is cool. Yeah.
Sean: And to that point, to the choo we have a legacy name recognition internationally. Yeah. Which not a lot of [00:24:00] cities. Do. You can go to Austria, you can go to France, you can go and you can see Chattanooga as a restaurant, and you're like, okay, cool.
Sean: I have photos of me in Vienna at like the Chattanooga rib place or something and it's because of that movie, right? The Sun Valley Serenade in 1941. With that whole segment from the Glen Miller Orchestra singing about, pardon me boys, is that the Chattanooga Choo, and they do this whole dance.
Sean: And that movie was so popular that it instantly ingrained Chattanooga, which is a weird word, right. Chattanooga into people. It's kind a fun word if you
Carli: think about it. It's a fun word. Yeah. It's a fun name to say. It's fun.
Sean: But you know, so you'll go places and even if they don't know anything about Chattanooga, they know Chattanooga.
Spencer: What are some of the, you're usually. Explaining the very best parts of Chattanooga, the reasons to come. What are some of the friction points for the city? It's grown a lot. There's a lot that. I think about, you know, the airport and your location and how you get here. Like from a tourism [00:25:00] perspective or from a population, what are some of the friction points that the city's navigating around?
Sean: I think growth is one. I mean, I think it's easy to say that you want to grow sustainably, right? But what does that mean, right? How do you actually do that when more people from Texas and Los Angeles and New York, they wanna move here? Because it's a great place to live, and it's a great place to raise a family.
Sean: And so figuring out how do we keep up with the infrastructure, I think is a, is key. Without doing damage from a tourism angle like I am, my job is to have people have that first date with the city, right? If they choose to move here, you know, I don't love to take credit for that. I mean, you know, you kind of do because you will.
Sean: Yeah. If you have to. It was a great first date, right. But no, my, you know, my job is that first state with the city, and so making sure that visitors have a good time when they're here is really important to me.
Spencer: One of the things that I like to ask people in your role is if you had a magic [00:26:00] wand and you could add something to the city that would be a meaningful attractor.
Spencer: I wonder what that would be, because I think through, and you think about. Major athletic wins, like suspending disbelief a little bit for a moment of whether Chattanooga itself could support something. But if you thought like, boy, if we had an international flight direct to London, like what is now running outta Nashville?
Spencer: Or if we had the major league baseball team that was to come here, like what would be a. You know, 10, 20 year wave, the magic wand win that you would say, oh my gosh, if I had this would be incredible. I've
Sean: got two. Okay. Right. Okay. So the first one we commissioned a study and so a lot of things we do at Chattanooga Tourism and Company is we commission studies and we say, here's the recommendation.
Sean: Whether or not that happens, that's great. But one of the studies we did was a music venues study. Okay. Yeah. And we found that one of the things that Chattanooga is lacking is kind [00:27:00] of a mid-sized venue for, you know, 6,000 people to be able to watch a show your amphitheater. Right. We don't have an amphitheater.
Sean: Huntsville has amphitheaters. Atlanta has amphitheaters. Nashville has amphitheaters. We need a place for the a certain type of act to come and perform.
Spencer: Okay. Yeah. The
Sean: recommendation was a 3000 seat, 3000 lawn capacity, so around 6,000. And I hope that happens. There's been a lot of talk about where that should go, and that's not for me to decide.
Sean: I just want an amphitheater. I think that would be. Incredible. And then the other thing I'll say is going back to your sports. We have great sports teams in Chattanooga. We have a great minor league team, the Chattanooga lookouts. We have the UTC mocks who just won the NIT Goms. But we don't have a professional sports team other than a couple of.
Sean: Soccer teams that are, that, that play at the professional level. And so one thing that I would love, just personally, this is just me and it's not Monster Trucks. It's not a monster truck. [00:28:00] Oh, I wish it was Monster Jam. It's it's ice hockey.
Carli: Oh yes,
Sean: we are. We are. I was a season ticket holder for the Knoxville Ice Bears for a long time.
Sean: And I love ice hockey. We have no ice hockey. The most we get is a roller. It's kind of Derby rink over here at the chat skate park. And during the winter we get a pop-up ice on the landing. Skate park. That's it. We do, we need a sheet of ice. We need a professional hockey team. And I would love to have a Southern Professional Hockey League team so we could be rivals with Knoxville, Huntsville, Birmingham, all of these great teams that are within reach.
Sean: And I think it could happen. I mean, I've done a lot of like research. I think that there's enough momentum. It's just, you know. It's money and a building.
Carli: I'm with you. I love hockey.
Sean: I love hockey too, I think. I think that would really. It'd be incredible to have something like that in Chattanooga.
Spencer: Similarly, when you think about budget for you.
Sean: Yeah.
Spencer: I like personal budget. Well, there's none. [00:29:00] I have two kids.
Sean: All my money goes to them.
Spencer: Like when you think about Chattanooga in general, there's all sorts of ways that you sometimes see cities spend money that. Advertise for tourism. Sure. And usually the advertisements that I see, they suck not from Chattanooga, but from other cities that it's like, it's a billboard somewhere.
Spencer: Totally get it. You know what I'm talking about. Totally get it. So how do you. Advertise tourism because as a business owner, when we're advertising our product, usually we're able to really create, hopefully, a compelling value proposition. Our product is clear and it's a yes or no purchasing decision, but for advertising tourism, that seems like so tough to nail, so.
Spencer: A do you get a budget of any type to be able to do some of that advertisement and whether you do or you don't, how have you seen anything be effective or is there a way to do that? Those are great questions
Sean: [00:30:00] and I will largely agree with you that most tourism advertising sucks. Yeah. I've seen it and I'm like, Ooh, we can't do that.
Sean: You know, we can't do that and we try not to. Right. The reason people do that, the reason that is because others have done it and it seems to be valuable and working. And so with, in terms of a budget, you know, we are, the Chattanooga Tourism Company is an independent nonprofit. We are funded by, primarily by hotel and motel sales, tax revenue from the county.
Sean: So we don't serve just Chattanooga. We serve the entire Hamilton County region. And it's great because if we bring visitors in, if we do our job, then we get hotel motel sales tax to then turn around and advertise Chattanooga. And so that's that. So we work with a pretty healthy budget to do that.
Sean: I would say. We'd always love more, but, you know, you know, what we have is great. And I guess, you know, talking about specifically the campaigns that we work on. There's a statistic that someone has to see an advertisement from a location six times [00:31:00] before they get into that consideration phase.
Sean: Okay. And so a lot of what we do is just making people aware of Chattanooga. And there's only so many times you can go out and say Chattanooga. Yeah. You know, so you have to find like. A few other ways to do that. And one of the things we do is we rely on our great partners. So the Tennessee Aquarium is one uhhuh.
Sean: It helps me tremendously to be able to take the aquarium and what they're doing and show that to a national or regional audience, uhhuh as a driver for tourism. Without that would be it would be ridiculous for me to just say, Hey, look at the river, right? Yeah. Yeah.
So
Sean: using Rock City, Ruby Falls, all these great partners are culinary scene.
Sean: This Michelin thing. I mean, that's a driver for tourism. Yeah. All of a sudden you get in your idea, oh well we can go two hours, let's go check out the food in Chattanooga. Yeah. And that's something that we want to do. So we use our partners a lot, use just a varying degree of advertising.
Sean: But then we also have pillars in Chattanooga that are what we [00:32:00] stand on, what we think, again, going back to our differentiators, right? And from a sales, from a SaaS point, we don't do, we used to do features, but we don't do features anymore. We do benefits. So before we would say, we've got an aquarium, we've got the hunter, we've got the river, we've got, you know, we've feature that.
Sean: Yeah. Or listing all of our features. And then we realized just recently, like, let's try a different approach. Let's focus on the benefits. How do those things make you feel? So in Chattanooga, our pillars are like joy and warmth. Okay. And you know, trying to
Spencer: bring out the emotionality of what needs to come.
Sean: Right. And underneath those, all those things are available that you can do. But really getting to the heart of like, what would drive someone to. Come to Chattanooga and it's, they wanna seek an adventure
Sean: John, we wrap each podcast Okay. With a series of three questions. Oh God. They're short. Fill in the blank questions.
Spencer: Let's see that. All right. I'm excited. All right. Number one, the most exciting thing coming to Chattanooga is blank.
[00:33:00] Sean: The most exciting thing coming to Chattanooga is the International Bluegrass Music Association's world of Bluegrass. September 16th through the 20th, it's gonna change our city. That's gonna fill this place up. It's gonna fill the place up, and it's gonna fill the place up with music, which we desperately need.
Spencer: Okay, number two. One thing most people don't realize about tourism is blank.
Sean: One thing most people don't realize about tourism is how many jobs it supports. In Chattanooga, we have 30,000 tourism jobs. That's a big deal. Wow.
Sean: We have 10.6 million visitors. And this is 2023 numbers, but that's, yeah, that's big.
Carli: That's significant.
Spencer: Okay. Okay. Number three. What I love most about Chattanooga is blank.
Sean: What I love most about Chattanooga is the people we are. Aggressively welcoming to everyone.
Spencer: I really like that we've had that [00:34:00] experience. I'm from Tennessee and I've had the chance to see Chattanooga over a lot of years. I mean, I was a little kid on a field trip in the aquarium. Yeah, I've been up and down this river out here.
Spencer: It's amazing to see what this city has become and something that I see too is from the business world. Companies that really understand their identity and who they are and stick with it are often the ones that prevail. It's when you forget your identity that everything comes off the rails, and it seems as though Chattanooga, from an early stage, from the history you've given us, recognized that tourism.
Spencer: Is the lifeblood. It's not the only thing, but it is the lifeblood and it has consistently leaned into that with the types of significant events that you've talked about through the years. And [00:35:00] so it doesn't surprise me at all to hear from someone like you that is a great storyteller and clearly has an important responsibility for the stewardship of not only people's vacations, but a lot of jobs here.
Yeah.
Spencer: And that's why I think it's just fantastic to get to hear from you because you don't often get the front limelight. Yeah. You're giving everyone else the limelight around you. And so to give you a moment to know that people may never know your name here, but you are part of what make this city really special, and finding those little nuggets that people would've never otherwise found out about.
Spencer: It's a real treat to have you here and I'm glad that people get to see the guy behind the curtain a little bit that's making their trip or their job a reality.
Sean: Oh, thank you Spencer. Thank you, Carli. This has been fantastic. Hospitality is in our blood. It's in my blood, and and I really [00:36:00] appreciate that.
Sean: Thank you.
