192: Matt Pivarnik • Making the DMO-Chamber Combo Work

Speaker A: This is DMOU Destination Marketing Organization University, the DMO M Sectors Podcast and I'm

Speaker B: your host Bill Geist.

Speaker A: DMOU is where you hear the best and the brightest in the destination marketing space. Sharing innovative and compelling stories inspire you to take your destination and organization to the next level. The format for DMOU is elegantly simple. It's three questions and a bonus round and today's episode is sponsored by our friends at CFO By Design, a firm focused on developing DMO excellence. And that means the numbers are just the beginning. As a full service executive support firm, Julie Hart and her team provide the foundation and accountability needed to build strongly aligned DMOs and successful leaders. Don't take it from me. Go to cfobydesigntx.com and click on clients for a sample of the rave reviews for one of the few firms out there that lives up to the phrase Rockstar at CFO By Design. And now it's on to our show. Matt Pavarnik is the Chief Executive Officer of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and Visit Myrtle beach, which includes Partnership Grand Strand Leadership, Grand Strand Keep Myrtle Beach Beautif, Grand Strand Young Professionals, the Myrtle Beach Regional Sports alliance, and several other community, destination and economic development organizations. Matt joined the Myrtle beach team in May of 2025 and brought his passion for transforming communities through destination, community and economic development. Matt has extensive experience with various chambers and has served in several high level positions throughout his career. During his tenure, Matt has served as Chair of the Chamber of Commerce Executives of Kansas, Chair, Chamber Institute for Organizational Management's National Board of Trustees, Chair of the Board of regents for the U.S. chamber's Institute for Organizational Management at the University of Arizona, Chair of the Board

Speaker B: for Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce Executives, Commissioner

Speaker A: for the Certified Chamber Executive Program, and Chair for the Kansas Department of Commerce's

Speaker B: Team Kansas, of which he was appointed by the Governor. He was recently elected to the Carolinas association of of Chamber of Commerce Executives.

Speaker A: He is currently a Certified Chamber Executive, serves on the American Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and is a member

Speaker B: of the US Chambers Committee of 100. Matt Favarmik, my friend, welcome to DMOU.

Speaker C: It's great to be with you, Bill. I was doing some reading this morning and I came across the word behemoth. And I was thinking that Bill is a titan in the, uh, destination marketing, destination development and stewardship industry. Uh, and I also thought about you when I read that term behemoth. So it's great to be with you today.

Speaker B: I don't think I'VE ever been called a behemoth, but I'll take that.

Speaker C: Thank you. It's a good thing. It's a good thing.

Speaker A: Well, thank you.

Speaker B: And Matt, uh, you have had one of the most interesting and unusual turns in the chamber economic development and destination marketing ecosystem of pretty much anybody I can think of. We first met 15 years ago when you were the EVP and COO of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. Now at the your CEO was the irascible Mike Neal. And your DMO lead was a past guest on this podcast, Ray Hoyt. It was a cauldron of contradiction, and yet Tulsa thrived. Then you moved on to head up the Topeka Partnership, which was also a chamber DMO combo. But it was a little different than the Tulsa Model M. It was an innovative model under your tutelage that got a lot of practitioners around the country

Speaker A: to stand up and notice.

Speaker B: The Topeka Partnership. Everybody was talking about it. People that mostly marveled at what you had achieved, but were unsure of how to replicate the model in their community. So with your first question, tell me what you learned in Tulsa that helped you create the sensationally successful Topeka model.

Speaker C: Sure. Well, let me just start. You mentioned two guys, Mike Neal and Ray Hoyt. And first of all, you know, when I started in Tulsa, I got to work, uh, with another titan in the industry, Suzanne Stewart. Uh, but I will tell you, working with Mike Neal and Ray Hoyt, those are two of the most energetic, smartest guys that you can possibly work with. And the thing is their level of intensity that just comes from the level of care for their market and their community and the organizations that they were running. So being able to be in rooms with them was pretty cool to go on. To try to answer your question is I really think that, like the Topekas of the world and the Spartanburg, South Carolinas of the world, that get so much credit for bringing organizations that were disparate together. I really like to look at some of these organizations out there, like in Tulsa and like in Oklahoma City and places like that. We where they resisted the urge in the 80s to ever break up in the first place. So really, when I got to Topeka, the first thing that Brad Otting did is he reached out and said, look, dude, let's work together. And that was really cool. He's like, let's work together. I think we should can share some resources. And what I realized, it didn't take me long to realize that when chambers and eco devo organizations and destination marketing organizations, when they're Separate, it just makes it harder to collaborate. So what I realized is I didn't know what I had in Tulsa until I didn't have it anymore. And then we really started working on community strategy. And it was very natural. I give Brett Otting and several leaders in that community a lot of the credit for bringing everybody together under the Greater Topeka Partnership.

Speaker A: You know, it's interesting that you say

Speaker B: that, and I think part of the issue tends to be focused on funding.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I remember when I entered, uh, Madison and the game was already in play, that we were going to have to move, uh, from our offices on the outer ring of the Capitol Square. And the Chamber of Commerce said, hey, we uh, have space and wouldn't it make sense for you to move in with us? And the two titans in Madison that had created the DMO like 10 years, 15 years prior took me to lunch within the first couple of weeks when I was in town and made it very clear that this was not going to happen, that you are not going to hang out with these guys. You are not going to move in with these guys. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait. We're just shacking up, right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Boards, bylaws and budgets will not touch. And ultimately it worked. We had the relationship that I think people aspired to without the fear that. And you know, uh, all due deference to chambers, but chambers do tend to kind of pick up part of the room tax and move it over into their own thing. And I think that's always been the fear of DMOs is that the room tax gets diverted into non tourism related things. Tell me how it worked for you in Topeka, because I know that was always a challenge in Tulsa. That was always a fear. In the, in the days that we did work in Tulsa, we were hearing from the CVB board that they felt that resources were being misaligned. How did you make it work in Topeka?

Speaker C: So one of the things that, uh, and I really like to talk about this model is collaboration, but fences, and especially fences around funding. You know, especially in Topeka. We were also managing a, uh, significant economic development budget. So we had economic development, we had lodging tax, we had membership dollars, we had sponsorships, we had investors. And so one of the things that we did there is we actually took a little from, uh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and studied the Allegheny Conference. And what we ended up there is that the destination marketing organization, Visit Topeka was a standalone 501C6. The Chamber of Commerce was a standalone 501C6. The economic development organization Go to PICA was a standalone 501C6, the downtown organization, C6. So. And they all had their own boards, and they all had their own budgets. Now, they also had presidents of their organization. So Brett Otting was clearly the president of Visit Topeka. Molly Howey was clearly the president of Go Topeka. And so we created C6S where we picked up the economies of scale. And the collaboration is that we were able to share things like the finance team and the marketing team. We were able to have a research person and an economist that none of us could have afforded on our own. And we were able to share a boardroom and things like that. So I love the fact that we created those C sixes. And the thing is, is there was this organization called the Greater Topeka Partnership, which is a C6, but it didn't have its thumb on any of those entities. Those entities got to make their decisions and their strategic decisions without the oversight of a parent board. And I really am a big fan of that model, and I think that's the model that works.

Speaker B: So did the boards collaborate much, or was this really you, Brett, and others that just saw the opportunity to work together? I mean, uh, yeah, I love the fact that you were all like, we were here in Madison. We were all independent, but we were

Speaker A: all living in the same space.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, that living in the same space is cool. So, you know, Brett or Sean Dixon, they could get up and walk down the hall and go talk to their eco devo or their chamber person. Or, quite frankly, Sean Dixon could have the chamber person to say, hey, I need you to go to the Capitol and advocate for me on this project. And at that point in time, they would take their chamber, uh, name tag off, put their DMO name tag on, and go lobby. We collaborated, but our boards also collaborated. So me as the CEO of this holding company, this thing called the Greater Topeka Partnership, my board was actually called the Chairs Council. So the chair and chair elect of each of those organizations, uh, they were my board. That's who I reported to.

Speaker B: Okay?

Speaker C: And my board met quarterly. Now, make no bones about it. When we had a Visit Topeka board meeting, I did not sit by the chair. I was in the audience, if I could make it. But that was really, uh, either Sean Dixon or Brad Otting and their leadership running those meetings. The same goes for the rest of them. But I was accountable to that group. And if there was ever a dispute, and I can only remember maybe one or two disputes, but if there was Ever a dispute, they could have that dialogue at the chairs council meeting, which were quarterly. And that was my board. That's who I worked for.

Speaker B: Very cool. So fast forward to last spring. You're selected to lead the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, which also has a DMO as a division of the mothership. So that's a little different because it wasn't, uh, during the time I used to work with the DMO, it wasn't a separate 501C. It was a relationship that since Brad Dean's time there has been effective, but also caused the chamber to take a number of arrows as Joe and Jill public think the Chamber is receiving tens of millions of dollars in sales tax revenue when it's really the dmo. I think many of we onlookers were surprised at how quickly you moved to reorganize the enterprise. So share with us how that all played out.

Speaker C: Sure. Well, I will say this one is, don't give me too much credit. Give our elected officials and our community leaders and our board members the credit here. Uh, one as I think that they were admiring what, uh, Spartanburg, uh, South Carolina had done and bringing some of these entities together. And I think that they liked what we had in uh, Topeka as well. And uh, so now, now I'm actually the CEO of an organization that's called the Greater Myrtle Beach Collaborative. As a matter of fact, there's going to be a new sign going out on our, you know, on our building. And it's going to have the Collaborative, it's going to have Visit Myrtle beach, it's going to have the Chamber Partnership Grand Strand. But the Collaborative is now the Yum Brands, the holding company of economic development and community development organizations. And uh, when I got here, Stuart Butler was the chief marketing officer. Stuart is now the president of Visit Myrtle beach, and Jimmy Gray is the president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber. And so we have actually bifurcated, created their boards and are in the process of learning how to live under this new structure. And so like, Stuart just went from being a hotshot chief marketing officer to all of a sudden destination development, destination stewardship. He's literally a C level executive overseeing a, uh, huge dmo. And we're very, very careful about our compliance with dollars. So we have very strict compliance. We actually have compliance people here. No leakage dollars. I mean we make sure that we stay within the verticals of what funding is for.

Speaker A: And that's always been an issue since

Speaker B: the 1 penny sales tax was passed what, 12, 13, 15 years ago was it was really specific what that penny sales tax could do. And at the time, uh, you know, from just pure room tax, I think you guys, your budget was, I don't know, six, seven, $8 million, uh, for the DMO. And now, I mean, what are you, 50?

Speaker C: Uh, yes.

Speaker B: Yeah, 50. But that's the issue, right, Is the confusion with Joe and Jill public on how does the Chamber of Commerce get all this money when we really need it for police and fire and first responders and whatever. But the argument is, is I don't think anybody would argue that, that the DMO should be funded at that level.

Speaker A: But it was just.

Speaker B: It was semantics. At least in my mind, as I watched the debate go on during the renegotiation for the one penny extension was, uh, they just couldn't get their head around the fact that here's this group of guys in suits who get $50 million in sales tax, and what are they doing with it? They couldn't connect the dots, that it wasn't the Chamber, it was the DMO that was the recipient of those funds.

Speaker C: One of the things that drove me crazy when I first got here is when people said that the Chamber gets all of these dollars. I'm like, the Chamber gets zero of those dollars. Actually, zero. As a matter of fact, we don't use a public penny to even pay for our DMO staff here. Right. Our DMO staff is actually privately funded. So Stuart Butler and Diane and Bob Harris and all of our people, they're actually funded by private dollars. We are actually regulated by the state and really, you know, by our. Our regional municipalities and county that we invest all of those dollars into marketing the destination. And so, again, we keep a compliance person here on staff to watch us like a hawk because, uh, we want accountability and we want transparency. But now what is we have visit Myrtle Beach. We have that brand. Stuart is the president of that organization. And Stuart and his board actually manage that budget.

Speaker B: So here's the question, and I mean, I guess I know the answer, but I want to make sure that our listeners get the answer as well. Um, and I remember that, Brett, when you were in Topeka, telling me why the partnership worked so well, and Stuart has said the same thing to me over the past few months about Myrtle Beach. What is your role as the CEO of the mothership when it comes to marketing, sales, destination development? Where are you in all of that?

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked that question. Where I am is I spend my time. When Stuart needs me to do something, I do it. So I spend a lot of my time now. One is I'm looking at the. The entire organization. I'm looking at kind of the. The staffing and take it. I work with a lot of boring stuff like administration and benefits and things like that. But at the same time, I spend my week, Stuart, saying, matt, I need you to do this for me. I need you to go to Columbia, and here's why. I need you to go to D.C. and here's why. Or I need you to go with me to this meeting. Or can you make these phone calls? I spend a significant amount of time being a shared service, and I'm shared from those different entities. So I'm really. I'm kind of like the boardroom. The boardroom is an asset that all of the entities can use. Me as the CEO of the Greater Myrtle Beach Collaborative, I'm an asset that is ready to jump in and help any of those executive leaders when they need me.

Speaker B: Very cool. All right, third question. You're a year in.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: How to balance resident sentiment with the sensational success of what you and Stuart have developed. So what's next? Because the Myrtle Beach Grand Strand ecosystem, um, is. It's magic. It's one of my favorite destinations in America. And yet watching the rancor that went down with the reauthorization of the 1 penny sales tax a few years ago, you just scratch your head and say, really? How do you people not understand how this works? And yet there was just an awful lot of misinformation that was out there. I remember one letter to the editor that was just railing about the fact that this is all about benefiting the fat cats because they're getting that guy over there in a $500,000 house, is getting $80,000 tax rebate, and I only got $2,000. Well, yeah, you live in a shithole. I mean, huh? How do you not understand how this all works? And yet people don't. And so how do you, as you move forward with this complete enterprise that is economic development, it is chamber of

Speaker A: commerce, it is destination marketing, etc.

Speaker B: How do you bring the community together to understand how this benefits them?

Speaker C: Well, you talk a little bit about what, what's next. Right now I will say what's next for us is us really examining our product as a destination. And you're right, Bill is extremely complex. Right. There are a lot of ways that you can sleep in Myrtle beach, and I'm not talking about in your car either. I'm talking about campgrounds and short term rentals and Timeshares and branded hotels and independent and condo tails. I mean, it is dreamily complex and it also is, it's actually very affordable to have a really cool trip here, a vacation here, and at the same time, it's also very affordable to live here. So the what's next part, we need to position ourselves for the future to continue to invest in our product. Right. To make sure that our product is staying up with what the demands are of, uh, tourists and people that want to visit here. And we need to be able to weather a really strong K shaped economy as well. So right now, you know, what we, what we are finding is gas prices are spiking, people are freaked out a little bit about the economy. Our more affluent travelers are still coming, they're still spending money and they're still spending a lot on ADR and RevPAR in their hotels. But our traveler that is used to coming here is maybe pulling back just a little bit, maybe not going to as many restaurants, you know, having a lunch in as opposed to that. So I think really looking at our product is extremely important. Here's the other thing that has changed over time. It wasn't that long ago that a penny sales tax in Horry county, which is where Myrtle beach is, the brand is Myrtle beach, but we're at our MSA is Horry County. It wasn't that long ago that a penny sales tax that 80% of that would be paid for by tourists. Here's the thing that happened. All of the people came here to visit, they fell in love with it. They said, this is my favorite place on earth, I'm going to move there. We're the fastest growing city and community in America right now. So now what you will find is $0.01 is 54% paid for by tourists and 46% paid for by residents.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: We are on our way to 60%, uh, residents, 40% tourists. So all of our tourists are moving here. And that's actually changing the dynamic of our destination.

Speaker B: Interesting. And so because of that, now

Speaker A: residents

Speaker B: actually have, I think, a platform to say, what are you doing with the sales tax?

Speaker C: I do. We actually survey, uh, our residents and we love to see where our resident sentiment survey and our visitor sentiment survey, we love to see how they differentiate, but also where they overlap. An example of an overlap right now, something that everybody wants is they want a large scale outdoor music venue. Right. So I mean, they want something unbelievable that we can actually have that quality of life thing for our residents, but at the same time, uh, for our visitors. But here's the thing. Most of the people that are moving here, they love it that we have 2,000 restaurants. They love it that we have all this stuff. So I think most of the people that are inbound migration, I think they see the value of tourism because they were tourists before they moved here. So they enjoy all the amenities that would not be possible without the tourism economy.

Speaker B: So does the city and or the county understand this rapid influx of residential and their expectations and needs and desires for, as you say, a large entertainment venue? Does the city and or county say, okay, then, um, we'll build that, or will they turn back to you and say, well, you know, you've got all this money coming from the one penny sales tax. Why don't you do it? Except that's against state law. You can't use that money for infrastructure.

Speaker C: Just like a Fortune 500 company, right? A Fortune 500 company has to determine how much of our dollars are we going to put into product development and how much of our dollars are we going to put into marketing. If a Fortune 500 company takes all of their marketing dollars and puts it all into product development, they go bankrupt. And if they take all of their product development money and put it into marketing and don't do any product development, they're going to go bankrupt. So that's a balance that every community has to play as well.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker C: We are actually looking at is there an opportunity for us, especially if it would equate into product development, that would turn into marketing. Right. So I think of like the sphere in Las Vegas. Right, Mike? Since the sphere was built, that's product development. That's created a lot of earned media and a lot of marketing. So we are having that conversation like, we can't empty the cupboard. We have to be very careful. But right, as of right now, the state law does not allow us to invest those dollars in product development. So if we come to some kind of a perfect mix, we would then have to go to Columbia as a community and seek permission to invest those dollars in a different way. Right now, we can only invest those dollars to market this. And the majority of that marketing is to people outside of the state of South Carolina.

Speaker B: Well, Matt, congratulations on not just what you're doing here in Myrtle beach, but, uh, your tenure over the past 15 years that I've known you. I've always been a big fan and, uh, love the way you think. Uh, and I think that there is a certain elegance to what you attempt to do by putting all of these organizations under one umbrella, not knowing you know, because like I said, it was already in play when I got to Madison. But when I got to Madison, I went, you know, this really makes some sense that we're all in the same building and we see each other every day and we're collaborating and we're looking for opportunities to share costs. And it just made sense. And. But you know, in almost every community that we've worked over the past 30 some years, it doesn't work. And that, uh, you've made it work in multiple destinations is pretty cool. So congratulations.

Speaker C: I appreciate that. I did just hear a story today. I did not know this until today that Cincinnati, that their economic development organization, chamber and visitors bureau have, uh, pooled their resources not to come together, uh, not to become one organization in any way, shape or form, but they've pulled their resources for collateral and marketing and uh. So I'm really looking forward to digging into that.

Speaker B: Yeah. Very cool.

Speaker A: So, time for the bonus round question. Before we let you go, your wife

Speaker B: has shared that you have some interesting routines and idiosyncrasies that drive her batshit crazy. Yes. So what are they?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I'm a freak. And, uh, I'm a freak. So I get up at 4:30 every morning. I follow the most meticulous routine. Uh, and that routine is building up to my first meeting in the day. Usually starting at 8 or 8:30, I have an evening routine where I prepare for my next day. If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exist. I probably need to relax a little bit, but I'm actually, I make a to do list on Saturday morning and Sunday morning. And so I'm just really, really regimented with my time. I think part of it is because I get excited the day before because I love what I do so much and I know that it's life changing for people. I think that's part of it. So she makes fun of me and says, when you retire, you're probably going to be making a list like which plants you're going to plant in the garden that day. And so. But it does drive her a little crazy. She rolls her eyes a lot, but she has not changed me.

Speaker B: Should we know this about you? Because there is something to be said for guys like you that, that favor bow ties. They're wound a little differently than the rest of us.

Speaker C: And you know what's weird is here in Myrtle beach, in our region, there's not a lot of bow ties. If you go to Charleston or to, uh, Columbia. A lot of bow ties.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I still rock the bow tie here. Um, I'm not wearing ties as much as I used to, so, uh, I'm a little bit more casual than I used to be, but I still rock the bow tie.

Speaker B: Man.

Speaker C: I gotta. I gotta say this. So, Bill, I just want to tell you how much I appreciate you. You actually came to Tulsa and helped us a lot, uh, when we had Ray and we were going through these considerations and then you may remember, but you helped Brett and me, too, and you helped us in Topeka when we actually had, uh, one of our government entities that felt like that they should use more of the lodging tax for general fund type of stuff. So you've just been amazing. I feel like I'm just blessed. I've worked with people like you and Suzanne, Ray Hoyt, Brad Otting, Sean Dixon.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker C: And now, uh, even Brad Dean. Brad's a friend and I get to talk to him often. But my gosh, working with Stuart Butler, it's mind blowing.

Speaker B: It's got to be exhausting.

Speaker C: He's so freaking.

Speaker B: In a good way.

Speaker C: It's in a good way. I mean, he's so talented and so smart. I'm very. I'm very blessed to be able to work with a guy like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, all the best for a great summer. And we look forward to seeing you, uh, hopefully at the annual or somewhere down the road. And we can't wait to get back and, uh, have fun in Myrtle. Not as client, but just as hanging out on the beach and having fun.

Speaker A: That's it for this edition of dmou. Tell your friends and peers this is where the best and the brightest share

Speaker B: innovative ways to tell people where to go.

Speaker A: Past episodes of DMOU are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and most podcast platforms. Subscribe on your preferred platform and you'll get notified the minute that new episodes drop. Drop. Today's episode brought to you by our friends at CFO By Design, a firm focused on developing DMO excellence. And that means that the numbers are just the beginning. As a full service executive support firm, Julie Hart and her team provide the foundation and accountability needed to build strongly aligned DMOs and successful leaders. Don't take it from me. Go to cfobydesigntx.com and click on clients for a sample of The Ray reviews. Billgeist.com is where you're going to find links to past episodes of dmou, plus links to our book, Destination Leadership, the Z newsletter, the blog, our position papers, and much, much more. That's Billgeist.com thanks for joining us and we look forward to our next conversation on dmou.