By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

The Tourism Committee of the Benicia Economic Development Board is dealing with a lot of new faces — on the board as well as in the audience.

In its first meeting Thursday with newly impaneled members, the committee welcomed so many members of the public it decided to hold future meetings not in the City Hall Commission Room, but in the city’s community center.

Because of all the new faces, Mario Giuliani, acting economic development manager, laid out the committee’s purpose for both the assembled public and the members.

The committee, he said, originally was formed to generate a tourism program, and once that was accomplished, after an interval, the committee was tasked with helping move the program forward in light of reduced staff availability.

“I want to make it clear that this is a working group,” Giuliani said.

The group nonetheless had issues to tackle at its monthly confab, including plans to take part in a regional magazine’s annual celebration and the choice of a coordinator for a city contest.

Sunset Celebration Weekend, an event hosted by Sunset Magazine in Menlo Park, will again draw Benicia representatives following a successful 2011 junket.

“Benicia took a little bit of pride that we were one of the few cities that were represented there (last year),” Giuliani said.

Eight members of the committee volunteered to put together a city booth for the event.

In a related matter, the committee also formed a subcommittee to handle coordination of bus tours for out-of-town visitors.

One of the results of Benicia being taking part in Sunset Celebration last year was the arrangement of a bus tour of the city out of San Jose. Because it was coordinated with the city of Benicia, Giuliani said, organizers were able to make the tour a little more special for the visitors.

“When they arrived, they met at the Capitol and they were greeted with a welcoming party. Mayor Patterson was there, and she got on the bus, welcoming them to Benicia,” Giuliani said.

The Capitol was opened up for the tour and “it was a very great way to welcome a group to Benicia,” he said.

“I think we can imagine if we all traveled somewhere on a bus, and when we opened the bus the mayor of that town got on the bus and welcomed us to that town … maybe we take that for granted, but for John Q. Citizen that’s kind of a big deal.”

The bus tour subcommittee, comprised of eight committee members, will aim to better coordinate such experiences.

Finally, committee member Kimble Goodman, chair of the Economic Development Board, was named the Visit Benicia contest coordinator.

The contest is an effort by the city to gather hard data for its tourism campaign. It involves the random collection of information from visitors in the city’s restaurants, shops, and other places of businesses who are encouraged to fill out questionnaire-type slips of paper to become eligible for an overnight stay in one of the city’s hotels and other prizes.

The merchant where the winning slip was filled out also gets $300 in advertising.

“The purpose of this slip was to get quantifiable data on when we have our tourism program, radio ads, print magazines, what have you — how are we measuring that?” Giuliani said. The contest is expected to begin in March.

The committee also chose Claire McFadden as chair and Pat Ryll as vice chair.