BUREAU TO TRACK TOURISM DOLLARS

The visitor's bureau uses tourism figures to determine what business it wants to go after for the city.

Cape Girardeau's Convention and Visitors Bureau plans to track the economic impact of tourism on the city.

Visitor Bureau director Terri Clark-Bauer said her staff will track sales and inquiries from tourists.

As part of the plan, staff members will have sales goals for meeting planners, leisure travelers and tour groups, and the staff will work to attract customers rather than to simply act as "order-takers," Clark-Bauer said.

"We do sales on a daily basis already," Clark-Bauer said, adding she wants staff to concentrate on soliciting sales and on keeping track of the number of sales files initiated and closed, contacts made and cold calling.

In addition, staff members will track the types of accounts serviced, including motor coaches, meeting and convention groups, trade shows and special events.

Clark-Bauer said she also plans to begin tracking tourists' economic impact in Cape Girardeau.

"The economic impact is an overview of what a visitor would spend in a community when they come," she said.

A leisure traveler, for example, spends $35 to $50 for a one-day visit.

"That expands in impact on the community, because for every person that comes into the community, you're going to have a hotel that has to hire more staff that weekend, and that person has to hire a baby sitter for the extra hours they work, and maybe that baby sitter takes the money they made and goes out and buys new carpet or whatever," she said.

Clark-Bauer plans to track several visitors throughout the year to develop a spending profile to help determine tourism's direct and indirect economic impact.

She said some sources say tourism dollars "turn over" up to 12 times in a community.

"I tend to say they turn over up to three times in a community the size and personality of Cape," she said.

The information will help the bureau fine-tune its marketing efforts, Clark-Bauer said.

"I use those figures to identify what business we really want to go after," she said.

Staff members can concentrate on attracting more of the types of travelers who make a greater economic impact on the community, she said.

"Then we start looking at restructuring staff time and efforts that we're putting into different segments of the business so we can get more impact for our investment," Clark-Bauer said. "I think it must make good business sense."

The bureau has a staff member concentrating on sales, and Clark-Bauer wants to fill a vacancy for a second person to handle sales.

The bureau has begun tracking some information on tourists and how they choose Cape Girardeau as a travel destination.

From July 29 to Aug. 26, the bureau received 255 e-mail requests for information about Cape Girardeau.

Also in that time, 426 inquiries were made through the bureau's 800 number, and 3,039 clients used the bureau's Web site.