Cape council approves first reading placing Convention and Visitors Bureau under City of Cape Girardeau control

The Cape Girardeau City Council approved the first reading of placing the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau under the control of the City of Cape Girardeau as of Monday, July 1, as well as establishing an advisory board for the bureau Monday, June 3, at City Hall.

The Convention and Visitors Bureau was overseen by the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce and “as a result of the termination of the agreement with the chamber,” the bureau will be under control of the city. Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation director Doug Gannon said the bureau will operate as a division of Parks and Recreation.

He said they’re currently completing the transition of the bureau under the City of Cape Girardeau, and they are currently onboarding three employees for the bureau with a “temporary plan” to be located in the Osage Centre’s conference room two.

“We will have an office administrator and there's a visitor experience development specialist that will be on board as well,” Gannon said.

He said they will build up a working space where they can be permanently housed.

Gannon said the bureau manager will be attending Parks and Recreation as well as Parks and Recreation staff attending the bureau’s advisory board meetings.

“We're going to capitalize upon that the share of resources that we have and the synergies that we have,” he said. “We're looking forward to having Visit Cape under our umbrella to capitalize on the interconnectivity and synergy that currently exists and help them move forward.”

Gannon said the parks department has already worked with Visit Cape regularly with marketing toward visitors from sports tournaments and trying to get them to “stay for a couple extra days.”

"We really want the CVB (Convention and Visitor’s Bureau) team to be able to focus on some other areas that they can bring some people into town, maybe at times whenever we're not necessarily drawing people in town for sports tournaments,” he said. “I mentioned some of the duplication of effort we want to eliminate that; because that's just gonna make everybody that much better.”

The council unanimously approved the first reading of the ordinance.