Cape hotel, motel receipts spike 28% in past fiscal year

Hospitality, an industry plagued by COVID-19, was able to survive and now rise to unprecedented heights in Cape Girardeau.

Data collected for the 2022 fiscal year -- which ended in June -- had hotel-motel tax receipts in the city up nearly 28% from the previous year. The figure far eclipses the 3.27% increase for the previous year and is the highest mark in the past five years by nearly $200,000.

Brenda Newbern, executive director of VisitCape, said she's "ecstatic" about the increase because it actually represents more visitors to Cape Girardeau, not just inflationary price increases.

The director of the city's main tourism division credited multiple factors for the increase in travelers to the city. In many ways, 2022 tourism has been connected to a travel boom. Pent-up frustration at being locked at home during the height of COVID-19's reign in the U.S. has led many to want to get away.

"It's like the perfect world right now; it's like the perfect storm," Newbern said.

John Echimovich, vice president of operations for MidAmerica Hotels, said the company's three hotels in Cape Girardeau -- Auburn Place Hotel & Suites, Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn Express -- were able to stave off some of the industry decline experienced in other parts of the country in 2020 and 2021 and rebound faster than expected.

Echimovich and Newbern said the numbers will likely plateau as the travel boom ends but will likely stay constant because of the assets of Cape Girardeau. Newbern said the proximity to water, trails and history make the city a destination for people deciding to take shorter trips.

As always, Southeast Missouri State University will help drive numbers as well. The college represents the three annual biggest visiting weekends -- graduation, parents' weekend and homecoming -- in terms of hotel occupancy, Echimovich said.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the increase comes from an investment Cape Girardeau made in the youth sports market.

Cape Girardeau SportsPlex, a sprawling mass of hardwood courts and turf fields, first opened in May 2017, with city officials hoping it would be a destination for sports tourism, driving more people to the Southeast corner of Missouri.

Newbern, Echimovich and Heather Davis, SportsPlex supervisor, all agreed that it has done just that.

"It helped us find a niche for ourselves, that we really can do sports well and with our brand new SportsPlex, it was perfect," Newbern said.

"It's just doing a heck of a job bringing groups into town," Echimovich said.

Wintergreen Research estimated the youth travel sports industry to be worth a little more than $19 billion in the U.S. annually. The growing number of club sports and American Athletic Union tournaments have led many cities and states across the country to make large investments into the market, hoping to lure in people and money.

The SportsPlex is just coming out of its "busy season," Davis said, which normally runs from December to August. The manager said the facility hosted a tournament nearly every single weekend in that span. In the fall most children -- and parents -- are focused on the start of school and school sports rather than travel ones.

Volleyball and basketball tournaments are the most frequent ones held at the complex. The majority of the teams come from Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. However, Davis said for elite level tournaments teams have come from as far as California and Florida to play in Cape Girardeau.

The location has been a major asset to the SportsPlex, Davis said. The centralized location between St. Louis and Memphis has allowed the facility to become a hub for travel teams in the area.

Davis said the complex has likely caused the formation of teams surrounding areas as well because they know there will be somewhere to play tournaments.

Right now the SportsPlex is scheduling tournaments a year in advance with repeat customers getting priority on the same weekends that they have previously held tournaments.

The officials at the facility are in regular communication with VisitCape, which works with hotel managers to make sure rooms are available for those traveling to the tournaments.

Echimovich said the winter tournaments have allowed the hotels to stay busy even during their traditional slow season.

Davis said the SportsPlex is looking to fill the gaps in the fall with sports that don't have a normal season, such as cheering and taekwondo.

The manager said there's also been talk of eventual expansion basically since the facility first opened. Sometimes tournament directors will reserve other facilities, in addition to the SportsPlex, in order to meet their needs. There's also a limit with the two turf fields on the soccer tournaments they are capable of hosting, Davis said.

Davis didn't characterize the problem as dire. However, the turf fields are frequently occupied by local teams practicing or people playing recreationally.