BOARD SUGGESTS FULL-TIME TOURISM DIRECTOR BE HIRED

Members of Cape Girardeau's Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board think the city needs a full-time tourism development director.

Gary Bunting, chairman of the CVB board, said the new position could be funded through additional revenue from expansion of the hotel-motel-restaurant tax voters approved in April.

The tourism development director would work hand in hand with the CVB director and board, he said.

"If they build it, we'll market it. If they build it, we'll get the tourists to come," Bunting said.

"We're a marketing arm," Bunting said of the existing CVB. "But a tourism development person would be somebody that would work directly with the public to actually get people to come here."

The tourism development director could help develop tourist attractions within the city and region, Bunting said.

The board's proposal calls for the tourism development director to act as an information and assistance clearinghouse on tourism and to provide development support services to local businesses to encourage increased tourism.

The tourism development director could work to attract tourists from overseas to Cape Girardeau.

"This person could be involved and know the places to go and buttons to push to get something like that," Bunting said.

The tourism development director could also work to improve Cape Girardeau as a tourist site within the region, he said.

"If people visit Ste. Genevieve, instead of turning around and going back to St. Louis, they can come down here," he said.

In addition, the new director could work with the state's new initiative to push cultural and historic tourism, Bunting said.

"We need this individual to go out and actually put tourists on the streets in Cape Girardeau," he said.

The proposal written by the CVB board points out that the CVB has marketed the city well, but once visitors arrive in Cape Girardeau they "have little to see or do. The rich cultural heritage of the community and the historic architecture of the downtown area offer a potential for tourism growth and development in Cape Girardeau. History and cultural tourism sells."

The CVB proposal calls for setting up a five-year test market program under which the CVB would work with public and private entities to develop tourism attractions, establish a marketing program and offer direction to the community in using tourism as an economic development tool.

The tax that funds the CVB ends in 2004, Bunting pointed out.

Aggressively developing tourism will help ensure the CVB itself continues to exist, Bunting said.

Bunting and Shirley Talley, vice-chairperson of the CVB board, submitted the proposal to the City Council Monday night.

Talley said the new director could help put together a tourism master plan for the city.

"Everybody's got a lot of wonderful ideas, but everybody's going in different directions, and I see this person maybe being a person that could put all this together," she said.

The council took no action on the proposal.

Bunting and Talley gave the council an update on the CVB's activities over the last year.

In 1997, board members visited Savannah, Ga., Frankenmuth, Mich., and Paducah, Ky., to study how CVBs in those cities operate.

Bunting said Paducah's CVB officials are interested in setting up a cooperative venture with Cape Girardeau and possibly setting up a tourism marketing "triangle" with the two cities and a third destination.