Statewide, Missouri set a new tourism record and locally, the tourism numbers are also showing an increase.
Executive Director of the St. Joseph Convention and Visitors Bureau Marci Bennett said this year the museums have seen an increase in attendance and the hotels are doing well. Bennett said statistics of economic impact of tourism in Buchanan County are reported by the state from the Missouri Division of Tourism and Missouri Department of Labor. Last year, according to those reports, the economic impact of tourism in Buchanan County was $175 million into the community.
Bennett said they will not have final local tourism statistics for 2016 until sometime in January but numbers are looking good so far. Bennett said this year some things that contributed to tourism numbers going up included better marketing campaigns.
“We are actively out there marketing not only for the leisure travel market but for motor coaches, athletic events and conventions and meetings,” Bennett said. “We’ve continued to do that for a number of years and it really has led to more visibility of St. Joseph as a destination.”
Bennett said one of the upcoming events next year that is already drawing interest from outside of the country in the solar eclipse in August.
“We already have booked a group of 200 people from Israel, we have some coming from Great Britain, from Japan we have three or four of our hotels are already sold out and they’re able to get a pretty good price for those rooms because we are right in the center of totality,” Bennett said. “I think we’re the fifth largest community in the United States that has that much totality of the eclipse.”
The solar eclipse takes place August 21st. Another highlight Bennett said is coming next year is a new visitor’s center downtown at Frederick and 9th.
“It’s going to be a state-of-the-art visitor’s center so those visitors that come into downtown, we can help direct them to our museums and our wonderful architecture and around the community so they get the best experience possible,” Bennett said.
The goal is to have the building open in time for the eclipse.