Tourism numbers hit new records in St. Joseph last year.
The Pony Express Museum recorded its highest attendance, hotel occupancy was up and overall tourism numbers showed an increase for Buchanan County. These increases were part of a year of records for the entire state of Missouri in 2016.
According to Director of Sales with the St. Joseph Convention and Visitor’s Bureau Mary Supple, hotel occupancy was at 59.1 percent, up by one percent from 2015. Average Daily Rate was $82.53, up $3 from 2015 and according to the Missouri Division of Tourism, the economic impact of tourism in Buchanan County was $180 million, up from $175 million.
Supple said they hope to increase tourism numbers again for 2017.
“Our goals would be to increase over last year,” Supple said. “We do have some big bowling tournaments coming in that will be here several weekends at the end of March and the beginning of April so we think that’ll help boost our economic impact.”
Director of Sales for the Candlewood Suites and Holiday Inn Express and Suites in St. Joseph Brandon Wilson said they saw an increase of 14 percent over 2015 numbers.
“We saw a large increase in the amount of our local business, a lot of them had groups coming in,” Wilson said. “We saw a lot of people from different countries coming in for the factories that we have on the expressway, that generated an awful lot of business, and it seems like a lot of people are getting married in St. Joe. We’ve seen a heavy increase in the amount of weddings that we’ve had.”
The Pony Express Museum recorded its highest attendance in 2016. According to Cindy Daffron with the museum they had 46,000 visitors, which is up from 40,000 the year before with people coming from all 50 states and 35 different countries.
Daffron said she thinks part of the increase is due to the Buffalo Bill exhibit.
“Changing an exhibit in a museum and then moving things around makes things look different so people are like, ‘Well we want to go see what’s different,’” Daffron said. “So maybe the museum’s been here since 1959, but it’s been added on to three times, it’s been changed up since I’ve been here four times, we’re getting ready to do a new exhibit in April called the Hall of Riders. So Buffalo Bill was here from 2014 to 16 and then a new exhibit will come here this year which I think will be a huge draw because it’s all about the riders and what happened to them after the Pony Express, which is one of the number one questions we get asked everyday.”
Supple said they have already seen a large number of people planning to travel to St. Joseph for the Solar Eclipse in August. Daffron said they have special exhibits planned for that weekend and Wilson said many of the hotels are already sold out in town over that weekend.
“I think only three of them have rooms available,” Wilson said. “It’s good to see St. Joe is actually getting something that a lot of people from across the world are wanting to attend.”
The Solar Eclipse takes place August 21, 2017.