Carbondale Tourism

The Carbondale Tourism office is shuttering June 30th, according to a post on its Facebook page. Since Carbondale's budget runs July 1 to June 30, I imagine tomorrow is when this year's funding runs out. Earlier this year, the city council voted to transfer tourism funding to Southernmost Illinois Tourism, which promotes tourism for most of southern Illinois, including the Shawnee National Forest. 

with a budget of $170,000, it was always rather difficult for Carbondale Tourism to make much of an impact drawing business and convention activity to the city. I estimate about a quarter to a third of the funding went for salaries and rent, not leaving much for promotional activities.

Jane Adams on Tourism

Councilwoman Jane Adams has a lengthly post on Carbondale as a tourism destination.  She makes a couple of important points:

1) Unlike Mt. Vernon and Marion, Carbondale is a destination community.  People are drawn here primarily by the University and then by the hospitals. They spend nights here, rather than a night on the way to someplace else.

2) the annual $60,000 grant received as a result of being a certified tourist bureau should not be the "tail that wags the dog."  The council and by implication, the community, should decide first the best way to deal with Carbondale's tourism situation, then seek the grant if that proves applicable. If the city signs with Southernmost Illinois or Illinois South, it needs to be because of the services the organization brings to the table, not because we would retain the grant money.

3) use of the internet and social medial   I missed this when listening to their presentations at the last city council meeting but neither of the two aformentioned organizations discussed their internet or social media use, focusing instead on print media.  In today's culture, not focusing on the Internet, is like ignoring four-color printing when  it became available.

More from Wissmann on Tourism

Here's the remainder of Councilman Wissmann's email on why he supports turning the city's tourism efforts over to Southernmost Illinois:

Here are my revised reasons for preferring Southernmost to a reconstituted Carbondale Convention and Tourism Bureau:

(1) We'd need to pay off the CCTB's sizable debt, for which the city isn't responsible. That debt stands at about $40,000- and mounting. We'd also need to extricate the CCTB from some bad deals, like the lease, which is costing them an exorbitant amount. Our money should go into productive tourism promotion and not a bailout necessitated by poor management and board oversight.

(2) By the time we kick off the current CCTB board members and replace them, get the new board to meet, create new bylaws, figure out what it wants in a new director, advertise the position, conduct interviews, and hire someone, we could be in October or November. If we go with Southernmost, however, we would not need to rebuild- we could start moving by August at the latest, in partnership with a good organization with a proven track record.

(3) We really need to market the entire region, rather than just Carbondale. Southernmost has the wine trails in their territory, we have the hotels. Southernmost has the Shawnee, we have the restaurants and university and nightlife. We can successfully appeal to far more people with a regional approach than if we remain independent. On the other hand- especially if the Jackson County Board signs with Southernmost- staying with the CCTB could send the signal that we don't want to work together with the rest of the region, and reinforce the mage with which the CCTB saddled our city.

(4) Though the Illinois Office of Tourism encourages cooperation, bureaus can only expend state dollars on the regions in which they are certified. Thus, if we reconstitute the CCTB as a certified bureau to exclusively market the city, then hire Southernmost or another bureau to handle cooperative, regional marketing efforts, we will probably encounter some frustrating limitations that we could overcome by joining a single bureau.

(5) Due to past performance- and ongoing political theater- even with a completely new board and director, I see the CCTB as an incredibly hard sell to the public. The brand is damaged beyond repair. If we were to create an energy or financial startup, we would not go with Enron or Bear Stearns, even with a new director and board. Let's not go with the local tourism equivalent.