Stillwater working to keep tourists flowing in

Since when did picturesque Stillwater, with its historic downtown overlooking the St. Croix River, need help enticing people to come pay a visit?

The answer, according to supporters of the freshly minted Stillwater and Oak Park Heights Convention and Visitors Bureau, is when they realized that many other suburbs were doing more to market their communities.

City leaders hope the new visitors bureau will provide a shot in the arm for Main Street businesses, many of which have been hit hard by rising property taxes and a sluggish economy.

Concerns over a rash of store closings downtown and the possible departure of one of the city's biggest attractions -- the Minnesota Zephyr dinner train -- have many worried about the future of tourism in the St. Croix Valley area. And at City Council meetings, stimulating business downtown has been a hot topic lately.

On Wednesday, the Convention and Visitors Bureau board will convene to set goals and map out a strategy for drawing even more visitors to shop, dine and sleep in the greater Stillwater area.

The visitors bureau will be funded through lodging taxes passed last year by the Oak Park Heights and Stillwater city councils. The 3-percent tax is expected to generate about $150,000 annually. By law, 95 percent of the funds must be spent on marketing and promotion, leaving 5 percent to cover administrative costs.

Other metro area suburbs with tourism bureaus include Hastings, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, Roseville and Bloomington.

Compared to many other Twin Cities metro communities, Stillwater enjoys name recognition throughout the state and even in neighboring states. It's one of the top 10 keyword searches on www.exploreminnesota.com, according to John Edman, director of Explore Minnesota Tourism, the state's tourism agency.

"When people think of Stillwater, they instantly conjure up memories of river towns, of antique shopping, of little bed and breakfasts, of wine bars and restaurants," he said. Those memories lead to powerful word-of-mouth advertising, but the message reaches only a limited audience.

The creation of a visitors bureau will allow the Stillwater area to coordinate its marketing efforts, Edman said. "Now this gives them an opportunity to really promote themselves as one of the true jewels of the state," he said. Minnesota tourism is a $10 billion industry, with well over half of the tourism dollars spent in the Twin Cities metro area, Edman said.

A representative from Explore Minnesota will facilitate the Stillwater/Oak Park Heights discussion Wednesday, helping the visitors bureau board to refine its goals, create benchmarks and list their communities' best assets.

Rivertown competition

Steve Roll, president of the board of directors governing the Stillwater and Oak Park Heights Convention and Visitors Bureau, said he hopes adding a visitors bureau will allow the cities to better compete for tourism dollars with other river towns that have had convention and visitors bureaus for years, such as Red Wing, Hastings and Hudson, Wis.

Hastings has had a lodging tax and a tourism bureau in place for more than a decade.

The $70,000 to $90,000 generated annually for promoting Hastings to visitors has allowed the bureau to advertise in publications such as the Des Moines Register and Home & Away, the AAA magazine. A lot of Iowans come to Minnesota to ski, explained Michelle Jacobs, executive director of the Hastings Tourism Bureau.

"It's nice to have money to target areas where you know people are coming from," she said.

The Hastings tourism bureau does not have statistics on occupancy rates before and after the lodging tax was enacted, and the city has added a hotel since the tourism bureau opened, making it difficult to gauge how much of an impact the increased promotion has had on area businesses.

Jacobs says that she sees an uptick in the number of phone calls, hits on the bureau website and other inquiries for information about Hastings every time the bureau places an ad somewhere. Before the lodging tax, she said, the Hastings Chamber of Commerce didn't have an advertising budget.

Roll, who also owns the Super 8 Motel in Stillwater, said that while the area traditionally has been able to draw visitors without a tourism bureau, the business climate has changed in recent years.

"There have been times when we've seen a lot of metro business, where people would come out, spend the night, stop at a bar and stay overnight. Now, as the economy has tightened up, I don't think we see as much of that," he said.

Roll said the potential growth market for new visitors includes cities such as Chicago, Des Moines and Fargo. Rural areas around the state also could be a strong market.

Scott Zahren, who owns Alesci Furniture Gallery in downtown Stillwater, said he believes the new Convention and Visitors Bureau will be good for his business. "We're trying to turn Stillwater into a 365-day-a-year destination," he said. "The CVB will help out tremendously because those funds will be dedicated solely to marketing and promotions."

Even though the bureau has "convention" in its name, drawing large meetings won't be a focus for the board, Roll said, because there isn't a large facility to host one. "At this point it's more of a tourism bureau than a convention bureau," he said.

In the months ahead, visitors bureau leaders will prepare and roll out a marketing campaign aimed at next winter. Area hotels began collecting the lodging tax last month, but funds likely won't be available until spring. Summer is the busy tourism season, so there's a greater need for marketing in the off-season, Roll said.

Wednesday's meeting signals the start of their efforts.

"We have the formation of it [the bureau] completed," Roll said. "This will get us on track to start looking ahead to where we want to take it."

Allie Shah • 651-298-1550