Tourism Committee tours Abbey

The City of Maryville Tourism Committee met October 11 at Conception Abbey after a tour of the Basilica and learning information about the services the abbey offers.

Downtown Maryville had submitted a Christmas Lighting Grant application for $5,000. It is to be used for the installation of Christmas lights on downtown businesses and in the pocket park. The lighting is part of the expansion of Yuletide Magic, a holiday festival. The festival is to attract visitors to downtown, increase local business traffic and promote community pride. The grant was approved. Member Stephanie Campbell-Yount excused herself from the vote as she is president of Downtown Maryville.

The committee approved two requests for qualifications; one for website development and the other for strategic planning.

The purchase of tourism-related information and software from Placer.ai, which studies visit trends, trade areas and demographics, was approved contingent on an agreement between local partners. The cost is $15,000 annually.

A subscription to STR Benchmarking for $3,000 annually was approved. The firm prepares a report that provides information on hotel occupancies, gives data on trends and compares data year-over-year.

Tourism Director DeAnn Davison reported she has subscribed to a month of AlphaDigital for $1,200/monthly. This company “utilizes interests, behaviors, demographics and location based data,” to “develop a custom audience solution to reach individuals with hyper targeted ads across their media feeds” for Maryville’s “product and/or service.” She is working with the company to create an Eat/Shop/Play/Stay campaign.

She requested two more months to finish the 2023 year at $1,200 a month. The committee approved.

Visit Maryville has created a “Hometown Holidays” flier to hand-out at hotels, businesses and other amenities.

Davison also brought up a MSHSAA invitation to host 2024-29 football championships. Northwest Missouri State representative Greg Hansen said the high school championships would interfere with Northwest Bearcat Football playoffs. He suggested tourism shoot for other high school sports championships through MSHSAA.

No financial report was presented. Davison will present the 2023 fiscal year financial report at the November meeting.

The committee discussed meeting dates and decided to change from quarterly meetings to bi-monthly meetings starting with November and then again in January 2024.