Editor's note before we begin: I am forwarding four "white papers" Kim Ridenour has written dealing with Eureka's current marketing problems. These papers are better printed out and read more than once because they have a lot of thoughtful commentary on a lot of problems. You will have trouble at first not becoming defensive if you feel one of your "things" is being criticized. Hang in there and read to the end and you will find that she isn't slamming...she's offering constructive suggestions to fix what is wrong. These papers appear on the message board but I'm also forwarding them on here because some of you just have e-mail and not internet. Unfortunately, none of the CAPC commissioners are on Eureka people. - Joyce Zeller, 9/98 Tourism is Down? Eh, what?!? Tourism is down? It doesn't seem like it around here. We get thousands of letters every month. Hundreds of phone calls. The Eureka Springs Tourist Center (Positive Idea) web site has more traffic than either Levi Strauss or the Chicago Tribune - and that's straight from the horses' mouth. I KNOW that people are interested in Eureka Springs, but I suspect that a local communication problem prevents everyone from knowing that fact. For example: By 10 am on the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend, the Chamber was telling people that there were no rooms in town. I know this because that hour marked the first complaint call we received from someone who had been to the Chamber looking for a room and had been sent to "some place WAY out of town and what IS it with you people; are you taking kickbacks or WHAT?!?" For the record, this caller had found a room at the establishment of one of the Chamber board members so no, the issue was not kickbacks. The front desk person simply didn't know. I'm not trying to beat up the Chamber, my point is that we took call after call after call - all day Friday until about 10 am on Saturday morning. We knew who to call because people responded to Carole's email message to "post your vacancies on the Front Porch bulletin board," or they called to say "I've had a cancellation. . . I have availability. . .let me know if you hear anything." I'd guess that we referred over one hundred two and three day reservations plus a few one night fill-ins during that time. I know the people booked because there were several places who were near empty on Friday morning who called during the day to say "stop referring! We're full!" Here in the "tourism underground," things are going quite well. So why does Sherry say that somebody must not be doing their jobs? Why does the 62 E entrance into town look like a set from a post-apocalypse science fiction movie? Why is nobody saying much of anything in public while they say, in private, "It's no use caring. Why try?" I have some theories about that. These theories are not only based on our years and years of tourism marketing experience, they're based on our day-to-day dealings with the world and Eureka Springs. I have an easy answer for the example described above. When somebody calls and wants to know who has room, where do we look? On the computer. When somebody asks for the start-time of a parade, or an 800 phone number for a local B&B, we look it up on the computer. Anybody who answers the phone around here has instant access to a public database that will tell them just about anything they want to know. The Chamber could have access to this database too. . .if only they had the equipment and the internet access that would allow them to use the information. Last week, I had to call the Chamber four times in one day with questions about ads for their book, and every time I called, a different person answered the phone. How shall we suggest they keep on top of things? Should every message be recorded in triplicate and distributed in stacks throughout the building? You never know where the phone might be answered in a place where people walk in the door requiring personal attention from the first person they see. Maybe the Chamber should install one of those old fashioned cable-car message systems. Remember when you made a purchase at the hardware store and the cashier fired your ticket up to the bookkeeper's office via a container-on-a rope? Yes, it would be nice if people dropped by the Chamber or called and got accurate, up to the minute information. But asking them to provide this information without any way to gather and distribute the data is rather like telling a farmer, "OK. Here's your shovel. Here's a package of corn seeds. Now go out on that rock and grow wheat." I know that there are a lot of important issues at stake here. Sherry wants to see businesses stay in business. Bill wants to see Eureka's advertising dollars subject to local control. Carolyn wants to protect the natural and historic beauty that sets us apart. Cheri wants to get some credit--or at least less abuse--for all the work that is done by the Chamber. Like all human beings who have put passion and energy into a cause, the "Powers that Be" would like their contribution to mean something--and they're no more willing to let the Passion Play return to dust than Carolyn is willing to sell the trees of Spring Street to Georgia Pacific. Meanwhile. . . as we bicker among ourselves. . . the world goes on and draws its own conclusions. While we're doing battle with Branson, the world is booking their flights to Paris--or they're making their Passion Play reservations for Obergammerau. Did you know that it's frequently cheaper to take a five day European vacation than a three-day weekend in Eureka Springs? Quite a few people know it out there in the world. And that doesn't mean that we have nothing to offer, nor does it mean we can't compete. It does mean that there's a little more to the world than there used to be--and that keeping ourselves alive in the tourism market of the future is going to take a bit more savvy and forethought than we've been required to use in the past. We have a unique position here among the pigs and chickens at Positive Idea-we're in the thick of communication with prospective visitors, yet unrelated to, and substantially unaffected by, official marketing personnel, theories and practices. Among other things, that gives us access to information that isn't available anywhere else. My motivation is to give that information with the hope of provoking intelligent discussion. Eureka Springs probably has a higher per capita population of intelligent, creative people than anywhere else on Earth. Plenty of passion. Plenty of business savvy. Plenty of commitment. Yet we continue to spin our wheels. I'll tell you why I think that is. Then you tell me what you think . . . and what you'd like to do about it. More -- >