Olathe ? State tourism leaders plan to spend the next year figuring out how best to market Kansas to potential visitors.

“Kansas does not have a recognizable brand image,” state tourism director Scott Allegrucci told 150 leaders Monday at the annual three-day conference of the Travel Industry Association of Kansas.

Allegrucci said he would withhold about $300,000 of the Kansas Travel and Tourism Division’s nearly $4 million annual budget this year and next to finance market research and to develop a marketing strategy, tourism logo, slogan and image.

The money will come from the state agency’s advertising budget.

He said the state couldn’t and shouldn’t sell itself as a destination if it didn’t know who its customers were and where its best target markets were.

Allegrucci said that in recent years the state had no clear marketing plan or goals. The result, he said, has been a $3.7 billion industry beset by factions and lacking the confidence of state lawmakers, who have resisted funding increases for the agency. Kansas operates with one of the smallest state tourism advertising budgets in the nation.

According to survey results presented Monday, Kansas tourism industry leaders were harder on the state than its visitors.

While 12 percent of visitors had a negative impression of the state as “flat,” 35 percent of industry leaders harbored negative feelings about the state’s flatter-than-a-pancake reputation. Twenty-five percent of visitors were favorably impressed by Kansas’ natural beauty.

Only 10 percent of visitors said the first thing they thought of when they thought of Kansas was “The Wizard of Oz,” compared with 26 percent of industry leaders.

Other survey findings presented at the conference revealed that industry leaders had been disappointed in past image remakes and catchy marketing slogans.

The state’s “Land of Ah’s” campaign drew favorable impressions from 23 percent of those surveyed. The “Simply Wonderful” and “Linger Longer” marketing slogans had even fewer admirers.