Think of Judy Billings, director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau, as a human megaphone.

For the past 23 years of her professional life, she has been proclaiming why visitors should spend their time — and, more importantly — their money in Lawrence.

Next year, she and her six-person staff may be able to crank up the volume.

A $70,000 increase in the bureau’s funding is thanks to a 1 percent increase in the transient guest tax, or “bed tax,” approved in August by the Lawrence City Commission.

Billings said the bureau would consider using a good portion of the money to increase its $46,000 advertising budget.

“There is a lot of competition out there for visitors,” she said. “Think about the decisions you make when you decide to go somewhere. You are bombarded with ideas.

“That’s why you have to get the word out there. Because if you are out of sight, you are out of mind.”

The idea isn’t universally accepted in the Lawrence hotel industry.

Some hotel managers said they thought the bureau should become more active in planning and organizing events to draw people to Lawrence. And one said it might be time for the city to start socking away some of the hotel bed tax to build larger projects such as a convention center or a museum that would highlight the area’s Civil War history.

“Physical attractions are what bring tourists,” said Rob Phillips, general manager of the financially struggling Eldridge Hotel. “We have gone 20 years with no leadership to step up and say we need to build an infrastructure for tourism.”

Lawrence Parks and Recreation horticulturist Matt Bunch visits with Regine Benalcazar, center, and her daughter Caterina Benalcazar, both of Lawrence, in the garden in front of the Lawrence Visitors Center. The two women were at the visitors center last week to gather brochures on the area for themselves and some friends visiting from out of town. The Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau, which runs the visitors center, will be getting more tax dollars next year because the city increased the transient guest tax from 4 percent to 5 percent.

Bureau basics

The Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau isn’t a government agency, but it does spend a significant amount of tax money.

The bureau is a division of the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. Through a contract with the city, the bureau receives hotel bed tax revenues to promote the city’s tourism industry.

Since it was founded in 1980, the bureau’s budget has grown from about $50,000 to $570,000 in 2003-2004. For the latest budget year, about $450,000 came from the city’s transient guest tax, which is paid by every visitor who rents a Lawrence hotel room. The rest came mainly from advertising sales for the bureau’s visitors guide, which generates about $110,000.

Since 1985 the guest tax rate has been 4 percent. This summer, city commissioners agreed to raise the rate to 5 percent after Billings said the bureau’s budget had suffered from a nationwide downturn in the tourism industry.

“I think everyone can understand that the cost to do business has gone up for us, just like everybody else,” Billings said.

Revenues have been declining, though. The $458,860 the city collected in guest taxes in 2002 was less than the $460,000 the city collected in 1997. In two of the past three years, guest tax revenues have declined. The highest amount collected was $504,983 in 1999.

But, the downward trend may be over, Billings said. Figures for the first sixth months of 2003 show guest tax collections are 30 percent above the same period in 2002. That, combined with the tax increase, could give the bureau $70,000 or more in new money to plug into its budget.

Billings said no decisions had been made on how to spend the additional money. She and her city-appointed advisory board will meet before April to discuss ideas. But Billings said a portion of the revenue probably would be used to keep up with operational costs, such as health insurance and employee benefits. Staff salaries, at about $210,000, are the bureau’s largest budgeted expense.

“This is a people business that we’re in,” Billings said. “You have to take care of your people because they are the machinery that makes all this work.”

Spreading the word

Billings said she expected increasing the bureau’s advertising budget would receive serious consideration from the board. The department advertises in publications ranging from Midwest Living to regional publications produced by the Kansas Speedway. A larger share of the budget is spent for advertising on the Internet because it is proving to produce the best bang for the buck, Billings said.

But the $46,000 advertising budget isn’t enough for the bureau to advertise on a frequent basis, and soon won’t be enough to keep up with increasing advertising rates, Billings said. As an example, Billings said the department paid $5,250 for an ad in the Kansas Speedway guide and expected to pay more next year.

“You’re not going to get very many of those $5,250 ads out of a $40,000 budget,” Billings said. “And anybody who has advertised will tell you frequency is the key, and that costs money.”

Despite the cost, she said advertising was a good investment. The bureau last year paid a consultant about $10,000 to study its advertising expenses. The study determined that for every dollar spent in advertising, $52 was injected into the Lawrence economy.

“That tells me one thing: We definitely should be considering spending more money on advertising,” Billings said, though she declined to say how much she may recommend increasing the advertising budget.

More events

But Phillips said he seldom heard guests at his hotel say they were visiting Lawrence because of an advertisement.

“I can play games with numbers too, and that is what I perceive that study is doing,” he said.

That’s why he would prefer the bureau spend its new revenue creating events to draw tourists to the city. Phillips said he had started events like the Eldridge Hotel Old Fashioned Christmas Parade, the Gingerbread Festival and Civil War Days on the Western Frontier that have been successful tourist draws.

Other hotel operators said they also were unsure whether widespread advertising by the bureau was effective.

“I really have no idea whether it works or not,” said Sonny Bhakta, general manager at Virginia Inn. “I think the events would be a lot better. That would be money well spent. It would definitely help the whole town.”

Billings said her department was all for events, but that it learned years ago it didn’t have the staff to successfully run and sustain annual events.

In the early 1980s, the bureau created Independence Days, an event that aimed to attract visitors during the slow period of July. The festival eventually ran out of money and support.

“We quickly realized that to do an event well, it is very time consuming and very expensive,” Billings said. “Our philosophy now is that we would rather provide our marketing services or our Web site to support an event.

“But it’s true that we’re not involved in the nitty-gritty, day-to-day operations of an event. We just don’t have the people to do that and still bid on conventions and do everything else we need to do.”

The philosophy does have support in the hotel industry.

Ron Desch, regional manager for the Lawrence Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, said he thought the current system worked well. Desch, who is a member of the bureau’s advisory board, said he thought the department’s advertising strategy was a good one.

“I don’t have any way to really know if we get $52 back for every $1 we spend in advertising, but if we get even half that result, the money would be extremely well spent.”

Thinking bigger

Phillips — whose hotel faces a foreclosure proceeding from a Baldwin bank and has about $450,000 in back taxes — said the industry needs to think bigger.

City commissioners should consider withholding some of the guest tax funds from the Convention and Visitors Bureau to fund larger tourism oriented projects, he said.

A convention center, downtown parking or a museum that focuses on the area’s Civil War history could be good choices, Phillips said.

“If they would spend the money on capital improvements, I would support a 4 percent increase in the tax,” he said.

Other communities have taken a similar tack.

Junction City has started construction on a $4 million, 30,000-square-foot convention center that tourism leaders hope will increase that city’s convention number to about 90 a year, up from about 25 per year.

The center, which is expected to open in late 2004, is funded through $50,000 a year in guest tax revenues and $50,000 a year from both the city and the county, said Connie Hall, executive director of the Geary County Convention and Visitors Bureau. A private hotel developer is building a 100-room facility adjacent to the project and will run the convention center.

Lawrence Mayor David Dunfield said the idea of using guest tax dollars to fund a major capital improvement was intriguing, but said he didn’t want to do anything to harm the bureau’s ability to do its job.

“I think it is probably an idea worth discussing,” the mayor said. “We do hear a lot of interest in the idea of increasing the amount of meeting space we have available in the city.”

But he also added that he didn’t think the city’s current system of using the guest tax dollars to fund the Convention and Visitors bureau was broken.

“I’m very impressed with their professionalism and just the sheer amount of work they take on,” Dunfield said.