Visitors spend high amount on Lawrence businesses

Other 2008 stats

  • Economic impact from conventions and meetings: $2.29 million.
  • 193 conventions and meetings took place in Lawrence with a total of 13,230 attending.
  • The economic impact from sporting events, excluding KU events, totaled $2.1 million.
  • About 9,375 people registered as guests at the Lawrence Visitor Information Center, with 41 percent from out of state.

Visitors showed a lot of consumer confidence in Lawrence last year.

They spent $57.39 million while they were in the city. That’s 16.8 percent more than spending attributed to Lawrence visitors in 2007, according to the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau.

That spending came from an estimated 779,320 visitors, and generated $1.15 million in local sales tax, the bureau’s annual report shows.

Yes, last year’s Kansas University national basketball championship had something to do with those totals, but it wasn’t the main factor.

“There’s no one thing that drives our visitor business,” bureau director Judy Billings said. “It’s a series of a lot of different things, including conferences, conventions and sports events.”

Other factors are day-to-day leisure and business travelers, weddings, reunions and sports events.

Overnight visitors spent $98.43 a day on lodging, food and beverages. Day-trip visitors spent $42.09 a person.

The visitors are tracked by a calculation using the city’s 5 percent bed tax at hotels and motels, Billings said.

Also estimated are “earned editorial coverage” generated about Lawrence, which amounted to $379,758. That includes work the bureau did with travel and other writers and reporters, Billings said. It’s calculated by what it would cost to pay for that coverage in column inches.

“That’s coverage we don’t have to buy, but we spend a fair amount of time working with them,” Billings said.

The sluggish economy this year is expected to bring a reduction in spending, she said.

“We know it’s going to go down, but you just don’t know until the end of the year,” Billings said. “That fluctuates from quarter to quarter.”

There are several new events coming to the area this year, including sporting events and basketball tournaments. Last month’s Kennedy Center American College Film Festival regional competition was one of them, she noted.