A year after a new tax on local hotel and motel stays started, a newly-formed organization will begin spending that money to market local attractions.
Two of the first expenses: a director and a marketing firm.
The Johnson County Convention, Visitor and Tourism Board, which is made up of nine members appointed by the Johnson County commissioners and Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers, began meeting last year to discuss how to spend the money from the county’s innkeeper’s tax. The tax charges an additional 5 percent on local hotel and motel stays in Johnson County and is expected to raise about $550,000 this year.
“We think it is a good first year, more than lot of places have started off with,” board president Michael Neal said.
In 2017, the board plans to spend about $406,000, which includes $75,000 for the new director’s salary, $250,000 for a marketing firm and the remainder for expenses such as travel, training, rent and equipment.
The purpose is to promote Johnson County.
The new director’s job will be to build relationships with organizations in the county, work with various community groups, help manage the marketing firm and work on projects for the board, Neal said.
The board will begin its search for an executive director in January and wants to have one hired by February as a contractor for a one-year term, with the option of extending the contract, Neal said. Some expenses the board had set aside for hiring a director, such as funds for health insurance and social security, won’t be used if the director is hired as a contractor and not a county employee, he said.
The marketing firm will be tasked with putting together a digital marketing plan and keeping track of metrics to measure if the marketing programs are successful, Neal said.
Board members considered several options for how to set up the new tourism bureau, such as creating or partnering with a nonprofit, but settled on maintaining direct control over the effort by hiring an executive director and marketing firm that report to the board, Neal said.
The group will market everything from restaurants to shops to resorts, but will also include larger attractions, such as Freedom Springs or the Greenwood Park Mall, which are both already marketed, because people coming from out of the county or from another state may not be familiar with them, Neal said.
“Everything is fair game,” Neal said, “Not everything is in Greenwood or Franklin.”
The board will be looking at ways to measure whether its efforts have been successful.
“We want to see increased hotel stays, that is a big part of an increased economic impact,” Neal said.
Collecting that data is one of the tasks they have in mind for the marketing firm, he said.
“The increases in all those areas will begin to tell us if we are successful. If there are increased sales, we are clearly having an impact,” Neal said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”By the numbers” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Johnson County Convention, Visitor and Tourism Board approved spending about $406,000 in 2017:
Director: $99,000
Marketing firm: $250,000
Additional expenses: $57,000
[sc:pullout-text-end]
