City renews promotion agreement

The Williston Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) was featured in three segments of Tuesday's Williston City Commission meeting.

Most importantly, city commissioners agreed to renew its Visitors Promotion Agreement with the city five more years, even though the CVB will move sometime this summer.

The agreement specifies that the CVB will still receive 95 percent of the revenue collected from a 2 percent lodging tax, and the city will retain 5 percent of the fees generated from the tax. In 2007, the CVB received just over $120,000 from the tax, an increase over the $103,935 collected in 2006.

Finance Commissioner Brad Bekkedahl announced some of the terms of the new agreement.

He said the city still provides some accounting services so it will continue to receive the 5 percent. Bekkedahl said agreement also will allow the CVB to continue to use tables and chairs for special events. He said the CVB will still submit its budget information to the city. There will be no use of the lodging tax for capital construction or the purchase of real property

The terms state the CVB will continue to use that revenue to promote, encourage and attract visitors to come to Williston and use travel and tourism facilities within Williston.

Either party has the right to discontinue the agreement with 60 days notice.

In a separate matter, the city agreed to pay $35,000 from the STAR Fund to pay for siding and exterior work the CVB's new office which will be located at the intersection of Airport Road and U.S. 2.

"This has been a project that has been many years in the works now," said Amy Krueger, executive director of the CVB.

She said the cost of the project will be just over $200,000.

"We have raised a lot of money for that," she said.

STAR Funds allocated will help with exterior and siding work at the site.

"It's going to create some office space that we don't have now. It will be a physical point for visitors to come and pick up information - find out about Fort Union/Fort Union, the parks and about the things in our area. It will do some job creation with part-time hours," Krueger told the commission.

Williston City Commission President Ward Koeser agreed this would be a visible way to network visitors to sites and events in the region.

The building was received by the CVB for $1, and moved into town. It was noted it was not an original Fort Buford building as a visitor site. Renovations, basement costs, renovations, moving the house and parking lot features will mount the cost to $200,000

"To have a visitors center like this will give us much higher visibility," said Williston Economic Development Director Tom Rolfstad.

Krueger spent an earlier portion of the meeting highlighting visitor promotion impacts on Williston. She said the CVB does advertising in major magazines to multiple interests, brochures, trade shows throughout the country and Canada, even motorcycle rallies. It also promotes major events such as Band Day, March's Sports and Recreation Show at the Raymond Family Community Center. New this year is the Ride for Life event which will attempt to involve motorcyclists en route to the Sturgis, S.D. motorcycle rally event to Relay for Life, and raise funds to fight cancer. She said 112 convention events were called upon to hold their events here, and assisted with over 80 conventions in 2007.

Krueger encouraged commissioners to attend, the Tourism Congress that will meet 10 a.m. March 5 at the El Rancho. Discussion will focus on tourism's economic impact on the state, industry challenges and growth opportunities, developing strategies to advance tourism in North Dakota and prioritize programs and action items for the 2009 North Dakota State Legislature.

"Tourism is the second leading industry in North Dakota, and it does impact the western side of North Dakota" she said. She said it has a $3.8 billion impact statewide.

She said the local marketing budget for the CVB totaled about $55,000, including $22,000 for advertising. $5,000 for group travel, $4,100 for outdoors, $4,800 for a golf campaign, $2,500 for FAM Tour travel writers, $4,150 for convention sales, $2,000 for tournament sales, $3,400 for motorcycle promotion, $21,900 for regional and state promotions, and $5,700 for trade shows.

In addition to the new visitor center site, she cited the Amtrak station grant for renovations and working on getting better signage on I-94, in southern North Dakota as major project efforts in the near future.