By the numbers:
8.5 percent — Increase in occupancy rates
160 percent — Increase in visits to Chamber of Greater Springfield tourism website
$40 billion — Tourism impact statewide
$370,000 — Estimated tourism impact in Clark County
Sources: Chamber of Greater Springfield, Ohio Travel Association
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The Springfield News-Sun provides unmatched coverage of jobs and the economy in Clark and Champaign counties. For this story, the newspaper spoke to leaders in Clark County as well as area business owners to discuss tourism’s impact on the county.
Clark County hotels have seen a boost in business this year as the economy improves and more visitors are making weekend stays, according to data from the Chamber of Greater Springfield.
Hotel occupancy rates are up 8.5 percent through July compared to the same time last year, which means more money spent at area hotels and motels, as well as other area businesses, said Chris Schutte, the chamber’s director of marketing and the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.
Nationally tourism spending is up as well, improving about 6.5 percent compared to the same time last year, said Melinda Huntley, executive director of the Ohio Travel Association. The industry has a roughly $40 billion impact on Ohio’s economy overall, she said.
“We are definitely in an upward trend,” Schutte said.
The travel industry has bounced back relatively well since the Great Recession, Huntley said, but local cities and state officials need to constantly work to promote the region as a tourism destination.
Locally, tourism spending has ticked up steadily since the economic slow down, with hotel occupancy rates increasing more than 11 percent from 2012 to 2013, and improving slightly again last year, Schutte said. In the past, business travel drove much of the improvement, but evidence exists that leisure travel has started to play a larger role as well.
Several factors could be playing a role, including an improving economy, more weekend stays by visitors, and a revamped bureau’s website designed to work better over mobile devices, he said.
“Weekday stays can be influenced by conferences, meetings and conventions,” Schutte said. “We’ve done a much better job over the past few years of attracting those types of events, but we’ve really seen this growth on the weekend side.”
Champaign County occupancy rates weren’t available Monday.
The Springfield chamber has worked recently to boost local tourism spending, including advertising on Springfield City Area Transit buses to promote local attractions like the Springfield Museum of Art and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. It also revamped its tourism website last year to make it easier to use on mobile devices.
Visits to the tourism website are up 160 percent compared to the same period in 2014, Schutte said. More visitors are also using mobile devices to look at it, according to information from the chamber.
“We invested a lot of time, effort and dollars into completely re-sculpting our web presence from the ground up,” Schutte said. “Travel decisions are being made more and more on mobile, but also in-market decisions are being made almost exclusively on mobile devices.”
In Springfield, Schutte estimated tourism has a roughly $368 million impact in Clark County.
Some area hotel operators also said they’ve seen an uptick in business.
“We have been seeing a little more business this year, but it’s also not the slow season yet,” said Jamie Lynch, an assistant general manager at Country Inn and Suites, 1751 W. First St.
Business has been better than last year, but she noted demand for hotel rooms typically starts to slow in October. She noted the hotel has seen improvement both from business travelers as well as visitors staying overnight and on weekends for events in the county.
“It’s actually a little bit of everything,” Lynch said.
The Courtyard by Marriott, 100 S. Fountain Ave., hasn’t noticed a significant improvement in occupancy, but the hotel has seen a boost in revenue from hotel room rates, said Becky Krieger, the general manager at the hotel. The hotel has made several upgrades as the economy improved, including purchasing higher-quality beds and installing a new patio on the restaurant, which could be open as early as November if the weather holds.
“We are getting some growth year-over-year, but we’re seeing it more in our rate than in our occupancy,” Krieger said.
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