Tourism agency reports return on investment to Lockport Council
By Thomas J. Prohaska
- NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU
Updated: 07/24/08 6:41 AM
LOCKPORT — The president of the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp. told the Common Council on Wednesday that Lockport received almost $16 in value for every dollar it contributed to the countywide tourism agency last year.
John Percy said that about 30 percent of his staff’s time is spent marketing Lockport, which sends three-quarters of its hotel and motel “bed tax” to the NTCC. That contributed $87,389 to the corporation’s $2.8 million budget.
Niagara Falls and Niagara County also contribute bed tax revenues to the corporation.
Percy said the NTCC is required to provide at least a 15- to-1 return on investment. The 16-to-1 figure he reported for Lockport is the same as the countywide figure he quoted to the County Legislature on Tuesday.
Percy calculated his agency’s Lockport impact by using percentages of its overall spending on trade shows, publications and maps, as well as a proportion of the tourists the NTCC takes credit for drumming up, based on a survey of tourists by Niagara University.
Mayor Michael W. Tucker questioned the methodology. “How do you differentiate [the results of] your marketing efforts from those of the Senecas?” he asked.
Percy said he directed the survey takers and contracted agencies providing data not to count anyone who stays at the Seneca Niagara Casino’s Niagara Falls hotel as a tourist for whom the NTCC can take the credit.
“Our report does not include any Seneca Niagara Casino numbers. I don’t want that number to cloud our regular hotel numbers,” he said. Percy called the Senecas’ hotel “600 rooms that are filled with a 98 percent occupancy rate all year long.”
Percy said data from Smith Travel Research showed a 7.5 percent increase in Niagara County hotel occupancy rates in 2007 over 2006, with a 13.3 percent growth in hotel revenue.
Percy acknowledged that there had been some closures and reductions in available rooms in Niagara Falls last year, but he said the increases shown in the Smith data were for hotel rooms that existed in 2007 as well as 2006. “The reduction in inventory was taken into account,” he said.
He said the NTCC received 146,027 inquiries in 2007, a 37 percent increase over 2006. Using an average of 2z people per party, and survey results that estimated 66 percent of those who inquired actually visited here, the NTCC claims responsibility for producing 240,944 tourists in 2007.
The Niagara University survey results estimate those people spent $46 million in the county, a figure Percy said does not include visitors on bus tours. Dividing that number into the NTCC’s $2.8 million budget produces the 16-to-1 return on investment.
Lockport received $1.38 million in “direct value,” Percy said, which is 15.8-to-1 when divided into the bed tax money.
In a brief special meeting Wednesday, the Council doubled the size of its appropriation for repairs to valves at the water filtration plant. It allocated $22,301 in May to fix two valves, but Director of Engineering Norman D. Allen reported a third defective valve was found.
“These valves are very, very large; very, very old; and very, very far down in the basement,” said Alderman Patrick W. Schrader, D-4th Ward.
