Sunday, October 17, 1999
Tall Stacks boosts image, coffers
But no one knows extent of impact
BY JOHN J. BYCZKOWSKI
The Cincinnati Enquirer
It's the fourth Tall Stacks celebration in 11 years. The hotels are predictably full, the restaurants predictably busy.
The direct economic impact is about $40 million. That's what Tall Stacks officials expect tourists to spend during their stays here.
But is there an impact next week, or the week after? Does the visibility gained by Cincinnati pay off in more tourism later?
Logic says it does, but the answer is no one knows for sure.
“It's time to put a better handle to what this event brings in,” said Gayle Harden-Renfro, director of communications for the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau. To that end, the bureau is surveying visitors at a number of local events this year, including Jammin' on Main, the Coors Light Jazz Festival, Taste of Cincinnati and Tall Stacks.
“It's an attempt to put an accurate face on what this means to (the) region,” she said.
The celebration is portrayed as one that increases the city's visibility. The 1995 festival generated 482 million impressions; that many people saw images of paddle-wheelers in the media, and this year more than a half billion such impressions are expected.
“It puts your city's image out there nationally and internationally so people know who you are,” said Tall Stacks executive director Richard Greiwe, “and every time there's a picture of Tall Stacks on television or in a newspaper, the skyline of the city is usually in the background and the boats are in the foreground ...”
The hope is that businesses might discover Cincinnati and choose to locate here. Do they?
“We have no way of tracking that,” Mr. Greiwe said.
Rex Repass of Marketvision Research Inc., a travel market research company in Blue Ash that is conducting the convention bureau's surveys, said comprehensive studies of Tall Stacks's effects haven't been done, but other studies give an idea of what kind of tourism business the city is building.
“We do have some data that there is a high awareness and interest in this event, not just from Greater Cincinnati but from outside the area,” he said.
And past research also says “once they've experienced Cincinnati, they tend to come back,” he said.
The convention bureau says, for instance, that 29 percent of those who came to this July's Ujima Cinci-Bration festival were from outside of Cincinnati. Two-thirds of them had also been to last year's festival, and on average each spent $494.
The convention bureau is also benefiting from Tall Stacks. It invited six meeting planners to Cincinnati during the festival, and 200 members of the Ohio Travel Association scheduled their annual meeting here during Tall Stacks weekend, Ms. Renfro said.
Laura Long, executive director of the Cincinnati Business Committee and an advocate for building a tourism business locally, said by the year 2010, $1.5 trillion will be spent worldwide on tourism.
“It's a huge growth industry,” she said. “Laying groundwork with these kinds of events will allow us to capitalize on this industry. (Tall Stacks) is the kind of event people are looking for.”
Bensons Inc. is one local business kept busy by Tall Stacks. Its catering business is serving four of the riverboats, while Bensons' BB Riverboats, Mike Fink's restaurant and others are all busy, said president Jim Bernstein.
“It's hard to really quantify, but we get comments from people saying they come back,” Mr. Bernstein said. “We see people from all over the country who come” to the festival.
Barleycorn's riverfront restaurant in Newport also sees repeat business from Tall Stacks. “We do know it brings people in,” said owner Ken Heil. “There are people that remember us and will come back and tell us they were here for Tall Stacks.”
Mr. Heil said business is more than double normal levels at Barleycorn's, which also sets up buffets for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The Hyatt Regency Cincinnati is sold out as well, but it's getting help from the Pittsburgh Steelers and their fans, in town for today's game against the Bengals, as well as a convention that has the hotel sold out for the rest of the week.
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