LOCKED&LOADED Arkansas Tourism forecasts big things to come

By Dwain Hebda

From the Ozarks to the Ouachitas and from the Delta plains to glittering city centers, the postpandemic world has been very, very good to Arkansas tourism.

For the three years leading up to the COVID emergency and related restrictions, visitor numbers and tourist spending in The Natural State were already creeping upward. After a justifiable dip in 2020, a slingshot effect in 2021 demolished all previous numbers, according to Arkansas Tourism’s most recent Economic Impact Report.

More than 41 million people visited Arkansas in 2021, a 14% increase over 2019 with 30.1 million total leisure visitors, a spike of more than 11%. Four out of 10 visitors spent an overnight in the state, a 23% jump over 2019 totals.

Lodging is just one area where visitors showed a willingness to spend money in the state. As per the Economic Impact Report, total visitor spending topped $8 billion, equaling a mark previously set in 2019. Of this, 30% was spent on transport, and 29% was spent on food and beverage. State tax receipts were up 9% to $467 million, and local taxes generated totaled $186 million, 10% over 2019.

Travis Napper, director of Arkansas Division of Tourism, said despite the robust numbers, the public hasn’t seen anything yet. He said the goal heading into the new year was to make such numbers the norm and not a byproduct of pent-up demand.

“There’s so much potential that I’m ready to see it fully in action,” he said. “We have great partnerships that exist, but there’s still potential to take a lot of those to the next level and initiate new ones. Some of those are other governmental partners and other agencies, and some of those are private businesses. Some of those are just other organizations within our state or regionally that we can work with.”

Matching the remarkable numbers of 2021 is a tall order and will require more than just goodwill. Napper is quick to point out that in addition to partnerships and momentum, the department also has considerable resources at its disposal to help achieve its goals.

“One thing we’re looking forward to is to unleash the full extent of the funding we have available to us, for what it’s been made available,” he said, referring to the state’s so-called tourism tax. “This industry went to bat for us and for itself many, many years ago to have this funding, and we have a good bit of it ready to deploy. I think now we’re going to have full authority to go deploy it.”

At the same time, Napper said the department isn’t merely going to go on a spending binge but will deploy resources strategically to get the biggest bang for its buck. He said work has been done behind the scenes to identify those areas of promotion and marketing that provide the highest return on investment.

“Over the past few years, we’ve done the best we could to set the table with certain research projects that showed us where funding can be used and where it’ll be used most effectively,” he said. “Now we’ll have even more resources to do that, and that will be with the main goal of elevating our image, elevating our exposure, especially around outdoor recreation, going back to knowing our strengths and sharing them abundantly.”

The tax, a 2% assessment levied on lodging and attractions, was created to support the kind of marketing Napper envisions. The total tax collected has grown substantially since 2011, increasing every year except 2020. In fact, from 2017 to 2019 alone, every quarterly tax haul bested the previous on a year-over-year basis. In total, those three years brought in more than $50 million for marketing efforts. In 2021, the total was just under $21 million.

“That 2% we’ve talked about, we’ve had 20 consecutive months of each month being the best individual month we’ve ever had,” Napper said. “If you look at the economic impact report, 2019 had been the peak year, which we’ve since reached or surpassed, outside of employment.

“[The tax] definitely is helping to continue to elevate what happens on a statewide level. We don’t have to target [spending] in any one place, but where we think it’s for the best impact of the entire state.”

The type of windfall the tax represents has drawn criticism in recent years, as many in the state’s tourism industry decry what they consider a too-conservative approach to the very marketing for which the tax is earmarked. Arkansas Tourism spent $7.5 million in total media buy in 2021, a little more than half of the $14.2 million in tax collected in 2020’s pandemic-impacted year.

Mike Mills, newly appointed secretary of Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism, said he’s not afraid to leverage resources more broadly for the purposes intended, be it money collected via taxes or by appropriation. He said under his administration, more money will be spent to attract both native and out-of-state tourism activity.

“Part of promoting Arkansas is to promote travel within,” he said. “We now have the funds to do a much better job than we did 40 years ago. We now have additional capabilities by having money to spend on travel Arkansas first, see Arkansas first and so on.

“We also have the 52 state parks, which we promote, and they have their own promotions budget. This is the 100th year for Arkansas state parks, for instance, and we have planned a lot around that. We’ve even come up with this little passport that you take and get stamped at each of the state parks when you go.”

Mills also noted how tourism now has a more direct line to the state’s leadership. In one of her first official actions, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued an executive order establishing The Natural State Initiative. Chaired by First Gentleman Bryan Sanders, the body will advise the governor on the best ways to promote tourism, specifically related to outdoor recreation.

“The governor wants to be known as the education governor, but if you dip down underneath that, Parks and Tourism is going to be next,” Mills said. “Literally, Bryan is going to be around us all the time. That means we have the ear of the governor every day. I think that young leadership is really going to help us push a lot of our agenda out there.

“I also know Bryan is very focused on the partnerships that we have outside of the government, such as foundations that are providing millions of dollars for the Murphy Arts District in El Dorado, the Walton Foundation that’s doing all the bike trails in Northwest Arkansas and elsewhere, and other partners as well. I know that’s going to help to have that push behind us.”