Tourism still strong

The Carbon County Visitor Council (CCVC) met at 10 a.m. on Saturday at the Cotton Tree Inn in Rawlins.

The approval of the agenda and the minutes from the regular meeting September 16 were done quickly.

The next order of business was to listen to Angie Iacovetto for the grant application for the Pumpkin Patch and Harvest Festival being put on by the Rawlins Chamber.

Iacovetto said that the pumpkins had been delivered on October 3 and that over 200 pumpkins have gone out in less than a week. The grant was approved.

After the financial report was approved, the council went over lodging tax revenue for October. The figures would actually represent lodging tax reported on or before September 30, 2020.

The county was still down in collections compared to the year before, collecting $87,816.23 versus $98,007.05 in 2019. Rawlins was up from $35,363.44 to $38,175.56. Saratoga also did better this year than last. This year lodging tax revenue from Saratoga was $4,184.03 whereas last year the revenue was $3,381.76. Medicine Bow was up from $88.25 last year to $224.18 and Elk Mountain went from $228.77 last year to collecting $402.66. Riverside, Sinclair, Encampment Dixon, all posted gains. No lodging tax revenue was reported in the Town of Baggs prior to September 30, Baggs is down from $515.15 the year before.

The total of the lodging tax revenue was $131,911.76 for October 2020 versus $138,136.35 October 2019,

Leslie Jefferson, CEO for the CCVC, said she was pleasantly surprised by the strong showing of the municipalities. The CCVC approved the disbursement of $13,191.18 to the different municipalities that contributed to the lodging tax.

The top five states requesting information packets were Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee, and Ohio.

Kristy Kennedy, office manager for the CCVC, said the numbers coming in from all the states were fairly even. The highest number of views for video were for Road Trip CC at 1,372. The video features Saratoga resident Danny Burau, owner of Firewater Public House.

The season total for visitors to the Riverside Visitor Center was 2,481.

The CCVC approved the purchase of the Madden Frontier Forward Campaign that will take a collection of Carbon County stories and create a content hub showcasing the tales to drive traffic to those areas.

The council voted on the winner of the Summer-Fall photo contest.

The Wyoming Office of Tourism offered a third round of funding from the CARES Act Relief Funds (CARF) for Wyoming lodging tax boards to support ongoing recovery efforts from the impacts of COVID.

The council approved applying for the third round of funding in the amount of $35,568.45. The funds must be spent by December 20, 2020.

The next scheduled meeting is at 10:30 a.m. on November 18 at the Sinclair Town Hall.