GROW CLINTON: Of tourism, small business development and upcoming events | News

When you have writer’s block, the simplest thing is to just string together a series of thoughts into an article. This block is caused by the fact that Grow Clinton has been super busy requiring us to epitomize Chief Wearer of Hats.

Tourism

For example, a person reached out to ask about Clinton Iowa tourism numbers. I thought it would be fun to toot our own horn a bit on sharing our tourism numbers. The reality is we are holding strong.

The first tool we use is hotel/motel tax and also occupancy reports on our hotels. We had our first $100,000 hotel/motel check recently. Over the course of a decade, we have more than doubled the hotel/motel. Related, raised prices is also a sign of a successful tourist market. This year has been another incremental growth of hotel/motel tax.

This is driven by occupancy meeting or exceeding the state numbers for rural counties. For July, our occupancy was 59.9 whereas for the state our size town was 58.9. Over the year, we have been doing much better than the state’s 47.2. Nationwide 63% for a weekend is average. We are often there.

Interesting to some, our weekdays are stronger than some weekends, especially Sundays. This proves a very important point, for the average tourist, a large portion of our travelers are going to a larger city. Fulton sees this as well in their travel, lots of people in town on a Monday. Also, Fulton has a strong sign in book for the Windmill that shows the thousands of people that sign the guest book every month. You can do the math on travel party size to get a sense of if over 2,000 people signed in June, how many actual visitors that is.

Our River Cities are a stopping point. We have cellphone data that highlights this. Our traveler is going north and south on the Great River Road or going between Chicago and Des Moines.

We also track tourism expenditures as a long-time goal is to crack the top 10 counties. We are holding strong at 1% of the state’s tourist economy. We are continuing to grow, and these tax tables do not yet reflect Tailgate n Tallboys.

We are gaining new tools to do even a deeper dive into traveler data. Overall, we know our top 10 markets. We are fine tuning that message always. And we hear from the state that our numbers are holding strong or like with the concert, showing above average success. We always need to compare our numbers with the state to get the full picture. As on paper, a 58% occupancy might seem low but in actuality is acceptable.

EntreFuel

The other big focus has been on EntreFuel. If you are an entrepreneur or a startup, we implore you to reach out to our office to setup some meetings. You can do in person with Conor and Joel from the Small Business Development Center. Or you can do virtually through our Rural Ideas Network Business Lab. All the resources can be found here: https://www.growclinton.com/business-development/small-business/

The second Tuesday of the month at noon is always a workshop with Conor and the SBDC. There is a Rural Ideas Entrepreneur summit on September 12. We just hosted a Coffee Talk on our Business Lab. The resources are plentiful and we have experienced coaches in our network to workshop any idea. We are here to incubate tourist ideas as well.

Events

Finally, a few updates on some fun events. We are beginning to plan the 2025 Biz After 5 calendar. We are asking businesses interested in hosting a Biz After 5 to submit their name to [email protected]. Then in October, we will hold a lottery drawing to determine the calendar. This is because every year we have more businesses than available slots, and we want to make it equitable for everyone.

Then I’m very excited to see our River Roots: Newcomer Program launch. If you are a new resident or a new professional to town, and you are looking to learn about all the area has to offer, please reach out to [email protected] for details. The program is September 11 and September 18, from 5:30-8:30. September 11 is at Rastrelli’s and will cover all there is to do in the River Cities. September 18 is at the Eco-Center in Camanche and will be a trivia contest to learn even more about the River Cities. Afterwards, you can call yourself a Clintonian, a Fultonite, or a Camanchian (guess I need to learn what we call ourselves).