Representatives from the Lake Geneva Business Improvement District received a grant to acquire software that will help them track visitor spending.
Lake Geneva Tourism Board members approved July 8 awarding an $11,000 grant to Business Improvement District officials that will enable them to participate in a collaborative program offered by representatives from the Walworth County Tourism Bureau and purchase a one-year subscription to Placer.ai.
The grant was approved by a 4-2 vote, with Tourism Commissioner Zakia Pirzada and Councilwoman Mary Jo Fesenmeyer voting against it.
Business Improvement District officials plan to use about $5,000 of the grant money to acquire a one-year subscription to Placer.ai software as part of the collaborative program and $6,000 to manage reports based on the information the software provides.
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The Placer.ai software allows subscribers to get information such as how many people visited their business, how many people attended their events, what region or community their visitors are coming from, how many visitors stay in their hotels, and the average income of the average tourist.
This information is captured through applications visitors use on their mobile phones. Businesses typically use this information to promote their products and services to potential customers, and tourism organizations use it to promote future events and local attractions.
As part of the grant, representatives from the Business Improvement District agreed to provide monthly reports to members of the Tourism Committee showing the number of attendees at events awarded marketing grants and what neighborhoods and communities the attendees came from.
Representatives from the Business Improvement District will also submit a report to the organization that hosted the event.
Officials with the organization also plan to use the information to gauge foot traffic to the downtown business district.
“For our part, we’re looking at not only the impact of the event, but also the potential attraction for new business development in the future,” said Alexandria Vinanti, executive director of the Business Improvement District. “So it’s a multifaceted issue on our side, but we’re going to work together to look at the data in a way that will be favorable for future grant funding.”
Councilman Ken Howell, who also serves on the tourism committee, said the software will help committee members decide whether to grant grants to future events and let hosting organizations know in which areas they want to promote their events.
“The benefit we get from this as a tourism board is we can evaluate the places we give grants to, see what was successful, where we pulled talent from, and decide whether we want to continue it next year,” Howell said. “For example, let’s say there’s a ping pong tournament in Lake Geneva that we sponsor and all the participants are from Chicago. We tell them that that could be a promotional opportunity, or if no one comes, we don’t want to sponsor that event next year. That’s information we use to evaluate our grants.”
Tourism committee chairman Brian Waspi said the software would also be able to provide information showing attendance figures for events over previous years.
“You can actually go back in time,” Waspi said, “so if someone comes and says, ‘Hey, this is our fourth year,’ you can go back through each year and not only see how many people came, but what percentage of them went to a hotel after the event and stayed overnight.”
Proposal to reduce subsidy amount
Pirzada proposed giving the Business Improvement District officials a $5,000 grant so they could pay only the subscription costs, since they plan to use the software for their own purposes as well as preparing reports for the Tourist Commission.
“If the BID is using it outside of the tourism board, then they should cover the administration costs, we shouldn’t have to pay that,” Pirzada said. “The BID gets the software because of the tourism board, and because they’re using it outside of tourism, they can pay $5,000 instead of $11,000.”
Fesenmeyer instead offered a motion to award the Business Improvement District a grant of $5,500, with $2,500 going toward a Placer.ai subscription and $3,000 going to the organization that will manage the reports.
“I don’t think we’re talking about the quality of the data. To me it’s not about the amount, it’s about how it’s being used,” Fesenmeyer said. “If you say you’re going to provide $2,500 for the subscription and $3,000 for the administrative costs of ingesting the reports, I think you can justify it and say to people, ‘The BID will cover the other half of the cost.'”
Waspi said he supports providing an $11,000 grant to the Business Improvement District to use the software to provide valuable information to the Tourist Commission.
“That’s $11,000 for one year’s worth of data. The information we get from this data will make our grant application process 100 times more efficient. We grant more than that amount to a single event every month. We’re perfectly happy with that request,” Waspi said.
Tourism Commissioner Katherine Stoodley also agreed with awarding the $11,000 grant because the software will enable commission members to make more informed decisions about grant awards.
“This is a very small amount compared to the average grant that we consider and award,” Studely said. “I really don’t think $11,000 is that much money considering what we’re doing here.”
After some discussion, the motion to award the $5,500 grant failed by a 4-2 vote, with Fesenmeyer and Pirzada voting in favor.
Representatives from the Walworth County Tourism Bureau have been offering the Placer.ai Collaborative Program for the past few months, and so far, about seven local agencies and businesses have decided to participate in the program.
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