Tourist attraction: Visitors bureau brings in business
By Gerry Gilmour
The Forum - 10/30/1999

A tough week is a good week for Steve Hanson.

It's tough when you're short of rooms, and don't have enough room to seat everyone who wants to have breakfast with a presidential candidate.

But hey, that's business. And business in the hospitality industry is good these days.

Thank the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau for that, says Hanson.

The general manager of Fargo's Holiday Inn was among those who began pushing for the formation of a hospitality organization in the 1970s.

At the time, he says, hotels and motels handled most of their promotion in-house.

"There was kind of a fragmented effort going on," Hanson says. "We were ineffective doing it independently."

Jim Wold, general manager of the Holiday Inn at the time, directed Hanson to help direct an effort to form a hospitality association.

Fargo-Moorhead has long been a regional travel, tourism and convention center. Wold and others believed more people could be drawn here through a coordinated effort.

In 1975, the first meeting of the Fargo-Moorhead Area Hospitality Association was held.

The nation's first community-based organization devoted to the convention, tourism and travel trade was formed in the late 1800s in Detroit, according to Cole Carley, executive director of the F-M convention bureau today.

"Businessmen in Detroit figured out that there was a lot more money around when there were meetings in town," Carley says.

It wasn't until the 1970s, he says, that smaller metropolitan areas, such as Fargo-Moorhead, began to organize. "A lot of bureaus, outside of the major city ones, were created within a few years of one another," Carley says.

Hanson and others went from business to business, asking for donations of $50 and $100.

"We were successful," Hanson says. "We raised enough money to get it off the ground and the rest is history. We were off and running and it's been quite a ride since then."

The new association opened an office and hired a director.

The biggest breakthrough for Fargo-Moorhead came in 1981, when the states of North Dakota and Minnesota and the local governing bodies of Fargo and Moorhead agreed to a 2 percent tax on hotel and motel rooms.

That provided a steady stream of revenue to support the new organization, which was renamed as the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau.

In 1981 it became a member of the Minnesota Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus and began receiving support from the state of Minnesota.

Today the FMCVB is largely supported by revenue generated at 30 hotels and motels - and 3,400 rooms - in Fargo, Moorhead and Dilworth. West Fargo motels do not participate in the organization.

The FMCVB operates with a $710,000 annual budget.

"I remember when we had a budget of $35,000 and $50,000," says Hanson.

Carley, who had been a FMCVB board member and had served as its president in 1988-1989, came over from WDAY-TV in 1990 to replace original director Vince Lindstrom.

The city of Fargo in 1991 added an additional 1-cent room tax to finance construction and operation of the $1 million visitor center and FMCVB offices at Interstate 94 and 44th Street.

The "grain elevator" design was criticized in some circles when it opened in 1993, "but I think it has become a great signature for us out there," says Hanson.

Carley says the Fargodome, which had its first full year of operations in 1993, kicked Fargo-Moorhead "to the next tier" of convention and travel stops.

Dave Isaak, current president of the FMCVB and general manager of the Expressway Inn in Fargo, says the bureau generates business not only for motels and hotels but for restaurants and shops.

"Our main purpose is tourism and hospitality. Our mission is to bring in people and shoppers," Isaak says.

Tourism-related expenditures in Fargo-Moorhead generate more than $15 million annually. The hundreds of conferences and conventions bring in nearly 100,000 delegates.

Meanwhile, the tourism and convention industry supports some 3,000 jobs, and a payroll of more than $25 million.

Hanson says the FMCVB today is a "well-oiled machine," its 12 employees working hard to bring conventions, sports events and travelers to Fargo-Moorhead.

"Tourism's return is incredible - and it's new money," Hanson says. "It's not you and I recycling our money. It's people with a fistful of cash - hell-bent on spending it here."