The City Advertising and Promotion Commission completed discussion on the Eureka Springs Historical Museum’s contract for services as a city visitor center at their Aug. 27 meeting.
Museum Director Jeff Danos explained that there had been some confusion surrounding the museum’s contract with the CAPC. The museum is budgeted to receive $600 a month to act as a visitor center, which is separate from any marketing support requests the museum may make for events. In exchange, museum staff help visitors become acquainted with Eureka Springs (helping with parking apps, directions, etc.) as well as offer a public restroom and racks for magazines and cards for visitors to pick up.
Danos said that the museum also provides monthly and annual reports to the CAPC on visitor numbers, as well as doing visitor surveys. Danos said that if visitors decide to tour the museum is it a plus, and rack publications, bathrooms, and general helpfulness are all provided free of charge.
While commissioners were supportive of the continued agreement with the museum, commissioner Robert Schmid did discuss with Danos the possibility of increasing rack card space and asked Danos to find ways to continue to improve the visitor center aspects of the museum. CAPC staff did provide the contract between the museum and CAPC that had fresh text better defining the role of the museum.
In funding requests, Devin Henderson represented the Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce requesting $5,000 for the annual Christmas Parade of Lights, Holiday Home Decorating Contest, and Iconic and Historic Ends Tour. Going over the preliminary budget, Schmid asked about the inclusion of advertising in Eureka Magazine and Ozark Mountains Fun Guide, mentioning that a percentage of marketing must be directed outside of a 50-mile radius from Eureka Springs. Henderson said that the magazines are distributed statewide through the Arkansas Tourism Information Centers.
Rocky Horror Picture Show also had a request for $1,500 with Charles Mowrey explaining that the marketing would be used in a mix of digital and print marketing. He also said the event would be on Halloween night only, saying that the two events in previous years might have diluted the event. Both requests received unanimous approval.
The CAPC also went over the final draft for marketing support request applications that had previously been worked on at their workshop. Changes to how marketing support requests are made will begin in 2026.
The commission will meet in the future to decide what events will be considered “legacy” events. Staff explained that the legacy tag is there to assist in the budgeting process and any events including legacy events will still need to submit a request for funding annually. Changes to support requests also makes it that instead of events able to request funding at any meeting, that funding requests be funneled to four meetings each year with workshops prior to those meetings so commissioners have time to ask questions about the requests.
Other Items
- In the Finance Report, the CAPC July collections were $245,000 with a budget of $226,000 with year-to-date collections at $1 million with a budget of $1.1 million.
- Tourism Director Mike Maloney covered the success of various marketing campaigns, PR highlights in the past month by publications, and a slight drop in SEO based website visits, attributing the drop to things like Google’s AI Overview which often summarizes information on websites for anybody looking up information on Eureka Springs.
- Commissioner Heather Wilson-Vinson briefly discussed feedback that US 62 businesses were underrepresented in CAPC promotion efforts and asked that the commission consider how to better represent the US 62 businesses in 2026. Maloney mentioned that new data showed US 62 businesses represented 23 percent of visitation share in the past month and it would be worthy of discussion.
- Wilson-Vinson, following up on feedback, also asked staff to be mindful of social media posts, referencing the CAPC’s Instagram, and that they do not promote one business or endorse any one religion over another.