Wyoming Business: Cheyenne seeks ‘heroes’ to spur convention action

CHEYENNE — The Cheyenne Area Convention and Visitors Bureaus is looking for “hometown heroes” who will help bring new meetings and conventions to Wyoming’s capital city.

The visitors’ bureau has unveiled a new program called “Live the Legend at Home” that rewards Cheyenne-area residents who successfully encourage groups to meet in Cheyenne, plus it will offer logistical help in planning and putting on the meeting.

“Cheyenne residents participate in a number of local, regional and national organizations,´ said Janet Cowley, the CACVB’s director of convention sales. “We’d like our residents to use their positions in these organizations to bring these organizations’ meetings to Cheyenne.”

The visitors’ bureau will help both the “heroes” and their organizations with the logistics of bringing a meeting to Cheyenne, including planning, bid solicitations from hotels and restaurants, registration assistance and even transportation on the Cheyenne Trolley.

If the meeting generates 250 room nights in hotels, they’ll even throw in help at the registration table, a banner and the key to the city from Mayor Jack Spiker.

The promotion, which runs through this year, also offers some tangible rewards for those heroes instrumental in bringing a new meeting to Cheyenne, including publicity and recognition. The bureau will also offer prize packages of hotel stays, meals and entertainment valued at approximately $240 for small meetings (up to 50 room nights) to more than $600 for large conventions.

Cheyenne lodging tops state

Cheyenne’s push for more visitors notwithstanding, the capital city is already doing pretty well attracting visitors. Cheyenne once again had the highest year-round occupancy rate in Wyoming in 2001, according to the Rocky Mountain Lodging Report.

Cheyenne’s occupancy rate of 68.5 percent was the highest of any city tracked by Rocky Mountain Lodging in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. The city’s occupancy was 66.4 percent last year and has climbed steadily from 60.8 percent in 1997.

Wyoming’s statewide rate was 62.3 percent, virtually unchanged from 2000. Colorado’s rate for 2001 was 59.4 percent, down from 64 percent the year before.

Cheyenne’s average room rate for 2001 was $58.79, second only to Jackson, Wyo., but only slightly ahead of other Wyoming cities and well below the averages in neighboring cities such as Fort Collins ($79.98) and Denver ($88.52).

Wyo. bankers hear good news

CHEYENNE — Wyoming bankers are hearing welcome predictions that the national economy is rapidly rebounding.

In fact, the economy should return to a booming economy again by 2003 because of a return to increased productivity, economist Brian S. Wesbury told the Wyoming Bankers Association’s winter meeting in Cheyenne.

A continuing boom in new technology has led to increased productivity, efficiency and wealth, even in a down economy, he told the group. The coming year will bring “an incredible return of productivity that’s going to drive our economy right back up the growth rates that we had in the 1990s,´ said Wesbury, vice president and chief economist for a Chicago investment bank, Griffin, Kubik, Stephens & Thompson Inc.

“I believe we are about to set another record in length of recovery,” Wesbury said. “We’re going to see continued growth in real income and profits. We’re going to see the economy turn around. We’re going to see incredible wealth created. We’re going to see more business starts and more inventions in the next 10 years than we’ve seen in any 10-year period of our history.”

Although Wesbury was critical of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for going too far in cutting interest rates and causing deflation, all the signs point to recovery this year.

“I am very, very optimistic about the future,” he said. “The only thing I worry about is policy mistakes that could bring it to an end.”

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