Obama's proposed tourism strategy could boost St. Louis economy

KMOV.com

Posted on January 19, 2012 at 9:54 PM

Updated today at 10:20 PM

ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com)- A world-wide attraction like the Gateway Arch may put St. Louis on the international tourism map, but lesser known attractions like blues music and the Fabulous Fox Theatre could help keep the tourists coming back.


link: http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Obamas-p ... 28633.html

Extrmely important - not just for STL but for the USA in general. Fortress America has killed international tourism. A lot of people say "why bother" when they can go to Canada or another destination without the hassle and wait.

Leveraging STL for international tourists though, they've talked about Blues and music which is fine - the city needs to develop a district on that to be really effective - but selling STL as a 'destination' is going to be hard. Most tourists, if they're going to the Midwest, are going to Chicago, and if they want blues/jazz, most people think of New Orleans. What STL needs to do is to sell it as a place you have to stop at on your way somewhere else. They've mentioned Rte 66, which is good, also consider selling it as a place between NO and Chicago along I-55. It was/is a gateway city anyways, why not tout that?

STL needs to be ready for these international tourists, and that starts with the hospitality industry. There is only one (and it's very ordinary) youth hostel in the entire city. Staff tend to have limited language skills (English or Spanish), which affects how welcoming a place is perceived. More people who speak Mandarin/Hindi/Japanese would be good, as well as being able to quickly employ backpakers who speak any number of language, though that's more a national policy issue, but is related to youth hostels since so many employ backpackers instead of charging for room nights.

Bottom line, it's a good thing what Obama's done, but the challenge now falls to the CVC to leverage this potential.

Fort Worth, Texas recently took over every advertisement of my L station in Chicago. Every. single. advertisement. 
In five years of living on the Northside of Chicago, I have never seen an advertisement for St. Louis. 

Who is responsible for regional branding? A city of travel hungry 20 somethings who love trains and St. Louis begs to be forgotten. 

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Fort Worth, Texas recently took over every advertisement of my L station in Chicago. Every. single. advertisement. 
In five years of living on the Northside of Chicago, I have never seen an advertisement for St. Louis. 

Who is responsible for regional branding? A city of travel hungry 20 somethings who love trains and St. Louis begs to be forgotten. 

Explore St. Louis

I know they have or used to take out ads on the "Chicago Sports Network". When I was in Indianapolis, I would see Explore STL ads on Bulls games at restaurants or bars that had the CSN feed of the game on.

Auggie wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Fort Worth, Texas recently took over every advertisement of my L station in Chicago. Every. single. advertisement. 
In five years of living on the Northside of Chicago, I have never seen an advertisement for St. Louis. 

Who is responsible for regional branding? A city of travel hungry 20 somethings who love trains and St. Louis begs to be forgotten. 

Explore St. Louis

I know they have or used to take out ads on the "Chicago Sports Network". When I was in Indianapolis, I would see Explore STL ads on Bulls games at restaurants or bars that had the CSN feed of the game on.

That's a weird niche target audience - Living in Indianapolis, fan of Chicago Bulls and interested in visiting St. Louis.  

IND - STL is a pretty solid city pair for regional tourism. I've definitely seen a fair share of Indy + Indiana tourism ads around town.

GoHarvOrGoHome wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

IND - STL is a pretty solid city pair for regional tourism. I've definitely seen a fair share of Indy + Indiana tourism ads around town.

Sure, but then advertise on Bally's Indianapolis or whatever during Pacer games.  Odd that they're adding in another layer with the Bulls broadcasts in Indianapolis.  (Unless commercials on CHSN are all the same, regardless of what market you're in - I only watched a less-than legal stream, as the OTA CHSN wasn't available in my market)

Bart Harley Jarvis wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Auggie wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Fort Worth, Texas recently took over every advertisement of my L station in Chicago. Every. single. advertisement. 
In five years of living on the Northside of Chicago, I have never seen an advertisement for St. Louis. 

Who is responsible for regional branding? A city of travel hungry 20 somethings who love trains and St. Louis begs to be forgotten. 

Explore St. Louis

I know they have or used to take out ads on the "Chicago Sports Network". When I was in Indianapolis, I would see Explore STL ads on Bulls games at restaurants or bars that had the CSN feed of the game on.

That's a weird niche target audience - Living in Indianapolis, fan of Chicago Bulls and interested in visiting St. Louis.  

If the ad was running on CSN, I assume everyone watching the Bulls through CSN was getting the ad

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Fort Worth, Texas recently took over every advertisement of my L station in Chicago. Every. single. advertisement. 
In five years of living on the Northside of Chicago, I have never seen an advertisement for St. Louis. 

Who is responsible for regional branding? A city of travel hungry 20 somethings who love trains and St. Louis begs to be forgotten. 

Idk, all I hear from Chicago people is how awful St. Louis is. The barstool chicago office right now running out videos constantly of the “worst cities” and every single one of them saying how much St. Louis “stinks” and is “the slums a couple blocks from Busch stadium” (I would think Soulard would be those people’s dream). The “St. Louis is Boring” shirts I see everywhere, the constant hate I always hear from Chicago people that I ended up in grad school with in StL, every architecture boat guide telling the joke to a bunch of people from everywhere that Chicago sends all their trash and sewage down the river to St. Louis, etc, etc. I’m not from either place but lived in both and just have never seen a group of people (Chicago dwellers) hate on anything so much (St. Louis)

I would think a bunch of 20 something would love soulard, the breweries, Forest Park, cherokee st, etc etc but not sure the L ad would do anything but invite Chicago people to just talk about how horrible it is

Still seems like an obvious opportunity for some regional tourism

And yes Chicagoans have to punch down on the likes of StL to cope with being the third-soon-to-be-fourth-or-fifth city that struggles to occupy even a Seattle sized spot in the general conscience of US society

Aston Villa fans coming to town this week. Show them your best, STL.

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

Jul 27, 2025

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 16, 2025

Fort Worth, Texas recently took over every advertisement of my L station in Chicago. Every. single. advertisement. 
In five years of living on the Northside of Chicago, I have never seen an advertisement for St. Louis. 

Who is responsible for regional branding? A city of travel hungry 20 somethings who love trains and St. Louis begs to be forgotten. 

Idk, all I hear from Chicago people is how awful St. Louis is. The barstool chicago office right now running out videos constantly of the “worst cities” and every single one of them saying how much St. Louis “stinks” and is “the slums a couple blocks from Busch stadium” (I would think Soulard would be those people’s dream). The “St. Louis is Boring” shirts I see everywhere, the constant hate I always hear from Chicago people that I ended up in grad school with in StL, every architecture boat guide telling the joke to a bunch of people from everywhere that Chicago sends all their trash and sewage down the river to St. Louis, etc, etc. I’m not from either place but lived in both and just have never seen a group of people (Chicago dwellers) hate on anything so much (St. Louis)

I would think a bunch of 20 something would love soulard, the breweries, Forest Park, cherokee st, etc etc but not sure the L ad would do anything but invite Chicago people to just talk about how horrible it is

It is odd because the same people will go to Nashville and rave about how great it is. I think St. Louis struggles a lot with presentation. I think if regional leaders actually put some good money into cleaning up downtown and the surrounding neigborhoods, really working on connectivity, St. Louis would have a much different perception. Also, the Illinois side of the metro coming into the city is one of the worst stretches of highways in America in terms of blight. 

addxb2 wrote: ↑

Jul 29, 2025

Aston Villa fans coming to town this week. Show them your best, STL.

F*** Matty Cash

dweebe wrote: ↑

Jul 29, 2025

goat314 wrote: ↑

Jul 29, 2025

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

Jul 27, 2025

Idk, all I hear from Chicago people is how awful St. Louis is. The barstool chicago office right now running out videos constantly of the “worst cities” and every single one of them saying how much St. Louis “stinks” and is “the slums a couple blocks from Busch stadium” (I would think Soulard would be those people’s dream). The “St. Louis is Boring” shirts I see everywhere, the constant hate I always hear from Chicago people that I ended up in grad school with in StL, every architecture boat guide telling the joke to a bunch of people from everywhere that Chicago sends all their trash and sewage down the river to St. Louis, etc, etc. I’m not from either place but lived in both and just have never seen a group of people (Chicago dwellers) hate on anything so much (St. Louis)

I would think a bunch of 20 something would love soulard, the breweries, Forest Park, cherokee st, etc etc but not sure the L ad would do anything but invite Chicago people to just talk about how horrible it is

It is odd because the same people will go to Nashville and rave about how great it is. I think St. Louis struggles a lot with presentation. I think if regional leaders actually put some good money into cleaning up downtown and the surrounding neigborhoods, really working on connectivity, St. Louis would have a much different perception. Also, the Illinois side of the metro coming into the city is one of the worst stretches of highways in America in terms of blight. 

The Barstool chuds also do the dumping on St. Louis thing because it gets lots of clicks for engagement. St. Louis people always fight back hard. 

They also probably think bachelorette party tractors, WOO HOO girls and soulless corporate party bars with celebrity theming are a good time.

Dumping on St. Louis is extremely normalized. When I lived in Indianapolis, my coworkers said I was "from the hood" when they learned I was from St. Louis. And there were the East St. Louis jokes as well.

This despite the fact STL City+County have roughly the same number of murders as Indianapolis/Marion County despite us having 400k more people. Funnily enough, they also thought Indy was a lot bigger than St. Louis even though it's considerably smaller. Just so much misinformation and general ignorance about St. Louis from pretty much everyone across the Midwest, and as a result dumping on us is "cool" and "gets clicks".

“ St. Louis continues to outperform while Houston faced tough hurricane comp
The majority of the top 25 U.S. hotel markets posted negative RevPAR comps due primarily to weekday declines. Nine markets saw positive RevPAR across both weekdays and weekends, led by St. Louis (+30.8%). St. Louis has ranked in the top three among top 25 markets in six of the last eight weeks. Over the past two weeks, St. Louis benefited from the 10-day General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist held from July 3-10.”

https://www.costar.com/article/37512351 ... BFh98jTb8A