CEO Roundtable: Tourism

For this CEO Roundtable podcast, executives from local attractions sit down with Springfield Business Journal Executive Editor Christine Temple to talk tourism. This month's guests are Melissa Adler, executive director of the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield Foundation; Cynthia Carson, general manager at Sight & Sound Theatres; and Brad Thomas, president of Silver Dollar City.

An excerpt from the start of the podcast follows.

Christine Temple: I want to start with gauging the temperature of interest in your attractions and in the industries that you represent: national parks, theaters and attractions like Silver Dollar City. Visitor counts, advertiser support, any metric you use to gauge that health.
Cynthia Carson: At Sight & Sound Theaters, a lot of it is on our counts. But the exciting thing with Sight & Sound Theaters is that we like to change our shows, our productions, and they’re four years in the make when we get ready to do a new production. This year is a debut show for us, “David,” and we anticipate the numbers to be our best year that we’ve ever had, and our bookings are showing that already.
Temple: How many visitors do you have?
Carson: This year, we’re probably going to be shooting over 700,000, 750,000. For a theater, that is really good. We have 2,000-seat capacity. Our goal is about 425 shows a year. That’s a lot.
Brad Thomas: Silver Dollar City, 2023 was a record year. We had announced that it was the final year of the original Fire in the Hole, and then 2024, another record year, we had announced the new opening of a totally reimagined Fire in the Hole legacy indoor coaster. The leading indicators are showing that ’25 is going to be a good year for us, and we measure that with our attendance. We also measure it with all kinds of different scores. Our guests’ score, how guests rate us, is certainly critically important to us. Silver Dollar City is rocking, and so we’re super excited about 2025. We’ve done a lot of things in our mix with regard to what we’re doing for summer, our marketing program – to go out to families in Dallas, Texas, and Des Moines, Iowa, and communities all in between to reach them and invite them to visit us – is super important. We’re seeing really good responses from those outer markets. Any kind of news that talks about a softening of the economy and a softening of decision-making, we’re not yet seeing.
Temple: How many visitors did you see in ’24?
Thomas: 2.5 million visitors last year, a record year for us, and we’re super excited to build on top of that.
Melissa Adler: At Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, they also had a record year last year in attendance. They had nearly 360,000 visitors, and in general, visitation to national parks is up and set a record last year as well. I believe that during COVID, people discovered their national parks and the outdoors, and that enthusiasm has not waned at all. It has increased, and we think next year is going to be a very big year for Wilson’s Creek for a variety of reasons. The first being A250, which is the celebration of the country, 250 years. I think it will increase people’s interest in visiting national parks and learning about U.S. history and the American Civil War. And also Springfield is the host city for the kickoff to Route 66 Festival next year in April, and we anticipate catching a lot of visitors who are here for Route 66 as well.
Temple: This is almost 4 million visitors among your attractions. These visitors are not just coming for you, but they’re doing other things in the community. How do you gauge your economic impact, and what does your typical visitor do when they come to your attraction; what does the rest of their visit to the Ozarks look like?
Thomas: For us, it’s super hard to measure economic impact. We know of our 2.5 million folks that visited us that a huge percent of them stayed overnight. We know that a majority of our 2.5 million visitors drove from more than three hours away. And if you’re reaching into those outer markets, then those individuals are staying at hotels. You can add onto that White Water’s attendance, you can add onto that Showboat Branson Bell, and so we would be right a little under 3 million visitors just if you combine all of those businesses together. If you’re a family in Houston, Texas, or an adult couple in Minneapolis and you’re looking for adventure, something to do, we want to make sure that we’re part of the news cycle. But then also we want to message them through digital marketing, through social messaging as well as through old-time television and print media. If a visitor stays overnight, the economic impact of tourism is exponential. Those folks are filling up their tanks with fuel, they’re eating in restaurants, they are staying in hotels, they’re visiting area attractions. Our folks may very well visit because they may have an interest in history, and so they very well may visit the battleground. And then, of course, our customer clearly aligns with Cynthia’s customer, and for those faith-based visitors that visit our park, they will absolutely be interested in the “David” production along with music shows all up and down the strip. Tourism has one of the top returns of any investment that a state, a city or a district can make.
Carson: It definitely makes an impact. Our guests don’t come for just one day. They are staying in the nightly rentals, the hotels, eating. It’s definitely helping grow our whole community or the region, the Ozark Mountain region, not just Branson.
Thomas: For those of us who live and maybe even grew up here in southwest Missouri, sometimes we underestimate what we have here. When you look at everything that we have from the granddaddy of them all, the Bass Pro on South Campbell as well as Wonders of Wildlife, then you look at all of the things that there are to do in Springfield – Springfield Cardinals – and you go to the battlefield, you head on down to Ozark and the things that there are to do in Ozark at the Mill, and then Branson, all of the theaters, the incredible shopping, the attractions. Table Rock Lake, Taneycomo, Bull Shoals, Beaver, the outdoor experiences. And then you put the golfing that we have throughout Springfield corridor all the way through Branson. This is like this tourism mecca. Last year, we had representatives from all 50 states visit Silver Dollar City plus 33 countries. And the reason that they did that wasn’t just for us; it was for all of this culmination of things that exist throughout the Ozarks
Adler: A lot of people don’t realize that this area has a national park, and there are people who love national parks. They seek them out; they want to get their passport stamped, and so they are looking for opportunities to do that wherever they’re traveling. We know that in 2023, the park had more than a $28 million economic impact to the area, and that’s a small but mighty staff of about 20 people running that battlefield and making sure that every visitor has a great experience. Our visitors come from all over the country, and we do have international visitors. I love playing the license plate game in the parking lot. Typical things that they can do when they come visit is check out the museum in the visitor center, the film, the gift shop, the research library – all of this is free and the use of the trails is free. It’s a place for learning. If you want to learn more about history, especially the Civil War west of the Mississippi River, we have an incredible museum with really cool artifacts. It’s a great place to get close to nature. It’s 2,200 acres of preserved green space.
Carson: All of these attractions, we talk about family destination, a place that we can bring Grandma and Grandpa and we can bring our children as they’re growing. We want to be a place where everyone feels welcome and they come and not only relax, but learn. With our show, it’s a faith-based production where we bring the Bible to life not only by what we do, but who we are. 58% as of January to now of this year are new visitors that we can tell. So, we’re excited to see that grow also and to continue with our very loyal base that we have.