The first week of March was treacherous for Jim Cox.
As owner of the Branson Collector Car Auction, Cox was expecting more than 5,000 conventioneers to attend his spring auction April 20–21 at the Branson Convention Center. But that was before the convention center and the attached Hilton Hotel were disabled by a Feb. 29 tornado that came through town. With significant structural and glass damage, the convention center and hotel were originally expected to be out of operation until late June.
The Branson Collector Car Auction is in its 32nd year, and Cox said the event generates up to $9 million in sales of nearly 300 antique automobiles.
“It’s worse than you might expect for me. I also own the Candlestick Inn restaurant, and that got severely damaged,” Cox said, adding that the landmark restaurant on the hill across the lake from downtown Branson is expected to be closed through March.
“The roof in the dining room was ripped off. Most of the glass was broken – the glass that faces the Branson Landing, as well as a couple of the doors.
“I have been panicked quite a lot since the tornado.”
The EF-2 tornado has altered preparations for the 2012 tourist season, according to William Tirone, assistant general manager for the Hiltons of Branson and the Branson Convention Center.
“We were going to have a great year. The indication, at least from a convention standpoint, was that it was going to be a very strong year for us,” Tirone said, noting that 190 event days were on the calendar this year.
Tirone said 10 conventions that each required at least 100 room nights will be lost due to the closure of the Hilton Hotel and Branson Convention Center.
Among them are the Missouri Staff Development Council Show-Me Professional Development Conference, scheduled March 10-13 with an estimated 900 attendees, and the Transportation Engineers Association of Missouri Conference, scheduled March 14-16 with an estimated 450 attendees.
Tirone said groups have moved their events to Chateau on the Lake, which hasn’t reported damage, University Plaza Hotel and Convention Center in Springfield and other area properties. University Plaza General Manager Robert Henley said the hotel has booked 200 hotel rooms for McGregor Hardware’s two-day convention May 9-10.
Since the twister, Tirone has been scrambling to find homes for booked business in area Branson hotels. He reported March 7 that most business had been placed, and the convention center itself should be operational by mid-April.
“There was minimal loss to the local economy because everything has been placed,” Tirone said.
Stephen Marshall, general manager for Chateau on the Lake, said the hotel is hiring up to 60 staff members to meet the needs of the dozen new groups it’s accommodating.
“We’ve worked closely with the Hilton to try and accommodate the groups it has committed to, and we are honoring the contracts that they had with the Hilton,” Marshall said. “Some of the groups, we may not have the ideal space for them, but we’ve become very creative in the use of space and they’ve been very flexible in working with us.”
While Marshall declined to disclose revenue estimates from the unexpected business, he said one religious group was bringing 3,000 guests.
Tirone said the Hilton Hotel connected to the convention center isn’t expected to be fully operational until late June. He said all of its 3,800 glass panels will need to be replaced to prevent a “checkerboard” appearance resulting from a mix of new windows and functional existing windows.
“It’s not like those are sitting in a warehouse somewhere, they’ll need to be manufactured,” Tirone said, adding he believes individual floors may open as repairs are made in an effort to minimize loss of business.
He said Hilton owners are planning on making a business interruption insurance claim, but he declined to estimate the losses the Hilton suffered from business moving or physical damage.
Ross Summers, president and CEO of the Branson Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau, said groups such as the Branson Collector Car Auction are key drivers of the economy.
Summers said a party of three visitors during the course of four days typically would spend $900 in the city. A 2011 survey on the economic impact convention attendees bring to the city conducted by Springfield-based Jerry Henry & Associates found that convention attendees generate $16 million annually for the Branson area economy.
Summers said he is working to ensure that those conventioneers planning to come to Branson won’t give up on the city.
“Branson is open,” Summers said. “We took a hit. We have a few businesses that are going to be out of commission for a while, but otherwise, everything else is up and running as near to normal as we can get it.”
Summers said while 1,200 hotel rooms have been rendered temporarily unusable by the Leap Day tornado, there are still 18,000 rooms available.
Only five of the city’s more than 50 theaters have been shut down by the storm, according ExploreBranson.com. One of those was Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Theater, which features the Legends In Concert music tribute show.
Tiffany Powers, marketing director for Legends In Concert, said roughly 40 shows have been canceled through March, and she expects to reopen around the first of April. She said the show, which has been a 16-year fixture in Branson, sells an average of 300 to 500 tickets in March. Ticket prices range between $12.27 and $37.94.
Jeannie Horton, general manager for Dick Clark’s theater complex, said she expects revenue losses to settle in at the low six-figure range.
Summers sees the storm damage as a speed bump to an otherwise normal tourism season.
“We do not expect to lose visitors over this,” Summers said of the roughly 8 million visitors projected to visit the city in 2012. “There may be some short-term economic loss, but things overall have not changed.”[[In-content Ad]]
