City Hall in Pontiac, Ill., is hosting a meeting Monday at 7 p.m. to discuss tourists — not necessarily to just draw them, but to better handle the influx of them the city has experienced in the past year.
The Bloomington Pantagraph reports:
Pontiac Tourism Director Ellie Alexander said the number of visitors is up 30 percent from a year ago. More than 20,000 tourists have visited Pontiac in 2011. […]
One complaint that Fairfield has heard from tourists is that many of the downtown businesses are not open on Sundays.
“There is a reason to be open now,” Fairfield said. “We have had a big increase in the number of car clubs that come to visit the new Pontiac museum and they generally come on Saturdays and Sundays. It is unfortunate to hear from visitors that they may return but they don’t want to come on a Sunday because so many of the businesses are closed.”
Talk about a missed opportunity …
All I know is if I had a business in a downtown that was seeing a 30 percent surge in tourism, I’d want to be operating on the weekends, when large numbers of tourists will arrive.
I’d rather take the day off during a weekday, when visitor numbers would be at their lightest.
Pontiac’s “problem” would be the envy of many other towns.
Officials attribute the tourism surge to the Pontiac Oakland Auto Museum opening in July. The Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame and Museum, the International Walldog Mural and Sign Art Museum, and the Livingston County War Museum also are strong draws.
Area officials also will use the meeting for planning the 2012 tourism season.