|
Mini Poll: See St. Louis Through Vistors' Eyes
 Four years after the final ice cream cone was served at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the last of 20,000,000 visitors was packed off for home, it began to occur to St. Louis's captains of industry that a steady supply of visitors would certainly buy a lot of beer and toasted ravioli - and millions of other things that a City like ours produced. So, in 1909, these titans formed the St. Louis Convention & Publicity Board and charged it with recreating the hype of a World's Fair ... every year.
The men and women of the CPB did their best to do just that until 1984, when it was combined with the largely underworked St. Louis County Office of Tourism to form the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, which is charged with filling up the region's hotels and restaurants, and suggesting interesting ways - in a broad range of traditional and social media - for visitors, tourists, and conventioneers to leave behind as much of their money as possible.
For many people planning a visit here, the CVC is St. Louis's largest billboard, most prominent window, and most useful commercial hub for finding hotel rooms, dining suggestions, shopping guides, and instructions on the care and feeding of the local fauna. Yet, few St. Louisans know very much about the CVC's structure, finances, and governance. Its website, which is one of the busiest in local cyberspace, rarely attracts readers with St. Louis computer addresses. (If you are curious how St. Louis sells itself, visit www.explorestlouis.com.)
This week's Mini-Poll asks you to imagine yourself a prospective visitor to St. Louis - or, if that strains credibility, to be yourself, a person who might like to see her City through new eyes. Answer all our questions, and we promise not to comment on your bad Hawaiian shirt during your “staycation.”
|
|
