Local businesses are doing their part to entice visitors to the area, according to Carol Waller, executive director of the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau.
Proprietors are stuffing the kitty during the two dozen nonprofit special events held in the valley each year.
"The amounts are not insignificant as an economic reinvestment," Waller told the Ketchum City Council during her quarterly report Monday, Nov. 21. "You have a half-million dollars in donations and sponsorships from businesses. The business community is helping in a very direct way. They're a very active partner."
Waller also announced that the chamber will implement a new program to solicit feedback from hotel and restaurant guests.
The new visitor report card will allow travelers to grade Ketchum on aspects considered important to a mountain resort community, such as uniqueness, friendliness, cleanliness and ease of getting around.
The cards will be located at some hotels' front desks and in restaurant folios when customers get their bills.
"We'll collect them every month and have an ongoing report of what visitors are saying," she said. "We'll be able to tie the feedback into the master plan."
Ketchum is working on a downtown master plan that will create a strategy to enhance the city core.
Waller added that consultant Tom Hudson, who has contracted with the city of Ketchum to help develop the downtown master plan, agreed to be the speaker at the chamber's January breakfast meeting.
In highlighting some of the chamber's accomplishments, Waller also told council members that traffic to the Web site was up 47 percent in the fiscal year's fourth quarter, July through September.
The average monthly number of visits to www.visitsunvalley.com has reached 49,000, the report states.
The location of the Visitors' Center continues to be problematic, however.
Traffic there dropped 33 percent in the fourth quarter.
"More and more people are finding it, but not being on Main Street is certainly not helping those numbers," she said.
The center was moved last year to the Copper Ridge building on Washington Avenue after the city traded the piece of Main Street land it had occupied for years.
The quarterly report notes that approximately 20 percent of inquiry calls and walk-ins to the Visitors' Center are from local residents.
