Lee County visitor numbers climb; uptick comes after partnership formed with Discover Dixon, $180,000 grant

DIXON – With the goal of increasing tourism, Lee County and Discover Dixon in December entered into a two-year agreement, using a $180,000 grant to kick-start their new initiative known as Visit Lee County. What local tourism officials said they are now seeing is an increase in the number of visitors and overnight stays that will lead to collected revenue increases for local communities.

Lucas Pauley, Discover Dixon’s marketing director, gave an update to the Lee County Board on Sept. 19 about the progress Visit Lee County made over the summer developing the brand, partnering with local organizations and targeting advertisements on multiple platforms. Using cellphone data collected by Discover Dixon, Pauley reported a significant increase in visitors to the county in June and July.

The faces behind the brand are mainly Pauley and Lana Scholl, who handles social media and digital marketing, but “everyone that’s in the Discover Dixon office can be tapped in to help with Visit Lee County,” Pauley told Shaw Local.

Before Discover Dixon came into the picture, tourism was promoted through the Lee County Tourism Council ever since it was formed in 1988. The council was funded through a 5% hotel tax that was imposed countywide, except in municipalities that have their own hotel tax.

A large portion of that tax was coming from the city of Dixon, which entered into an agreement with the county in 2004 in which the tourism council and the city would split 98.5% of the hotel tax revenue 50/50. Dixon withdrew from that agreement Nov. 30, 2023, after members of its City Council decided that Dixon would collect its own hotel tax revenue rather than share it with the county.

This resulted in a significant loss of Dixon-based hotel tax revenue for the county – an estimated 73% decrease in funds, according to an ordinance approved by the Lee County Board on July 20, 2023. It also left the county in need of a new entity to promote tourism.

Discover Dixon came in and wanted to fill that role. “We created the brand [Visit Lee County] completely in-house here and presented it to the board,” Pauley said.

“Tourism in itself is something that Discover Dixon has effectively understood,” Lee County Administrator Jeremy Englund said in an interview with Shaw Local.

Back in 2019, Discover Dixon was awarded a grant through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity under the leadership of Englund, who’s the chamber’s former executive director. Using that money, the chamber was rebranded to become known as Discover Dixon rather than the Dixon Chamber of Commerce and Main Street, as it had been previously.

“We were able to work on that brand as well as move ourselves into the 21st century of media marketing,” Englund said.

In August 2023, the city of Dixon, Discover Dixon and Lee County came together with the idea of pursuing a tourism grant through the IDCEO. That year, Discover Dixon was awarded the grant – a total of $180,000 in funding, said Amanda Wike, executive director at Discover Dixon.

The county then entered into a two-year agreement with Discover Dixon to create the Visit Lee County brand. Discover Dixon split the awarded funds evenly between the city of Dixon and Lee County tourism marketing, Wike said.

Those funds “were really able to bolster and kick-start kind of the initiatives for Visit Lee, which I think helps significantly,” Englund said.

“The first couple of months, we were kind of building up the new brand and still doing the work to create those new graphics and all the content necessary,” Pauley said at the board meeting. “We’ve really been able to push for these last couple of months and put some of that work into motion. ... It’s been very exciting.”

Partnering with local events and organizations

“During the past couple of months, we began partnering directly with local events and groups on paid digital advertisements,” Pauley said at the meeting.

To create the digital content that’s used to promote the county online and through social media, Visit Lee County had content creators come spend a weekend in the area attending events and visiting different places. At the end, they came back with an itinerary, photos and videos.

They did four of those visits over the summer; working with several local businesses and organizations including Lincoln Way Stay, a bed-and-breakfast-style hotel in Franklin Grove, as well as the Lee County Fair and 4-H show in Amboy, Pauley said.

“[The content creators] have had such great experiences going into these businesses and staying at different spots that we’ve directed them to. So it’s been pretty amazing this past year to have that much buy-in from the county and just the people in the community,” Pauley said. “There’s just been so much positive community spirit.”

They also put out paid advertisements in partnership with local organizations in anticipation of their events. Some of those include Amboy Depot Days, the village of Sublette’s 170th anniversary festival, Ashton Fall Festival and Paw Paw’s first festival.

“We helped Sublette Fest and Amboy Depot Days reach 130,000 potential attendees,” Pauley said.

He added that Sublette’s festival had almost 2,000 people attend to watch its headliner – the Grammy-winning country music band Diamond Rio - and Depot Days also saw an increase in visitors over 2023.

“It’s been just such a great privilege, honestly, to just talk to so many people around Lee County, so many different community organizers and business owners who have been more than gracious to Visit Lee County and the social media content creators,” Pauley said.

Creating digital content

With a focus on increasing social media engagement, Visit Lee County has been uploading multiple posts weekly to its Instagram and Facebook pages. Each post centers on upcoming events, tourist destinations and local businesses in the county.

The content creator visits provided a large amount of photos and videos “that we can continue to use. There’s videos that we still haven’t even used for some of these places, so that’s very exciting,” Pauley said.

From May to July, “we’ve continued to see impressive growth on both Facebook and Instagram,” Pauley said.

He reported that organic reach – the number of people who see a post without the use of paid advertising or promotion – was up 32% on Facebook and up over 100% on Instagram. On Facebook, content interactions were up over 130%.

“That’s really what we’re trying to focus on: getting people to talk back to us, share content with us, tell us what they love, and really get those comments on there,” Pauley said.

On both platforms, the number of people clicking the links to the Visit Lee County website was up 25%.

Its website went live during the last couple of months. From its homepage, visitors can view the various activities that Lee County offers, including craft and vendor shows, hiking trails, museums and more. It also features a digital calendar for upcoming events, offers several lodging options and has a separate tab to showcase all communities in the county.

The itineraries tab showcases some of the work completed by the content creators during their visits. Similar to the trip ideas tab on Discover Dixon’s website, it features interactive maps that visitors can follow for day trips focused on specific communities, such as “Delightful Day in Ashton,” or that cater toward specific interests, such as “Dive into History.”

As for paid advertisements, Visit Lee County has been highlighted in social media, print and digital advertisements. In June, it launched two new commercials – a 15-second and a 30-second one – that targeted Chicago, Naperville, Crystal Lake, eastern Iowa, the Quad-Cities, Springfield, Peoria, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin.

“A lot of these places, we’ve had success in Lee County establishments and tourist destinations pulling people in. So we used that to frame our plan of attack,” Pauley said.

He added that all of these digital streaming campaigns have actually overdelivered. “We’re seeing retargeting completion rates that are well above average. So, you know when someone sees it and they are retargeted, and they’re completing the ad again,” Pauley said.

Increasing tourism: Why does it matter?

“We’re really trying to push the tourism economy in this area,” Englund said.

That’s because it increases sales tax, hotel tax and motor fuel tax collection, which are all major sources of revenue for the county and its municipalities. It benefits the residents, as well, because with increased revenue, the county and its municipalities are able to provide better services to its community, Englund said.

“When you look at development, all those three factors are important as communities continue to grow and expand,” he said.

To measure the progress of Visit Lee County, they used a service that Discover Dixon has used for a while to determine event attendance. It tracks visitors through cellphone data and “lets you know how many people are in a certain spot, how many visitors and how long visitors came,” Pauley said.

Based on that data, Pauley reported, since Visit Lee County took over the county’s tourism – from December until July – the number of visitors has increased 1.4%, “which has been a good trend for Lee County the past couple of years,” he said, adding that the estimated spending potential of those visitors increased by 1.7%.

What’s even more impressive, Pauley said, is that during June and July, the number of visitors was up by 3.5%, nights of stay was up by 8.1%, and the estimated spending potential of those visitors was up by 8.3%.

“It’s exciting because we’re seeing a jump from even before [Visit Lee County took over],” he said.

With that service, “we also can kind of figure out where people are coming from, which is really helpful as a tourism organization,” Pauley said.

They found that the majority of visitors were coming from the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area. From December until July, the county had 120,600 visitors and 310,000 visit nights from people coming from those areas, he reported. Other areas that had more than 1,000 visitors during that period were Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, Rockford, Peoria, Bloomington, Champaign-Urbana, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Madison and Iowa City.

“That’s why we’re focusing those advertisements on those areas – because we notice that people are coming here,” Pauley said. “They’re staying a couple of nights, they’re visiting different places, and we kind of use that for our advertising as we go forward.”

Even just a few months into starting the initiative, Englund said the county is already beginning to “see increased sales tax numbers across the board.”

Beyond the numbers, Pauley said, they’re focused on increasing tourism because “we’re constantly hearing that there’s hidden gems here. So I think there’s a lot of untapped potential.”