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“What lives in Iowa, vacations in Iowa”?

Thanks for the marketing slogan, Las Vegas.

OK, that is not really the slogan the Iowa Tourism Office is going with, but with all the data pointing to a propensity for budget-strapped would-be-travelers to stay closer to home, the office is making a conscious effort to highlight all the reasons for Iowans to stay right here in the state.

“If people are going to stay closer to home, if they are going to take that short trip, I think that is positive for us and what we offer,” said Nancy Landess, manager of the Iowa Tourism Office.

The office’s cooperative advertising initiative, which featured 75 participating Iowa communities pooling resources to buy advertising space in magazines and newspapers, is focused on persuading local travelers to experience nearby attractions.

Tiffany Tauscheck, vice president of marketing for the Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), said that this year for the first time in a long while it will be running a co-op television ad in Eastern Iowa. Tauscheck said the CVB refocused the television campaign because its partners saw a value in trying to attract Iowa traffic.

The Iowa Tourism Office is also targeting both Minneapolis and Chicago with a co-op TV advertising campaign that began running for six weeks on April 12.

“People aren’t going to give up their vacations,” Landess said.

“Even with the challenging economic times that we are going through, they value that time to break from their routine and have a trip, but they also want to make sure that it is within their budget. If we can let them know what there is to see or do in the state, we think we have a good chance to get them to spend some of their vacation time in the state.”

The goal, Landess said, is to keep Iowa top of mind as the travel season approaches. For the taxpayers’ sake, it’s time for Iowans to start rooting for Landess, her office and the health of the state’s tourism industry the way they root for their Cyclones, Hawkeyes and Panthers.

In 2008, Iowa’s tourism industry generated $303.2 million in state tax revenues, according to a U.S. Travel Association report. Although that was just a 1.3 percent drop from 2007, it was an ominous sign because it was the first time in the last five years that tax revenues declined from the previous year.

“As Iowans, we would all be paying more taxes if the traveler wasn’t spending money and generating that tax to our general fund,” Landess said.

Although 2008 was a rough year all around – floods, high gas prices and a harsh winter – 2009 might not have been much better.

Requests for information about tourism in Iowa from Iowans decreased from 190,000 in 2008, a five-year high, to 163,000 in 2009, a five-year low, according to the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

Tourism-generated expenditures in Iowa, however, actually increased to $6.4 billion in 2008 from $6.3 billion in 2007, a 2.2 percent increase, according to a U.S. Travel Association report released at the end of 2009.

Problem is, the Iowa Tourism Office’s budget is shrinking – fast.

Compared with fiscal year 2009, the office’s fiscal 2010 budget is down 22 percent. For fiscal 2009 the office had $5.09 million to parlay toward aiding the industry, but in 2010 the budget dipped to $4.39 million and then was cut further to $3.95 million as part of the state’s 10 percent across-the-board spending reduction announced last October.

“When you are talking about the dollars that we have available and the budget we have available, that has been very challenging over the last couple of years,” Landess said.

“So that makes the decisions for us challenging of where we are going to place the dollars.”

And it has forced the tourism office to turn away Iowa communities that hoped to gain the benefits of partnering in the agency’s annual co-op advertising initiative. In past years, Landess said, if there was high demand for the co-op ads, the office would go ahead and buy extra advertising pages in magazines and newspapers – but not this year.

“This was the first year we have actually had to limit the partnership,” Landess said. “We had to set a specific number of pages, and those that didn’t get their reservation forms in early were told they would not be able to participate this year.”

CVB President and CEO Greg Edwards said his organization’s budget shrank about 9 percent because of a drop in hotel-motel tax revenues, but it was able to protect its marketing dollars from the drop.

Landess said what her office needs is more dollars to spend on advertising.

“I think we are missing opportunities,” she said.

“When we talk about television, we are only in two markets. There are a lot of markets that we are not getting into and that we would like to.”

Out of the six immediately touching Midwest states and Kansas, Iowa’s fiscal 2009 budget was the lowest, and was well below the $10.2 million regional average (excluding Illinois’ $50.3 million budget).

Though the budget continues to be a challenge, the Iowa Tourism Office is expecting 2 percent growth in tourism-generated expenditures in 2010 and has hope that the industry should strengthen in 2011.

Edwards said that he is also optimistic because trends show that although 2010 should be flat, things will pick up in 2011. He also believes his budget will increase slightly in 2010.

Landess pointed to the large variety of tourism activities Iowa offers and the growth in 2008 of tourism-generated expenditures as reason to be optimistic about the future.

“To see growth even in those very challenging times, this is an industry that has the potential to continue to grow,” she said.

Nevada might have Las Vegas and the catchy slogan, but it also has an unemployment rate of 13.4 percent. Edwards, however, will take Iowa’s far better jobless rate of 6.8 percent.

“We don’t want to be at 6.8 percent, but we have really fared this a lot better, so we are optimistic that it is coming back quicker than other parts of the country,” he said.