A legislator criticized state tourism officials Tuesday for omitting negative trends from a press release about visitor spending, while tourism officials defended the release.
The Office of Tourism issued the press release Thursday to announce that visitor spending in South Dakota had grown by 2.8 percent in 2008 to a record $967 million. The information came from a study that was not made public until Friday and that contained several negative trends not mentioned in the press release.
State Sen. Scott Heidepriem, D-Sioux Falls, said the press release amounted to "misinformation."
"They're misleading the public, and they're doing it deliberately," said Heidepriem, leader of the state Senate Democrats.
Among the study findings omitted from the press release was the "real" change in visitor spending of minus 2.5 percent, which was calculated by subtracting a measure of inflation from the positive 2.8 percent "nominal" growth rate. Also omitted from the release was an estimated loss of 901 tourism-related jobs and a $500,000 decline in state sales-tax collections from vacation travelers.
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Melissa Bump, director of the Office of Tourism, and Wanda Goodman, an office spokeswoman, said the information was omitted in order to keep the press release consistent with past practices and to adhere to standard tourism-industry reporting methods.
It would be inconsistent to include inflation-adjusted growth rates, they said, because such information was not included in prior-year press releases. Goodman added that inflation-adjusted numbers require more explanation than can be effectively communicated in a press release.
Other states do not report inflation-adjusted numbers in their releases, Goodman and Bump said, and South Dakota's doing so would make the state inconsistent with other states in the region.
"We can't put absolutely everything in every press release we put out there, but we're certainly available and we've never tried to hide that information," Goodman said. "If asked, we're more than willing to give the whole story."
Heidepriem said the whole story should be given without anyone having to ask for it.
"What they should do is help us all evaluate the success or failure of the program," he said. "We can't do that if they come at the numbers from a predetermined position of supporting the status quo."
Heidepriem said the issue is timely, given the state's ongoing budget crisis and Gov. Mike Rounds' proposal to protect tourism programs from cuts that are likely to impact many other recipients of state funding.
"The essential question in a time like this," Heidepriem said, "is 'What is a necessary service of state government, and is the proper allocation to short education and infants and the deaf and the elderly and favor the tourism advertising budget, knowing that the results are at best questionable?' "
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Goodman said the 2008 results were positive, judging by comments made at last week's state tourism conference.
"That's really the overriding message -- not are we up or are we down, but are we happy with how we fared this year?" Goodman said. "And in talking to the people at the tourism conference that we just had last week, there was a positive vibe throughout the conference, throughout the industry, and they were looking forward to 2009 and they were staying optimistic."
