Ad agency prez suggests 'hamburger tax'

Cities around the state have reported significant increases in 2022 hospitality tax revenues and El Dorado is among them. The trend recently sparked a brief discussion for the consideration of a food tax in El Dorado. In its Feb.

27-March 5 edition, Arkansas Business magazine surveyed 17 cities with a dedicated Advertising and Promotion Commission that collects at least one hospitality tax, either lodging or restaurant or both. Of the 17 cities, 15 reported increases in tax collections for 2022. El Dorado ranked 17th in total collections for its 3% lodging tax and was one of the 15 cities that reported a boost in tax receipts.

The El Dorado Advertising and Promotion Commission collected a total of £433,225 in lodging taxes last year, representing a hike of 24% in collections from 2021. Other cities reported double- and even triple-digit increases in hospitality tax collections for 2022 — an indication that the tourism industry in Arkansas is rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Arkansas Business. The public health crisis crippled many restaurants and lodging establishments in Arkansas and across the nation.

In 2020, lodging tax collections in El Dorado lagged behind 2022 totals by a whopping 74%. Locally, at least one restaurant — La Bella, the popular gourmet gifts and delicatessen — shut down due to the pandemic. Several other eateries reached out to the Diamond Agency, the city’s ad agency of record, for assistance in promoting their businesses and the idea for the El Dorado Food Festival was born.

The purpose of the nontraditional festival is to help boost sales, raise awareness about the food industry in El Dorado and showcase the variety of local dining options. The event typically lasts for several weeks in the fall, includes discounts from participating restaurants and offers prizes, including cash and gift cards, to restaurant patrons who enter drawings and take part in online contests. The A&P commission has been a major sponsor of the EFF since it launched in 2020.

The Diamond Agency and local restaurants have reported successes with a boost in sales and foot traffic since 2020. EFF 2022 stretched for several months. The event began last fall and ended Friday but many of the restaurant discounts will remain effective until July.

For more information about the festival, call the Diamond Agency at 870-862-1010. Food tax While speaking to the A&P commission on March 15, Don Hale, president of the Diamond Agency, planted a seed to help boost hospitality tax revenues in El Dorado.

He distributed copies of the Arkansas Business magazine’s tourism edition that listed the 2022 A&P tax collections for 17 cities in the state. The two-page spread featured an ad that promotes El Dorado. Hale said several local entities — the El Dorado Conference Center, Main Street El Dorado, the Murphy Arts District, the El Dorado Insider magazine and The Haywood El Dorado, Tapestry Collection by Hilton — collaborated to purchase the print ad.

“Just because you’re at the bottom of the list, you need to remind yourselves that you only collect a lodging tax and most of the other cities on this list collect a ‘Hamburger Tax’, or a food tax, as well,” Hale said. Among the 17 A&P cities that were listed in the Arkansas Business tourism issue, four — El Dorado, Rogers, Fort Smith and Springdale — collect lodging taxes but do not have an active restaurant tax. Some of the other cities that collect both taxes are Little Rock, Fayetteville, Pine Bluff, Eureka Springs and Texarkana.

Prior to Hale presenting an ad agency report to A&P commissioners, MAD had reported a £28,000 profit loss with the 2022-2023 season of MAD on Ice, which is supported by the A&P commission. Pam Griffin, president and CEO of MAD, said earned revenue items fell £12,000 under projections and some expenditures, including utilities and an issue with finding a proper chiller to keep the ice in the skating rink frozen, increased last year. Hale referenced the MAD report in his pitch to commissioners to consider expanding the city’s hospitality tax.

“So, if you want to find a way to make up that £28,000 or to fund £140,000 projects that do bring people to El Dorado and add value to our quality of life, then maybe at some point our city needs to take a good, hard look at expanding the revenue source so that there’s more opportunity to promote the city,” he said, jokingly adding, “That’s an editorial comment.” Hale has previously mentioned the possibility of enacting a restaurant tax in El Dorado as part of an ongoing conversation that has been bantered about in the city since the 1990s. The issue sharply divided the community in 2003 when El Dorado Fifty for the Future brought before the El Dorado City Council a proposed ordinance to adopt a 2% tax on businesses that serve prepared food.

Contentious debates erupted throughout the community, with many area residents, inside and outside El Dorado city limits, staunchly opposing the measure and publicly speaking out against it. The council adopted the ordinance on November 20, 2003, but amid fierce public backlash, some city officials and members of Fifty for the Future expressed second thoughts about the matter. The council considered amendments to the ordinance to help ease tensions in the community before ultimately deciding to repeal the ordinance a month later on Dec.

19, 2003. Agency report The newly revamped Go El Dorado website went live in January and Hale said the Diamond Agency plans to use the site as a primary source of promotion, “a one-stop destination for all things El Dorado,” throughout the year and 2024.

Hale also reported that the first-quarter 2023 edition of the El Dorado Insider contained 116 pages, 48 of which made up the El Dorado Visitor’s Guide. An additional 5,000 copies of the Visitor’s guide were printed and distributed in all the Welcome Centers across the state, Hale said. “We haven’t done this in past.

We’ve mailed out the Insider and continue to mail out the Insider. We’ve cut back to 3,500 Insiders this particular quarter but increased 5,000 copies of the Visitor’s guides,” he explained. The Visitor’s guide includes listings for lodging, dining, transportation, a calendar of events, city and downtown maps and spots around town to “take a photo to record your memories.”

Distributing the guides in the Welcome Centers could lead to a “greater impact on our lodging, our entertainment and our dining scene in El Dorado,” Hale told commissioners. He said the annual El Dorado Insider Relocation Guide will be distributed this month. The Relocation guide is typically released during the first quarter of the year, but Hale said the Visitor’s and Relocation guides were “flip-flopped” so that Visitor’s guides would be available for attendees to the Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism, which was held in El Dorado Feb.

26 – 28.

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