New Tool Aims to Boost Tourism

Cheyenne tourism and business leaders are hoping a new online tool will serve as a roadmap in attracting more tourists to the capitol city.

Darren Rudloff, President and CEO of Visit Cheyenne, says they're using a tool called DestinationNEXT to measure their effectiveness.

"The DestinationNEXT tool is an online, detailed survey that allows local tourism and business leaders to really analyze their tourism industry, the attractions, the hotels, the workforce, the culture, etc. and compare themselves to other communities who have taken the survey," said Ruloff. "There have been about 200 or so that have taken it in a tentative fashion or a preliminary fashion, but we're one of the first ones that have really done it in a very detailed, community-wide type effort."

The survey was sent out to 230 people over the last two weeks and a workshop was held Thursday to analyze the results.

"Comparing ourselves to all types of destinations throughout the world, we were higher than average in terms of community support and we were slightly below average in terms of destination strength."

Rudloff says industry leaders are looking at ways to improve the downtown area as well as adding new attractions to increase tourism.

"Everyone kind of was fired up and discussed keeping in touch and all working together to make sure that these results don't sit on the shelf, but we actually turn them into action items and accomplish some of these items," said Rudloff. "So this was a good first step, but we got a long way to go."