Eureka Springs Task Force Re-Brands City

Eureka Springs is about much more than antique shops and the Passion Play. That’s the message the city wanted to send to the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, said Jeff Feldman, president of the Greater Eureka Springs Chamber of Commerce.

“Our relations with the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism has been flagging over the years,” he said. “So we made a concerted effort in May 2007 to bring representatives from the department to Eureka Springs and got them to look at [the city] with fresh eyes.”

The department suggested to city leaders that they needed a unified voice to relay the concerns and needs of Eureka’s tourism industry.

So mayor Dani Joy formed the Mayor’s Tourism Task Force, which consists of mayor herself, the city economic development coordinator, the chamber, the city A&P and members of the community that operate tourism businesses. In all, the group includes members of 35 different affinity groups from the city.

Members of the task force surveyed visitors to find out why they were visiting the city, and met several times over six weeks to compare notes on what the primary draws were. The answer they came up with was that people visit Eureka Springs to relax and get away.

The department had suggested that the city needed to establish a brand for itself. So with the results of the visitor surveys, the task force came up with the slogan “Eureka Springs Arkansas, The Extraordinary Escape.”

“I consider it pretty much a miracle that 35 people in Eureka Springs were able to sit down and discuss calmly and quietly and productively the task at hand and come up with a consensus,” Feldman said.