Beaver Fish Tournaments Attract Weekend Guests

Beaver Lake is a 28,000-acre tool the city of Rogers uses to lure leisure travelers.

“We are blessed to have a great lake here such as Beaver Lake to help bring people to our area,” said Buddy Wright, a member of the Rogers City Council and the city’s advertising and promotion commission.

A growing number of fishing tournaments are held on Beaver Lake. But Tom Ginn, vice president of business development for the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, said the A&P Commission is selective about the tournaments it sponsors. The Chamber of Commerce handles the A&P Commission business in Rogers.

“There’s a lot of interest in the lake for tournaments,” Ginn said. “The A&P has tried to look at quality tournaments that can bring a lot of attention to the lake.”

The goal, he said, is to attract leisure travelers to the city for weekend visits. Area hotels have no problem filling up during the week when Benton County is a hot business destination, but on the weekends the demand goes frigid.

“We have the business travelers, but it’s critical to get the leisure tourists too,” Ginn said.

Fishing tournaments bring in those weekend travelers, Ginn said. The Wal-Mart FLW Tournament, for example, has a lot of television coverage that might lure other anglers to Beaver Lake.

“We’ve had a lot of good public exposure on this for the last three or four years,” Ginn said.

It’s estimated that the FLW tournament brings $600,000-$700,000 to the city on the weekend. But, Ginn said, that’s “the first dollar” that could turn over several times in the community. The eventual estimated economic impact is $2 million-$3 million.

“It’s a pretty good impact for such a short amount of time,” Ginn said. “And it does put a lot of heads in beds.”

Many fishermen actually camp or stay closer to the lake, but a lot of other people come for the tournaments as commercial sponsors of the event, Ginn added.

Putting heads in beds on the weekends is a big concern for Jeff Arthur, manager of the Hampton Inn in Rogers. Arthur said the hotel is just five years old but is planning to start renovations in February.

“Normally, you’d get another year or two out of the carpets and bedspreads, but in this market we can’t,” he said.

Arthur, who serves as a member of the A&P Commission, agreed that attracting leisure travelers is essential for Benton County’s hotel industry which has “an ample supply of rooms” on the weekends. The Hampton, he said, has fared better than some hotels because it has a contract business that brings in airline flight crews on a regular basis, including weekends.

Wright believes that anything the city can do to attract people into the area is good for the city.

“Fisherman come here to fish, they see something here that they might want to bring their family back for,” Wright said. “They get acquainted with the area. They come here once and see the lakes and the things that Rogers has to offer, the sites, the Daisy Airgun Museum.”

Tournaments are one-time events, but the exposure can be tremendous, he explained.

“We don’t just get them one time, but possibly get them to make it an annual thing,” Wright said.