PROVO — The Utah Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau picked up a little bonus on Tuesday when Utah County commissioners unanimously approved a renewal of the bureau's contract to promote tourism in the valley.

In addition to a base contract, the bureau received surplus funds from previous years. "I think that was a very positive thing today," said bureau president and CEO Joel Racker. "That tells me that we've proven what we said we were going to do."

Racker says the bureau's main goal is to draw more attention to Utah County as a destination for tourism and conventions. So far this year, the county's revenue per available room is up 23 percent from last year, according to a Rocky Mountain Lodging Report released Tuesday.

That means Racker's group is meeting its goals. Attention to Utah County is surpassing many other areas of the state, except for some resort locations in the mountains.

"We don't really consider ourselves in competition with the rest of the state," Racker said. "Naturally, if visitors are trying to decide between northern Utah and the Provo area, we want them to stay in the Provo area. But we don't go after each other. If we can raise the numbers of people coming into the state, we're all going to benefit from it."

According to the UVCVB's contract with Utah County for 2007, the bureau will receive two-thirds of the county's transient room tax for 2007, $120,980 from restaurant tax revenues and $545,030 from surplus transient room tax from previous years.

Because the county's surplus transient room tax was generated by tourism, the money has been earmarked by state legislation to be used solely for tourism-promotion purposes.

In addition to those funds, the UVCVB will receive $25,000 from restaurant tax revenues for a special Web site improvement project. Racker says the UVCVB's Web site, www.utahvalley.

org, will soon be updated with a new restaurant-listing service.

The site lists about 120 Utah County restaurants, but the list was sometimes outdated because the UVCVB lacked the funds to maintain the site, Racker said. In the next two months, the site will list about 540 different restaurants. The list will be maintained by a separate company under contract with the UVCVB.

Racker says the UVCVB will also be using the $545,030 — about $200,000 more than the bureau received from the county's surplus funds last year — for special projects, including promotional literature, and increased marketing.

Although the UVCVB stepped up its marketing strategy last year with a promotional "passport" book that was distributed and mailed to Utah County residents, Racker says one reason the county has seen an increase in tourism is because the state's economy is doing well.

He hopes the trend will continue in 2007 — UVCVB's funding from the county depends on it. UVCVB is a private contractor that works directly with the county but is not county-owned and operated.

"They get paid based on if they generate more money," said Utah County Commissioner Jerry Grover. "If their marketing plan works, yeah, they'll get surplus amounts next year. But if it doesn't, they won't have any more money."

---

E-mail: achoate@desnews.com