Missoula tourism bureau to send $100K to UM to boost athletics, promote tourism

In an effort to increase visitor spending in Missoula and to perhaps boost enrollment and event attendance, the University of Montana has announced a new marketing and funding partnership with Destination Missoula and the Missoula Tourism Business Improvement District.

At a press conference on Wednesday, representatives from the three organizations announced they'll collaborate on awareness campaigns to promote UM events with the goal of increasing hotel room nights and driving visitor spending.

As UM athletic director Kent Haslam and TBID board president Dan Monahan called it, it's all about putting more "heads in beds and butts in seats."

Monahan is also the general manager of the Edgewater Missoula hotel, restaurant and conference center.

Destination Missoula, through the TBID, will invest over $100,000 into the UM athletic program over the next year to "help promote events that bring students, alumni and nonresidents to Missoula."

The funding comes from a $4 assessment that visitors pay to the citywide TBID for every hotel night stay in Missoula. All funds stay local and can only be used by Destination Missoula for promoting tourism to the city.

As part of the partnership, UM will report data on ticket sales for major concerts held at the Adams Center and Washington Grizzly Stadium, as well as football and basketball games. There will also be a schedule for regular meetings to ensure ongoing communication, Haslam added.

Haslam said the $100,000 will go to the university's revenue share, which means it will go toward paying student athletes or however UM decides to use the money for athletics.

"Our plan is to use that fund for revenue share and really, that will help supplement what we're already doing as we try and recruit differently, as we try and incentivize differently," he said. "That's our plan, that (the money) will help us retain and recruit talent, that will then hopefully get us conference championships."

“Ensuring the Griz are competitive in the changing landscape of college athletics will create more opportunities that bring visitors and fans to our community,” he added. “When the Griz win, ultimately, Missoula businesses win, too. We’re grateful to the Missoula TBID for this partnership to promote games and other events at UM to fill our stadium, arenas and theaters.”

According to a study from the UM Bureau of Business and Economic Research, one home Griz football game brings in about $5.2 million in nonresident visitor spending to Missoula County, including almost $1.6 million in lodging and accommodation spending and over $1.3 million to restaurants and bars.

“We’re essentially putting on paper what we’ve long known, that working together to bring more visitors to events in Missoula means more hotel room stays, which means more dinners at local restaurants, more demand for the goods and wares at our local shops, and more desire for direct flights to get here,” said Barb Neilan, executive director of Destination Missoula. “Those are all things that visitors enjoy, but also residents like us benefit from too.”

The partnership is new, so a lot of the details about how exactly the money will be spent aren't clear yet. Neilan said that her organization will undertake promotions in markets with direct flights to Missoula, and they're still in discussions about which events will be promoted.