Tourism figures released in the past week by the Vicksburg Convention & Visitors Bureau show fewer tourists visited Vicksburg in 2005, yet those who did likely spent more money than some of the ones who came before.

Numbers came to the bureau from four attractions for which the bureau does some type of marketing.

They show 270,080 fewer visitors than in 2004, a drop of about 26 percent.

Those attractions are Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg Battlefield Museum, Biedenharn Candy Co. and Museum of Coca-Cola Memorabilia and the Old Court House Museum.

The downward trend dates to 2003, when fewer than 1.2 million visitors were counted for the first time in a decade.

However, the bureau’s take of the 1 percent hotel and restaurant tax, a key to gauging the economic impact of tourism on the local economy, increased 12.9 percent.

That figure, provided to the bureau by the Mississippi State Tax Commission, shows the tax generated $934,777.64, up from $814,451 in 2004.

”We’re pleased with those numbers, but Katrina is also a major contributor to the visitor numbers being low,” said Samantha Hosemann, public relations and special events manager for VCVB. She said, however, that increased spending could be attributed to the influx of evacuees of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the area during September and October.

&#8220Our evacuee population was high, but also more people ate in restaurants and stayed in hotels,” Hosemann said.

The number of hurricane evacuees is believed to have peaked at 1,100, then dropped gradually over the next three months.

Hotel occupancy rates rose to 70 percent in 2005, a result that in January officials with the Vicksburg Hotels and Lodging Association attributed to hurricane evacuees.

As for finding a strategy to attract more regular tourist business to Vicksburg in 2006, VCVB officials referred those questions to Compass Facility Management.

At the board’s regular meeting Jan. 26, the Iowa-based firm won approval to develop a management plan to propose to the state-created tourism promotion board.

After the report is presented, Compass will oversee the bureau’s general management, personnel, budgeting, sales and marketing, public relations, convention and visitor services, operating services, special event coordinating and merchandising.

Larry Gawronski, a Compass officer and executive director of the Vicksburg Convention Center and Vicksburg Auditorium, said he has not seen the numbers, but confirmed ideas are being developed by Compass to aid a local tourism industry he said &#8220will be affected by the hurricane for some time.”

Gawronski joined about a dozen representatives from local government and economic development interest groups for a four-day lobbying effort with the state’s congressional delegation in Washington D.C. There, he said congressmen told them, the common misconception is that &#8220Mississippi is closed for business.”

The strategy to rebound is twofold, Gawronski said, with the first being to meet with the Division of Tourism in the Mississippi Development Authority to &#8220see what plans they have that can compliment or enhance what we plan to do here.”

The other, he said, is to meet face-to-face with every attraction in the city, from the bed and breakfasts to the Mississippi Welcome Center at Interstate 20.

&#8220We have to find out how they’re tracking their visitors, because I’ve had concerns about that,” he said.

VNMP Superintendent Monika Mayr said visitors are counted using electronic sensors placed near the park’s visitor centers and at the Louisiana Circle overlook near the Mississippi River. The National Park Service also has a sampling formula in place to estimate further the number of park visitors each month, Mayr said.

Physical counts of paying customers are done at the other three attractions and reported to VCVB, officials at each attraction said.

At the Mississippi Welcome Center on Washington Street, visitors who come into the offices for information are counted when asked to sign a guest registry and take an attached state-created survey.

Ideas to further track how many people visit Vicksburg and where they go once here entail expanding on the idea of information kiosks.

&#8220I’d like to see it tied to Internet technology so we can see not only how long people stay at a kiosk, but how they spend money here,” Gawronski said.

Another idea that Gawronski said could be explored to achieve &#8220meaningful tracking” would be to issue tourists &#8220smart cards” similar to those used for purchases at university campuses that can be activated for either purchases or discounts at area businesses.

Still, others in the community whose businesses profit from tourists have worries about recapturing their usual business for a busy spring season.

Area bed and breakfasts also blame Katrina for throwing off a distinct pattern of tourist movement, one that placed Vicksburg at the center of a commuting nexus between cities like Memphis and New Orleans, and further out, Dallas and Atlanta.

&#8220New Orleans was the anchor, the ultimate destination for a lot of European tourists, especially,” said Tom Pharr, operator of Anchuca Historic Mansion and Inn.

Pharr said January is historically slow, but tourism picks up in the spring with events such as Riverfest and the Vicksburg Spring Pilgrimage tour of homes and churches.

Those events tend to bring in visitors from diverse corners of the globe to bed and breakfasts in town, Pharr said. His guestbook lists four international visitors in the past two months.

To that end, Pharr continues pushing to fund a $57,000 multimedia advertising campaign to air in television markets in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi as well as print ads in a Dallas-based arts and culture magazine and billboards.

The television commercial features shots of the downtown area and short scenes of area bed and breakfasts. About $44,000 in funding has been secured from the Vicksburg Warren Community Alliance and the VCVB, Pharr said.

&#8220We need more than word of mouth to let the region know we’re ready for visitors now,” Pharr said.