Hotel room-tax revenues jumped sharply in Spokane County through the first five months of this year, and that and other indicators have tourism officials hoping that the visitor industry will snap all the way back this year from the losses it suffered after the terrorist attacks of 2001.


Through May, room-tax revenues shot up by 12 percent, to $585,000 from $523,000 in the year-earlier period, says the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau.


Thats a positive sign, says Nancy Goodspeed, who until Monday night served as the CVBs director of public relations. The CVB said it eliminated her position.


Meanwhile, through June the delegate count at meetings and conventions held here had climbed even more sharply, to 74,430 delegates from 58,652 delegates in the year-earlier period, for a 27 percent increase, the CVB says.


The delegate numbers this year were helped by April meetings of the World Wide Groups Spring Leadership Conference and the Women of Faith. Those events attracted 11,000 and 12,000 members, respectively, says Goodspeed, who was interviewed before her position was eliminated. In all, 34,235 delegates attended meetings here in April, compared with 13,230 in the year-earlier month.


The month of April was an anomaly, she says.


Still, with the year half over, the CVB is projecting a total delegate count of 121,055 for all of 2004, which would exceed the delegate count of 105,702 in 2003 by more than 14 percent.


The room-tax figures reflect only the $2 a night room tax that has been charged for years, and not the new 50 cent-to-$1.50 per-night tourism promotion area tax that hoteliers started collecting June 1, Goodspeed says. Spokane-area properties that have more than 40 rooms are collecting the new tax. Downtown hotels charge $1.50 a night, and hotels farther from downtown pay commensurately lower assessments.


Through May, the CVB says, the Spokane area had hosted 81 conventions with an economic impact that totaled $22.2 million. For all of last year, it says, the Spokane area had 232 such gatherings with a total economic impact of $46.3 million, and the industry hopes to beat that economic-impact number this year, Goodspeed says.


Economic impact is calculated at $195 for each day a convention delegate visits here and is intended to reflect the value of rooms, meals, ground transportation, and a small amount of retail spending.


It will probably be next year or the year after before were back to building on where we were on Sept. 11, 2001, Goodspeed says.


Also, she says, Smith Travel Research, of Hendersonville, Tenn., has reported that hotel occupancy here was up 8.7 percent in April. While hotel occupancy was relatively flat in May, countywide demand for rooms still was up by 8 percent year-to-date, Goodspeed says.