With more than half the 2009 tourism season in the books and the Sturgis motorcycle rally in full swing, Northern Black Hills tourism operators are optimistic about the season's outcome.

Sturgis Area Chamber of Commerce executive director Michele Loobey-Gertsch said area officials are pleased with the season to date.

"The Black Hills region is an economical family vacation destination," Loobey-Gertsch said. She said visitors have many options within a small area.

Tourism numbers for the area are difficult to quantify, she said, but the 2008 season was good despite the considerably higher gas prices.

Despite the shaky economy, people are still traveling, albeit closer to home, Wanda Goodman, media and public relations manager for the South Dakota Department of Tourism said.

"Traditionally a lot of our visitors have been come from our neighboring states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming and Colorado. Last year and this year, that has been enhanced," she said.

People today are taking shorter vacations, looking for savings and not traveling as far. Because South Dakota is a drive market, it benefits from that; in addition to people from surrounding states, residents of South Dakota are vacationing closer to home.

"That's been a big push for us. Earlier this summer, we went out and did a 'See South Dakota Week.' We encouraged people to go out and see what is in their own backyards," Goodman said.

Tourism booming in Belle Fourche

Something's happening in Belle Fourche when it comes to tourism.

"It's been nuts," chamber executive Teresa Schanzenbach said as tourists from Oregon, Missouri, Canada and Minnesota browsed pamphlets advertising other attractions in the Black Hills area.

"Usually we buy 30,000 rack cards to advertise," she said. "In the past, 30,000 rack cards would last us two years. We got them in May, and they're gone. We had to reorder an additional 30,000."

"This is the best tourist year I've seen in my 10 years here," Schanzenbach said. "They are coming because they want to see the Center of the Nation."

The relatively new four-lane spur up U.S. Highway 85 from I-90 makes tourism travel easier, Schanzenbach said, and increasing travel from the north includes both "Theodore Roosevelt" tourists and Canadians headed south on the sparsely-populated U.S. Highway 85 south from Buffalo.

Tourism officials know that a lack of good signs has already cost a lot of "flow-through" the community instead of stopping. "Some of them drive right past and don't know we were here," she said.

Increased advertising has played a major role in the increased tourism, Schanzenbach said. "… Our pilot project with digital picture frames showing local information has been successful."

"That AAA ad will cost us about $4,200 next year alone, and it's proven to work," she said. "But with budget cuts, how do we market to people?"

"Right now, they are specifically coming here," she said. "But that has taken years and years of work; we can't stop now, because we are too new a destination that needs to keep ourselves at the forefront, or we will be back where we were."

Schanzenbach said budget cuts by the city may cut off tourist development just as the buds are beginning to flower.

"The city was down roughly $35,000 in sales tax revenue through May in its calculations," she said. Tourist marketing took a $4,200 hit in the budget cuts demanded by the city this spring that are retroactive to the first of the year.

She hopes the tourist-holding ability of the Center of the Nation complex will improve sales tax numbers at least through the summer and fall "shoulder season," which brings many couples who don't have children through the area.

"We are seriously serving so many more people through here that it has to have an effect on our local sales tax," Schanzenbach said.

According to city officials, she said, May already showed an increase; and if the June and early July tourism numbers at the visitor center do have an impact, there may be increases for the summer.

"We also need to do more in the community so that people in all of our businesses can direct visitors here," she said. "People don't know."

Sturgis area experiencing tourism increase

Sturgis' tourism season experienced considerable success as July came to a close.

"Our tourist season is going really well," Sturgis City Manager David Boone said.

Boone said the city is running 4.5 percent behind in tax collections, which mirrors general economic trends. But he was optimistic about the rally. "We think we're going to have a strong season to catch up."

Bear Butte State Park Manager Jim Jandreau said numbers for June 2009 show an increase of 2,268 from June 2008. The May numbers for 2009 were up 700 from 2008 totals.

"I would say we're getting to 20,000 in total numbers for the year," Jandreau said.

Gas prices have everything to do with the increase, Jandreau said. "Last year was hard on everyone, and people put travel off."

Prices eclipsed $4 per gallon last summer, but this year's prices are less than $3. Jandreau said people are taking advantage of that.

Spearfish tourism a mixed bag

Lisa Langer, Spearfish Chamber of Commerce director said that in April and May, motel room numbers were down. June started slowly but picked up by the end of the month.

But campgrounds were doing well. Langer said it may be that people still want to travel, "but it may be that people are starting to stretch their money."

Deadwood tourism flat

"Gaming has been flat, other than a couple months when we received a lot of snow and the roads were closed," Deadwood Chamber director George Milos said. "Those were bad months, but then we've had small increases in other months."

Milos said visitor numbers have been solid, but vendors and retailers are noticing the people are not spending as much money as they have in the past when they get to Deadwood.

Deadwood made adjustments to its promotional strategies in 2008, when the national economy started weakening. "We haven't changed much in our approach, … hitting the markets that are within a six-hour drive, but we have added some strong 'energy pipeline' markets in Wyoming up into North Dakota," Milos said. "The thing that is keeping us optimistic is our inquiries are up double digits over previous years. People are very interested in Deadwood; in fact, we had to order an extra 20,000 brochures early this year."

The number of bus groups is basically the same as last year, but Milos said that Deadwood remains optimistic about the remainder of the summer and early fall. He also put matters into perspective by comparing Deadwood's percentages to precipitous declines at gambling destinations in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, N.J.

"We've been able to avoid that, mainly because we have so much more to offer in the Black Hills," he said.