Now imagine the thousands more visitors that attend the Salina Community Theatre and the Stiefel. Consider several other arts activities that attract folks and their credit cards, like the Art Center Cinema, the Salina Art Center and the Smoky Hill Museum.

This is starting to add up. Let's say the optimum visiting couple spends $80 on a hotel room, $60 on a tank of gas, $50 for drinks, dinner and tip at a nice Salina restaurant, plus another $20 on fast food and snacks. Each ticket to an event might go for $5 to $40, so let's figure $40 for two. That's $250 for a one-night stay, not including shopping. To be fair, let's use half that amount for our estimates, or $125.

Now let's say Salina averages 50,000 visitors a year. (A substantial portion of that amount comes to the three-day river festival alone.) That's $6.5 million in direct spending. Those dollars generate other transactions, like when servers take their tips and buy clothes. That's called the roll over. New dollars roll over from one to seven times in a community, depending on the economist doing the calculations. If our $6.5 million rolls over twice, then we are near the $24 million predicted in this study.

Hmm. That unbelievable number is starting to make sense. Perhaps we shouldn't be so skeptical after all.

-- Tom Bell

Editor & Publisher