As CEO of the Hot Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau, Steve Arrison is responsible for the creation and implementation of the advertising, promotion and marketing program for the city of Hot Springs.
He worked in the hotel business for many years, serving as the general manager of the Holiday Inn adjacent to the Pine Bluff Convention Center before being named executive director of the Pine Bluff Convention Center & Visitors Bureau. Arrison moved to the Hot Springs CVB in 1998.
Arrison was named Tourism Person of the Year by the Arkansas Governor’s Conference on Tourism in 2003 and is a member of the Arkansas Hospitality Association Tourism Hall of Fame.
Does the state really need another convention center? For example, one of the two in Texarkana is in bankruptcy, and now two convention centers are proposed for Jonesboro.
I think the actual convention centers in Arkansas are at Little Rock, Fort Smith, Pine Bluff and Hot Springs. All of these facilities have more than 100,000 SF of meeting space. The centers in Texarkana and those proposed in Jonesboro are hotels with large meeting spaces that are called convention centers. I think in the future we will see more true convention centers open in the state. I know that northwest Arkansas has already done a feasibility study heading in that direction. Meeting planners are discovering Arkansas and all that we have to offer in the various regions of the state. Demand from that market will determine whether we get more true convention centers.
Has tourism in the Hot Springs area rebounded to pre-recession levels yet?
Tourism in Arkansas and Hot Springs is doing very well. We are very fortunate to have Oaklawn Racing & Gaming in our community. That gives us the best thoroughbred racing in the country, which gives us an entirely separate tourism season in addition to our traditional summer season. Oaklawn also has a great casino product that produces visitors for us all year long.
Hot Springs just announced its first “Spa-Con,” focusing on a number of entertainment genres, to be held in September and featuring “Star Trek’s” Nichelle Nichols. How long have you been working on that?
We have been working on our new Spa-Con event for over a year, but it has been on our radar for a lot longer. Our partners in this event, the Garland County Library, also were looking to do a Spa-Con type of event. We put the geeks on our staffs together and they came up with an event that even has me excited — and I don’t understand any of it except for Lieutenant Uhura from “Star Trek”!
It seems that Hot Springs has learned to leverage its slightly wacky reputation to draw tourists. Was that deliberate?
I wouldn’t say Hot Springs has a wacky reputation. I see our city as having a very diverse reputation. We have great history that ranges from the thoughtful history of Native Americans and Hernando DeSoto to the not-so-quiet history of Al Capone and Babe Ruth.
What we have done — and continually try to do — is to highlight those areas that make us unique. No one else has Hot Springs National Park, land set aside for public use in the early 1800s. No one else has the Historic Baseball Trail that outlines the birthplace of Major League baseball’s spring training. In how many other cities could you watch American Pharoah begin his run toward the Triple Crown? Sure, we have the First Ever World’s Shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the Running of the Tubs, but we also have the world-class Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Valley of the Vapors Music Festival, the Hot Springs Music Festival and so many others I don’t have the words.