By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Great Bend Community Coordinator Christina Hayes presented a 2022 annual
report to the Great Bend City Council last week where she was able review
attendance at events, website analytics, marketing success and transient guest
tax income.
Hayes promoted the Explore Great Bend Facebook page as a resource for people to
learn about upcoming events. The page made over 23 million impressions, or digital
views, in 2022 and has well over 10,000 followers.
"All this information helps us set goals for the retailers on how we spend tax dollars to help them," said Hayes. "It also helps us on how we do our events and gives us goals for the CVB as well."
The city’s website, greatbendks.net, had more than 172,000 page views in 2022 as many users
visited pages for utilities, events and the zoo.
"You can look at the top searches," said Hayes. "The top searches of 2022 on our website were inmate searches, arrests and warrants, online bill pay, admissions and events, hotels and maps."
22,055 guests attended the 168 booked events at the Great Bend Events
Center in 2022, an increase of nearly 3,000 from the previous year.
Great Bend collected $434,649 in transient guest tax in 2022. The 6% guest tax
is applied to anyone that rents a room at a motel in town. The 2022 amount was
the most ever collected, surpassing the previous record by more than $85,000
that was set in 2016. The transient guest tax is used to fund the Great Bend
Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Events Center.