Recollections from Branson

“Sixty Minutes in December of 1991 changed everything. We started getting calls from all over the world. We were getting so many that we had to set up a phone bank. We weren’t set up for the volume that we were getting nor did we have it in our budget. For a period of time we were probably the only Chamber in the world that had a 900 number, where people had to pay to get information on our town.” I was talking with John Bowers about his days as president and CEO of the Branson, MO Chamber of Commerce from 1990 to 1996. Today he is the Executive Director of Arizona Association for Economic Development (www.aaed.com), where I was keynoting a talk to their rural conference.

John talked about how the community transformed from a small, local market into the superstar status of today, “For a time we lost control of the local market. These big egos from New York and Los Angeles came in trying to dictate what we should do. It took awhile for Branson to gain back its soul.”

“We went from a $300,000 to $400,000 budget to $2.5 million in six years. And, back then we did it without a room tax. The Chamber improvised to make ends meet. We did a two cassette tape package that had one track from each local performer that we sold until the real boom hit and everything just took off.”

He told me that his best perk on the job was, “I was on hugging terms with each one of the Lennon Sisters when they were doing the Lawrence Welk Show in Branson.”