Innovation: New visitor CEO’s prescription for boosting C.R. tourism

The walls in Aaron McCreight's office still are bare.

That's because the new president and CEO of the Cedar Rapids Area Convention and Visitors Bureau just started May 12. He doesn't even have a house yet, but he already has plans to put in motion as soon as he finishes moving his family to Cedar Rapids.

'I want other Convention and Visitors Bureaus to call us and ask, ‘How did you do that?' ” McCreight said. 'We want to innovate.”

This innovation requires research that McCreight, 40, called 'almost an internal audit.” He said a change in leadership gave the organization an opportunity to look inward.

Now, he hopes to explore questions such as who is the typical leisure visitor to the area? What would motivate someone to visit? How do people interact with the area before and after they visit?

'What's good for a visitor is good for a resident,” McCreight said.

After McCreight's predecessor, Marilee Fowler, announced her decision to retire last summer, the bureau set out to find a replacement. A search firm filtered down candidates from a national search, then a committee from the bureau's board of directors selected McCreight, said Jennifer Pickar, the organization's director of communications and marketing.

McCreight held a similar job for more than six years in Casper, Wyo. He said he sees a lot of similarities between Cedar Rapids and Casper, such as the ability to promote sports and meetings.

He said Cedar Rapids also has assets from tourism and quality-of-life standpoints.

McCreight is a native of St. Louis and graduate of Missouri State University, so the move will bring him, his wife and twin 5-year-old boys much closer to his family.

'I was excited to get back to the Midwest,” McCreight said.

An avid baseball fan, McCreight said one of the most difficult parts of accepting the new job was selling his baseball team, the Casper Cutthroats. He also had served as manager for the team.

But McCreight is moving on and said he already has been to a few Cedar Rapids Kernels games. On one of his first days in town, he took the bureau's staff to a game.