The Park County Travel Council is expanding its staff. 

At a Feb. 20 meeting, the board gave its blessing for PCTC Executive Director Ryan Hauck to advertise for a business development manager. The position will focus on bringing in more domestic groups, meetings, conferences and specialty groups. 

“It would be somebody that would have a focused sales effort to bring those types of groups in here — not just obviously in peak season, but to fill our shoulder season as well as our winter season,” Hauck said.

Park County is “a heavy, heavy leisure-only destination,” he said and adding the business development manager “would really help diversify the type of people coming here that we could go after.”

Including both pay and benefits, the job is expected to cost $131,000-$150,000, and Hauck said the right person will be more than worth it.

“This is one position that you can really put a true measure on ROI [return on investment] based off of what he or she would be bringing into the destination,” Hauck said, adding that the position could be cut quickly if it doesn’t pay off as expected.

Once a candidate is chosen, the council staff will have grown from two to five people in the last few years. Other positions included a marketing manager, brand content creator and coordinator, and an executive assistant. However, PCTC Chair John Parsons said adding the position would still keep administrative costs under 15% of total expenses, which is the percentage the council has targeted to stay under. 

“Which, for an organization of this size, is phenomenal,” Parsons said. “I think when we’ve looked at those studies, it’s usually 40%, so they’re still way below on our admin cost. So we’re not growing the organization.”

As one comparison, the Natrona County Travel & Tourism Council, where Hauck previously worked, has seven staff members.

Parsons also agreed with Hauck that it’s “a very measurable position” and said “if this isn’t working, we need to cut it quickly.”

The council talked about the position at length in a fall retreat, and Hauck said it would entail a lot of travel to a variety of trade shows. He expects to advertise the job in March or April, in order to have a business development manager in place by the beginning of the fiscal year in July.