My first spreadsheet project started with a classic error in reportorial judgment: Late on a Monday afternoon, the day before a weekly deadline, with six years of monthly tax rev- enues just in on a barely legible fax, I told my editor about a project I'd conceived that day. Since Dare County collects occupancy and meals taxes as a percentage of sales at hotels, rental agencies and restaurants, the numbers are often used to assess the health or growth of the tourism industry, the only real economy here on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The county tourist bureau, charged with increasing visitation in the spring and fall seasons and decreasing the area's reliance on the hurricane-prone summer season, operates on 1.5 percent of those tourist receipts. The more growth the bureau stimulates in the off seasons, the theory goes, the more revenue earns. Our numbers, however, would question that seemingly obvious premise. CAR on the run Ididn't know how the figures might add up.
From what the tourism and marketing director told me, I expected to show the shoulder sea- sons growing faster than the summer. My editor "Can you get it in this week?" Deadline in 24 hours, two beat stories to finish, and I had never used spreadsheet soft- ware in my life. "Sure," I said. It was probably 10:00 that night, after I'd entered all the monthly totals using a magnify- ing glass and back-checking with a calculator, before I realized what I had gotten into.
When I began doing a simple sum to com- pare the first two years of receipts, I couldn't even remember what command to type in the third column or how to extend that command down the column for the rest of the rows. Luckily, Ihad Brant Houston's "Computer- Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide" on the bookshelf behind me. (I was working at home because the office had no spreadsheet soft- ware. I had Excel.) Though mainly a matter of juggling col- umns, it took some time to do the first set of numbers.
Since each yearly comparison re- quired at least three columns - one for a new year, one for the difference, and one for the percentage change - I quickly found myself using eight sheets and 20 columns. With numerous errors and restarts, I com- pleted my first table, totalling only spring and fall numbers, at about midnight. I would have been better off had I done the entire table first, but I was anxious to know the angle of my story and excited to learn that fall revenues had grown 43 percent in five years.
The second table, with totals for all months of the year, Ifinished sometime around 7:30 the next morning after five hours of sleep. Yearly growth came out to 35 percent. So far, so good. I printed out two reports, knowing that I'd have to find time to come back to the house later that morning for the final grouping of summer and winter revenues. At work by 8:30. Phone calls; one beat story completed.
Back at the house by 10 a.m. The last table I finished before noon. Back at the office with three printouts, I still had to make calls. I finished the second beat story in between phone interviews with tourism officials. An hour and a half before deadline, I got a wakeup call from the Chamber of Commerce president, John Bone. I had already written the story in my head when Bone told me that, accord- ing to his retail figures and despite high fall growth, the summer still accounted for the same percentage of year-round business as it had six years ago.
According to Bone, the county was just as dependant on good summer numbers in 1996 as it had been in 1991. Refusing to let go of my angle, I thought my tax numbers would show something different. I was wrong. Stranded at the office away from my PC, a hand calculator told me that despite the amazing growth rate, the fall had only gained 1 percent on the summer in yearly revenue share. In fact, with the spring lagging seven points behind the yearly average, the summer was now worth 58.5 percent of the year's total, up one-half of a percent from 1991.
What I had failed to understand was the pro- portional difference between 1 percent of fall receipts ($4,936) and 1 percent of summer re- ceipts ($13,894), almost a three-fold difference. The phenomenal 5-percent growth the county had seen last October could be neutralized by a mere 8 percent drop in July. In fact, Hurricane Bertha had caused a 6 percent drop in July 1996. Another point I had missed was the differ- ence between summer and off-season rental rates.
The weekly cost of a vacation cottage rises roughly 90 percent when the season begins in mid-June and yields much higher occupancy- tax returns than it does in a week in the fall. The results showed that, in terms of its own budget, the tourist bureau would be better off concentrating on the over-full summer season, since even slight increases would yield greater growth in the bureau's revenues than larger percentage changes during the spring or fall.
I led my story with the huge fall increases, but hedged near the end of the piece with that last point. The tourist bureau took cautious credit for the fall increases, as well as for a stunning rise in early-June receipts. I turned in the story a little after 6 p.m, and my editor was profoundly pleased. I could almost see his chest swell with pride when he heard a local radio brief two days later that began: "According to a computer analysis of county tax receipts conducted by the Outer Banks Sentinel.
" Hart Matthews can be reached at (919) 480- 1785 or by e-mail at hart@interpath.com