Missouri City City Council discussed plans on Monday to focus on the city's tourism program and to promote the presence of its visitor's center through marketing and other strategies. In terms of tourism, the city possesses several advantages, including its active parks and recreation program, green space, unique history, anticipated growth and hotel expansions, said Sade McCallan, the city's new tourism manger. "Missouri City harvests this culture for getting community input, whether it's your citizen's university [or] your special events, there's always an opportunity for the public to share their ideas as well, and this will be critical in helping to brand our tourism program," McCallan said. However, issues involve the unestablished presence of the city's visitor's center and a lack of cohesive branding, she said. City Council should integrate the tourism program into its overall strategic planning, she said. "We want to be sure we're targeting the right audience with our media and our content for the tourism program," McCallan said. "Externally, letting people know that we are here-that's the next key step to bringing tourism in to visit our new visitor's center." Public works staff is in the process of developing signage to better promote the visitor's center and tourism program, she said. Some future goals include developing a vision for the tourism program, coordinating tourism-centric events, using the visitor's center as a space for social gatherings and collaborating with potential sponsors and partners. One of the biggest focuses, McCallan said, is concentrating on a strategic marketing campaign involving consultations from outside agencies. These are marketing specialists who will be critical in laying the groundwork for establishing Missouri City as a tourism destination, said Kathleen Weisenberger, Missouri City's chief performance officer. "This is a project that's going to engage our citizens, that's going to engage council members," Weisenberger said. "It's going to have a lot of visibility." The project is estimated to cost $30,000-40,000 and will be funded by the hotel occupancy tax fund, McCallan said. It would take 6-8 months to complete. "We've already begun a lot of the work with this," Weisenberger said.