Mystery tours gain traction bringing surprised tourists to Sioux Falls attractions

In May 2022, when Amy Mueller announced to the 40 people who had signed up to take a mystery tour to an unknown location, only one couple said, “Oh, we’ve been to Sioux Falls before.”

They likely weren’t expecting anything mysterious, since one of their grown children had lived in Sioux Falls for several years.

About one-third of the other riders had at least set foot in Sioux Falls before. For the majority, it was a new destination, even though they lived just three hours away.

When the three-day, two-night stay ended, however, some of the happiest people were those who had been to Sioux Falls but had never seen the city’s landmarks.

“At the end they said, ‘We never went to any of these places (before),’” said Mueller, office manager and tour guide with O’Neill Travelnow and Travelnow Tours in O’Neill, Nebraska.

Mystery tours, where travel agencies offer a multi-night trip to unknown locations, are popular, and Experience Sioux Falls is poised to expand its share of the business, said Teri Schmidt, CEO of Experience Sioux Falls.

It’s “absolutely” a growth opportunity for the Sioux Falls visitor industry, she said.

“I do think it’s growing in potential for us. It takes a lot of time to sell these tours and put them together, so it’s a tremendous amount of detail work and then the company sells the tour and when they’re coming here, we have to roll out the red carpet and make it really fun,” Schmidt said.

“It’s not just another town, another bus. We have to add excitement and make it an experience they’ll remember.”

An example she shared is a Minnesota-based tour company that has booked several mystery tours in recent years and spent four days each tour going all over the region “and taking in many of the attractions, arts, theater, along with eating,” Schmidt said. That company has returned several times.

“It’s a 50-passenger bus, and they don’t come down and do the norm,” Schmidt said. “They want a mystery tour. Often you don’t know where you’re going, and a lot of people love that. It’s a surprise.”

Jackie Wentworth, a sales manager with Experience Sioux Falls, arranges group tours. Tour companies across the United States develop the tours, she said. Her role is to help the companies put the details together.

“They (the customers) know the price of the tour and the dates of the tour,” Wentworth said. “The tour company will develop maybe a five-day tour. A tour company out of Wisconsin will come, they will maybe plan an overnight on the way to Sioux Falls and do something in that community. Then they’ll make a couple stops in Sioux Falls and do a couple of things, spend a day and a half maybe two days with us, then travel to Omaha or Sioux City, catch something like the Browns Theater (in LeMars, Iowa) on their way home.”

The traveler knows none of that when they sign up for the tour, Wentworth said. They don’t know from hour to hour what they are doing. It is the tour companies’ responsibility to make sure the tour is enjoyable so the travelers will return.

That responsibility also falls on Wentworth and the staff at Experience Sioux Falls.

Wentworth attends travel shows and promotes Sioux Falls as not just a stop along the way but a destination. The longer a group stays, the better it is for Sioux Falls businesses like hotels and restaurants.

“Jackie is doing a really good job attending shows and following up and selling Sioux Falls,” Schmidt said. “There is a fair amount of people who don’t realize Sioux Falls could do a tour in terms of the level that they like.”

Wentworth heaps praise on the people who make the stops she suggests successful. A three-day, two-night itinerary could include stops at Stensland Family Farms near Larchwood, Iowa, Good Earth State Park, the Stockyards Ag Experience, the Cathedral of St. Joseph and the Washington Pavilion with lunch at the Overlook Café. And that’s just Day One.

Other stops can include the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum, the State Theatre, the McCrossan Boys Ranch Visitor Center, EROS Data Center, Wilde Prairie Winery, the Bronzeage Art Casting Foundry, the Center for Western Studies at Augustana University, the Old Courthouse and Pettigrew museums and Sculpture Walk and Arc of Dreams in downtown Sioux Falls.

Every location has someone there to greet the travelers, explain the location and answer questions.

“It’s such a variety,” Mueller said. “Everybody loved the dairy. They liked that one and the theater. We didn’t have any negative experiences, and everybody seemed happy to have us.”

Her travel company has been in business for 32 years, Mueller said, but its first mystery tour wasn’t offered until 2021. She can’t offer Sioux Falls again as a mystery tour destination, but she is considering a trip to the city as a weekend get-away.

‘It’s not off the table to go back,” she said. “There’s still tons of things to do there.”

While Wentworth is proud to welcome bus travelers to Sioux Falls as an overnight destination her goal is to help show there’s enough to do here for a multi-night stay.

Experience Sioux Falls staff often welcome the groups and can take part in a driving tour around Sioux Falls, giving them the community’s highlights. When the bus drives by Levitt at the Falls, she can share the history of Mortimer and Mimi Levitt and how it came to be in Sioux Falls.

Wentworth currently is working with a travel company several states away, arranging a series of six mystery tours for next summer and fall. The travelers will spend two nights in Sioux Falls as part of a longer bus tour, visiting in May, July, August and September.

“All those travelers that will come on those six tours will be different customers that have traveled with him for years,” Wentworth said. “They just trust when (the travel agency owners) puts together a mystery tour they’re going to have fun and will have something new.”

Wentworth visited with the tour planner on a yearly basis for five or six years before he agreed to come to Sioux Falls and for a FAM, for familiarization, tour. She put together a “fast and furious itinerary” that allowed him to see the sites such as EROS, McCrossan, the arboretum and Old Courthouse Museum, along with eating at a few places that are tour-group friendly.

“He knows what might work for his travelers,” Wentworth said. “After he got home with all this information, he circled the things that will work best for his tour, then I help him with the driving time from one place to another. He packages that, then he decides on a hotel, then he sells that to his customers.”

Experience Sioux Falls has received requests for smaller guided tours, say for family reunions and small gatherings. The convention and visitor’s bureau doesn’t help on a smaller scale, Wentworth said, but residents have the knowledge to do it themselves.