GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Local tourism organizations are setting new plans in action as Governor Tony Evers awarded $15 million in grants for Destination Marketing Organizations throughout the state on Wednesday.
Tourism means a lot of different things for different communities. The marketing grants will allow those communities to make changes and extra efforts to get the tourism dollars flowing again.
“It means so much, especially after COVID, as Oshkosh was severely impacted,” said Visit Oshkosh Executive Director Amy Albright. “The loss of AirVenture alone was catastrophic, but then the loss of fishing tournaments and concerts and all of the other events that would’ve taken place if there wasn’t a pandemic.”
In the wake of the pandemic, communities like Oshkosh are looking for new ways to draw people in.
“Our tagline and brand is ‘Event City’. And while events are very important to what we do – and we saw that with the loss of them – but we feel that we really need to diversify our tourism message,” Albright told WTAQ News. “These dollars will be used to create and implement a new tourism branding strategy that will hopefully help us identify more events in the future, but also alternative tourism opportunities that will encourage people to visit and invest in Oshkosh.”
Albright says the’Event City’ might look to the surrounding water for some new ideas.
“We have just an incredible outdoor recreation story to tell here in Oshkosh. And I think that’s one of the things the brand just doesn’t talk about…We have so much to do! With an amazing parks system, it’s really such a draw for outdoor recreation – which we found to be something that was extremely important to talk about through the pandemic, and into the future I think people are looking for those opportunities,” Albright said. “We have a thriving university here and an art scene and smaller music venues. We’ve got so much going on, and we really want to tell that whole story. I think these dollars will really allow us to do that.”
She also hopes to attract meetings, conventions, sporting events, and other travelers on a year-round basis.
That also happens to be the goal in Green Bay.
“A lot of it is replacing dollars that were lost,” said Discover Green Bay President, Brad Toll. “We were looking at building a deficit budget moving into next year, because certainly continuing to market and sell our community and continue the recovery for the tourism industry is very important…Certainly these dollars will help us balance a lot of the budget and allow us to do things we maybe weren’t able to do prior to this.”
With the money being specifically allocated for marketing efforts, Toll says they’re hoping to use it in a variety of ways – whether that’s drawing in sports tournaments or other conventions at the new Resch Expo.
“These dollars will also be able to be used to market and sell these facilities. Especially when you have a new one like that, you want to get it out there so people are aware of it,” Toll said.
Visit Oshkosh received $456,858 in grants. The Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau received $652,088. Discover Green Bay is getting $1 million. You can see a full list of recipients right here.
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