Events attract tourism, tourism attracts transformation

Mother Teresa once said, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” This quote fits perfectly with last week’s column discussing the critical nature of building an army of community members or volunteers to assure a community has the bandwidth to implement their transformation. Your community army is the foundation from which all transformation flows. Communities are like homes; one would never build the house upon the sand expecting it to last very long. You would build upon a firm foundation assuring the house is steady and strong for a long time. Building a community is no different, always build on a solid foundation.

Once the foundation is in place, what are one of the next steps? While an argument can be made for many various pathways, I would suggest tourism needs to be front and center. Why is tourism so important? Very simple, without new visitors to your community, regardless of the new businesses, startups, and rehab projects, you are simply sharing the same amount of dollars in the same-sized pie. When you grow tourism, you generate new dollars increasing the size of your community financial pie.

Over the years we have seen many events. Here is a simple tourism-attracting event nearly any community can implement that grows both local and regional tourism, creating the dollars that flow with it. This event strategy not only works in growing tourism, it enhances revenue, excites the locals and pulls a community together.

First, search your community for events and activities already in place. This can be a farmers market, 5K run/walk, auto show, holiday activities, community garage sales, and the list goes on. Work with organizations running these events and convince them they need to hold their events on the same day each month, let’s say the first Saturday of each month. Next, hold all the events in the same location. I would suggest in your downtown area if you have adequate space. Your downtown needs to be the window into your community and this is a great opportunity to create that window. What is the reason for having all the events in the same location? Very simple, these events by themselves may only draw a few hundred participants or visitors, but when holding the events together, you now have 4-5 events with their few hundred participants each in the same location at the same time which now grows to an event with over one thousand participants cross-pollinating each other’s events.

From there, canvass the community for even more events to add. Here are a few ideas. Have a local bar sponsor a monthly cornhole championship. Have the local media company promote a local garage sale where everyone sets up at the event. Have a local yoga class conducting their class at the event. Have the local medical facility promote a community-wide walk for health. Have a local bike club? What a better place to start and end a bikeride. Bring in local food trucks. Have the local pet home have an adopt-a-pet day. Bring in and create as many events as possible that become a subpart of the major event. Once you have 10-12 mini-events each bringing their few hundred participants to the same place, at the same time, you will have a couple thousand people or more.

This is where the fun begins. Events such as these attract outsiders. They also attract potential sponsors as potential sponsors are always looking for events that draw as many people as possible. Bring thousands together and you will attract sponsors. With thousands of participants and sponsors coupled with promotion from the media, you now have the needed ingredients to

attract tourism as people travel for these larger types of events. Doing this you will begin to grow the community revenue base through tourism.

As with any initiative, the devil is always in the details. When implemented in the right way, taking the right steps, events will rejuvenate your community, grow tourism and propel your community to greater heights. Lastly, as your community creates events, ask one question each time – will this event grow tourism? If not, maybe it is time to move on spending your time on events that will.

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John Newby, Pineville, MO. is a nationally recognized publisher, community, business & media consultant, and speaker. He authors “Building Main Street, not Wall Street,” a column appearing in 50+ communities. The founder of Truly-Local, dedicated to assisting communities create excitement, energy, and combining synergies with local media to become more vibrant and competitive. His email is: info@Truly-Localllc.com.