One for all, all for tourism: Regional approach seen as economic development boost
PHOTOS/COURTESY
Scenes from three top tourist destinations in Central Massachusetts — from top — Old Sturbridge Village, Southwick's Zoo and the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts.
The Central Massachusetts Convention and Visitors Bureau is dead. Will its successor, the Worcester Regional Visitors and Tourism Corp., pump more life into the region’s tourism industry?
Much of the attention surrounding the state legislature’s decision to defund one visitors agency and replace it with another under the direction of Christina Andreoli , vice president at the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce has centered on how the old organization was defunded.
However, beyond how that happened — bureau staff saying they were unaware of the impending change — the new organization brings with it not only a substantial shift for tourism efforts in the area, but also highlights an overall boost for collaboration among economic development organizations.
The new organization represents an opportunity for many communities in Central Massachusetts that had stopped supporting the bureau over the years. For instance, Destination Worcester was formed in 2007, when the city decided to stop funding the tourism bureau and undertake its own marketing efforts. The money for Destination Worcester, $500,000 in 2015, will continue to be set aside specifically for marketing Worcester as part of the new tourism bureau, according to City Manager Edward Augustus, who is bullish on the new organization.
“It’ll allow us to leverage more state dollars and more resources to market the region, because people will have a renewed confidence in the effectiveness of (the) combined marketing efforts,” he said. “It’s long overdue and it’s moving us in the right direction … we were doing the other way for a while and it wasn’t giving us the results we wanted, so it makes sense that we try something else.”
Optimism for this shift is coming from all directions, including tourist destinations and regional economic development organizations. There is optimistic talk of collaboration from all sectors of the region’s tourism industry.
For Jeannie Hebert, president and CEO of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce, who had been second in command of the previous tourism bureau, the change represents a potential for collaboration that was lacking with the old organization. That will help Central Massachusetts push its strengths and expand current tourism activity at sites well beyond Worcester, such as Southwick’s Zoo in Mendon, she said. And Hebert said she’s looking forward to working with Andreoli, who had been in touch with her months before the new organization was created.
“It’s not Worcester taking it over. It’s a collaboration of all the areas here working in concert,” said Hebert, who pointed out that Worcester has certain resources such as hotels and urban destinations that will appeal to visitors. “We are going to utilize Worcester for what benefits they have.”
That approach will also help Worcester, said Troy Siebels, president of the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts and chairman of Destination Worcester. While the Hanover and other Worcester locations are destinations in their own right, the strength of the region lies in its diversity.
“Our attraction isn’t to say we are better than Boston. It is to say we have a really unique mix of urban, suburban, and rural,” said Siebels, who explained that the area primarily pulls people mostly from within a 100-mile radius who are doing day trips for specific events.
The key will be getting those people interested in other activities in the area so that they spend a night or a weekend, he said.
The region’s diversity is something Andreoli plans to play up in her new role.
“We know that there is a lot of energy around tourism in areas around Worcester. There are people in those areas and stakeholders in those area that are doing things around tourism and commerce,” she said. “So why aren’t we looking at ways we can increase the number of visitors to Central Massachusetts as a group?”
The chamber as conduit
This change also brings regional tourism efforts back under the direction of the chamber. In a way, it’s a return from the decentralized approach that took place in the 1990s, when there was a lack of coordination between economic development organizations, said chamber president Timothy Murray.
“One of the things that was lost during that was synergy, coordination and to some extent economic efficiencies,” he said.
Around 2011, both Murray, then lieutenant governor, and Michael Angelini, chairman of the law firm Bowditch and Dewey, had called for various organizations, such as the Worcester Redevelopment Authority, the Central Massachusetts Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Worcester Business Development Corp. and the chamber to be united into one organization. The reasoning was that a merged organization would address the issues that arose after the decentralization in the 1990s and improve efficiencies such as staffing and office space. While that mass merger didn’t happen, the organizations decided to communicate more, helped by the Economic Development Coordinating Council, an organization made up of local economic development groups that meets regularly to coordinate efforts.
“We had a number of siloed organizations doing work that was overlapping and sometimes duplicative and other times contradictory,” Angelini said. “What’s been accomplished … is a lot more coordination and fewer silos than what we had before.”
With the increased communication through the economic council, there’s less of a need to consolidate, although Murray said efficiencies such as joint tenancy in a building are always up for discussion. These new efficiencies will carry through to the new tourism organization, he said, which will lead to more money from the state if the organization can show how the private and public sectors are working together to boost tourism.
Angling for state dollars
Andreoli plans to leverage this partnership and improved coordination with area organizations when she makes her presentation to the state tourism bureau for Central Massachusetts’ portion of $6.5 million in funding that’s divided among 16 regional tourism organizations. This funding will form the base for the group’s operations.
“The theme has been Berkshires, beaches and Boston; that has been where the money has traditionally been going,” Andreoli said.
Despite the foreseen collaborations and benefits that a diverse region carries, there is hard work ahead. With conference calls and regional meetings underway, the effort to sell Central Massachusetts as a region has already begun.
“If you’re not telling your story, you don’t exist. So, by working together and telling our story, we can all benefit,” Hebert, of the Blackstone Valley chamber, said. “We’re not Boston, the Berkshires or beaches and we need to work harder. Without funding, it’s difficult and without collaboration it’s impossible.”
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