MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.
Meet Minneapolis, the area DMO/CVA, presented the city’s first-ever tourism master plan, Destination Transformation 2030, at its March 2, 2017, annual meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
The destination management organization is seizing the opportunities provided by the major events coming to the city over the next few years to strive towards longer-term gains in tourism.
Destination Transformation 2030 is a comprehensive tourism plan for Minneapolis, providing goals for where the destination will be in the year 2030, including:
- Attract 50 million visitors to the metro area annually; in 2015, there were 32 million visitors.
- Increase winter visitation to 11 million travelers, whereas there are 6 million today.
- Support 40,000 hospitality jobs; currently, there are 32,500.
- Develop a $10 million annual awareness-building marketing campaign for the metro area.
“We want to celebrate and enhance the very best of our city and everything it offers. And we want the world to know about it,” said Mayor Betsy Hodges, co-chair of Destination Transformation 2030.
Over the past year, Meet Minneapolis gathered input from 3,000 people, including tourists, travel writers, meeting planners, local stakeholders, residents and industry experts. Six subcommittees worked to develop the plan. The plan identifies eight initiatives for 2030:
- Attract 50 million visitors to the metro area annually by 2030.
- Launch a metro-wide branding and marketing campaign.
- Build an iconic visitors center on downtown’s central riverfront.
- Implement a unified transportation, wayfinding and information program for Minneapolis.
- Adopt a comprehensive place-making plan to drive Minneapolis tourism priorities and investments.
- Accentuate winter as a novel tourism adventure.
- Grow and emphasize hospitality jobs as important to social equity and the metro economy.
- Identify and secure ongoing resources to implement the tourism master plan.
More details on each initiative are available at www.Minneapolis.org/DT2030.
