If a request for a heritage tourism development grant is in your future, relax and remember that a marketing plan can easily help you map out all the right information needed for your grant proposal. Here are a few tips:

• Money is out there in a variety of heritage tourism development grants, but there is competition. To successfully obtain grants, be prepared.  
• Preparation means having a marketing strategy that shows grantors that your community has collaborative efforts in mind for heritage tourism, and your plans look past one grant and one project. Your marketing strategy encourages and develops new opportunities.
• New opportunities impact more than one area for heritage tourism. A complete marketing strategy will show how dollars spent will improve your area, region and the state.

Topics: Economic Development, Strategic Planning, Tourism Industry, Key Trends

Successful heritage tourism marketing gives visitors the opportunity to experience communities and their regional assets. Implementation of a strategic plan delivers more than tourists. It covers several audiences: 

Topics: Economic Development, Marketing Tactics, Strategic Planning, Tourism Industry, Key Trends, Brand Awareness

This week's Friday Five is focused destination marketing. Destination marketing is used promote any place people may want to visit such as a town, city, region or country. The main goal is to attract more visitors to a certain location in hopes to help the overall economic health.  Here are some great articles and resources that focus on why destination marketing in a small town is so important:

1. How to Make a Small Town a Big Deal 
2. Marketing a Small Town
3. Here's What Google Thinks: Five 'Next Practices' in Destination Marketing 
4. 5 Killer Tourism Marketing Campaigns That Make Us Want to Travel
5. Sustainable Tourism: Five Essentials for Rural Areas and Small Towns

 

Topics: Case Studies, Economic Development, Marketing Tactics, Tourism Industry, Brand Awareness, Marketing Operations