Last week, we announced that the Genesee Regional Chamber of Commerce now leads tourism efforts for Flint and Genesee County. We have created a new action group called the Flint-Genesee Regional Convention & Visitors Bureau. We have a dedicated staff and budget, and we have hit the ground running with an aggressive marketing plan. We couldn’t be more excited about this new opportunity!
Bringing the business of tourism under the Regional Chamber umbrella makes sense on many levels. We have an existing staff of marketing and communications professionals. We can increase operational efficiencies and we have a variety of resources from accounting to information technology to human resource management to support the business. In addition, we have been successful at promoting the county as a great place to do business and live. Promoting the region as a travel destination is a natural next step for our messaging. We now have an opportunity to tell our story consistently with one message and one voice by creating a regional brand.
One our first goals is to brand and position Flint and Genesee County as a desirable, four-season destination… for conventions and leisure travelers; business retention, expansion and attraction; great low-cost, high quality of life for families, college students and much more.
The brand positioning will help articulate a vision of where we’re heading. It will also give us a platform for communicating our community’s transformational story and promoting the region’s assets to our local citizens, across the state of Michigan and the nation. In other words, the brand positioning could do for us what Pure Michigan is doing for the state — deliver impressive results.
The bottom line is we know that tourism is important. It can have a significant economic impact on our region and help to grow our economy. My staff and I look forward to collaborating with all of our partners and the community to motivate people to choose Flint-Genesee County as a destination and stay overnight. Together, I know we can do it!