Manchester Awarded a $10,000 Grant to Increase Tourism

Congratulations to the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and the Village of Manchester for being awarded $10,000 to promote tourism to this area.

The $10,000 grant is from the Ypsilanti Area Convention & Visitors Bureau (YACVB), through the Community Tourism Action Plan (CTAP) program. YACVB is funded through a 5% bed tax levied on visitors to Washtenaw County’s lodging facilities, so while they serve Ypsilanti first, their goal is to promote all of Washtenaw County and the CTAP program is one of the methods they use to do that.

The CTAP grant requires that the recipient also put forward 20% of the amount of the grant awarded. The Downtown Development Authority and the Village have both agreed to contribute $1,000 each to fulfill this requirement.  The DDA will serve as the fiduciary for this award.

Seven communities, Manchester, Chelsea, Dexter, the City of Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, Saline and Milan are joining together to come up with tourism plans. The Ypsilanti Area Convention & Visitors Bureau will then gather information about assets in all of Washtenaw County and collectively market that information to promote the area as a whole and enhance the likelihood that families outside of this area will find this region enticing and choose to vacation here. The idea being that while no one community may have enough appeal to influence a family to choose to visit Washtenaw County for a week, collectively, there are enough attractions to draw visitors here.  The ultimate goal is that once visitors come to this area, they will spend a day or two in Manchester.

This type of collaboration is not new.  It has been successful in other areas of the country and in Canada.  Examples include:  Asheville (NC) (8 areas/communities- Biltmore Village, Downtown, East, North, River Arts District, South, West and Black Mountain) and Orange County (IN) (5 communities- French Lick, West Baden, Paoli, Orleans and Patoka Lake).

In previous research, the YACVB has found that most visitors to this general area come from 1) Toledo, 2) Columbus, 3) Fort Wayne, 4) Detroit, 5) Indianapolis, 6) Grand Rapids, and 7) Windsor.  These are the areas that will be targeted with information collected through the CTAP grant applications and the resulting efforts.

The Manchester Community Tourism Action Plan (CTAP) was prepared based on two workshop sessions, which were well publicized beforehand, held on March 19 and April 19, 2014. Decisions were made by the 20 participants representing Village government, Downtown Development Authority, Chamber of Commerce, local businesses, not-for-profit associations and others with an active interest in community tourism growth.

Participants discussed Manchester’s strengths and weaknesses in regards to promoting the community to tourists. Positives included our various festivals and events (including the Chicken Broil), walking trail development, weekly farmer’s market, gazebo concerts, and River Raisin recreational opportunities.  On the not-so-positive side, Manchester’s lack of general lodging, limited evening entertainment, and inconsistent or less convenient retail shopping hours of downtown businesses were discussed.

Initially, discussions focused solely on the Village of Manchester, however, later they expanded to include the surrounding areas with a focus on agritourism including Manchester’s farm markets, farms with tours, self-guided tours (barn quilt tour, German Heritage tour) and Alber’s orchard among others.

The following items were identified by the group to include in the application:

1. Destination/Community Brand Strategy and Identity Platform ($1,000)

2. Dedicated destination/community website with appropriate content, linkages and mobile capabilities. ($3,000)

3. Update/reprint tour brochures, implement new farm related activities and assess agritourism and adventure travel opportunities. ($1,000)

4. Improve community wayfinding and event signage ($7,500)

Pat Vailliencourt will investigate purchasing signage for the corner of Main and Clinton (in front of the post office) that will provide way finding signage and also current event information.

Ultimately, a proposal was submitted on April 29th, followed by a strong verbal presentation to the YACVB on May 1st.  Only a few days later, on May 7th, Karl Racenis (DDA chairman) received the call that the grant will be awarded.

Visitors spent $18.7 billion in Michigan in 2013 —including a record $13.8 billion in leisure travel spending— as the state continues to draw from tourists from both inside and outside the United States.  These dollars are critical to Michigan’s economy and Manchester is ready to step up for a piece of the pie, if even only a sliver.  Job well done!

The CTAP program aims to “increase the number of visitors…to the community and area through the focused promotion and sustainable development of community tourism experiences.” For those interested, the CTAP grant application pages can be found on the Chamber of Commerce website here and the CTAP plan can be found here.  The executive director for the CTAP program at YACVB is Debbie Locke-Daniel and can be reached at 734-483-4444 ext 106 or dlocke@ypsilanti.org. The YACVB coordinated effort to bring outside visitors to Washtenaw County was budgeted at the recommendation of Don Anderson from the Destination Consultancy Group,

For as little as $1 a month, you can keep Manchester-focused news coverage alive.

by News News