By: Liz Swaine • Executive Director • Downtown Development Authority
The Shreveport-Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau (SBCTB) announced the new look and feel today, along with information gathered over the course of more than a year.
This is important stuff. In fact, there are 819 million reasons why we should all care. $819M is roughly the amount of money visitors to the area bring and spend here each year. $819M is no small potatoes, but it is believed that our area could become a $1B yearly destination. The question is how to get there.
For more than a year, the SBCTB has been working with MMGY/Next Factor and MMGY Global on a new Destination Master Plan and Branding for the region, designed to provide us the information and look needed to help our area move to that next level. In getting there, the consultants met with 15 focus groups, conducted 50+ interviews, held three town halls and got more than 1,200 responses in a resident survey. What they discovered helped guide their discussion and ultimate decisions.
They found common ground in Shreveport and Bossier in family, friends, faith, food and football, and also found a common desire to improve civic unity and pride.
A full room gathered for the presentation.
From all that came strategic objectives. They are:
-Increase and diversify community collaboration.
-Accelerate mixed use development, placemaking and mobility initiatives in the two urban waterfronts.
-Prioritize support for local entrepreneurs in art, culture, film, food, music, retail and other creative businesses.
-Capitalize on surging demand for sports tourism.
-Increase visitor volumes in meeting and convention sectors.
-Accelerate business development in outdoor recreation and upgrade event venues.
Key insights gathered along the way will help in these goals. These insights were boiled down to:
-We don’t always see things the same way.
-We’re hardest on ourselves.
-We are not the same, but we’re not that different.
-We have an opportunity to be so much more.
As a part of the process, the SBCTB has gone away, replaced by the easier to write and say ‘Visit Shreveport Bossier’ or VSB. The slogan/graphic "Louisiana’s Other Side" is officially no more and will be gone as soon as they can remove it from different sites and locations.
A variety of fun and relevant tag lines will be used in advertising our area to others, from "Two Places, One Heart" to "Things Grow Here."
This is obviously the first of more to come, and it will take the effort of many people to make it catch hold in the way we hope. Stay tuned for more coming soon, and count us pretty darned excited to see it!