7.14.2023 Fall River Tourism Press Presentation

painting by going around the table and introducing myself my name is Paul Coogan I'm the mayor I'm Patty Rigo executive director of Viva Fall River I'm Olivia paxoda the special projects and media coordinator John Williams dean of the Charlton College of SSU may I start with and I'm Paul bagdine and I am working with Dean Williams on this project and I'm Tara Lee I'm District director

for representative Carol Fiola okay so what we're doing today is um releasing a comprehensive tourism report that we had partnered with UMass Dartmouth especially the Charlton School of Business related to travel and tourism in the city of Fall River so I would we have a press release we're going to post the report online Patty and I just thought about that so that everyone can see it once we

get done with this press conf so hopefully later today but I'd like to turn it over to John first so we can talk about how this all came to be and where we ended up well I I started my position three years ago and in the midst of covid and uh I had I had a chance to get around the community and talk to people and tourism came up and it was a subject with my

background in in tourism and doing economic impacts I thought well I'll get out in the community and and see where this goes and see if there's interest well there was great interest and I I might start by saying that I've done a lot of these studies in the past I was in New Orleans and and we did everything we did the states we did those economic impacts we did visitor profiles we did

it for all of New Orleans and what you need is a real Spirit of cooperation and I'm thrilled at what we encountered here and and how ongoing it was it's that Spirit of cooperation and you get places so you probably want to know what what is an example of that well when we started to get into the data it's good to also get anecdotal data in addition to the quantitative data we can get

quantitative data we can crunch that on and do things it's the anecdotal data that's difficult to get in that's by stakeholders and partners who are really embedded in tourism and have the desire to do that it was forthcoming it was all the way through it still is and I want to give you an example of that where as we started to look at the results we realized that what Fall River has is very tremendous

and we have a tendency in the north to think well you know we have a season and it's typically the warm season and we tend to disregard the rest of the year for many reasons well it happens that on the shoulders of that warmer season is enormous potential and the stakeholders realized that and we started a great conversation on it we also talked about going in and actually making incisions

into the year such as the holiday season New Year's Eve things like that that have just enormous potential that would have never been realized if we didn't have those stakeholders coming forward sharing their ideas getting somewhere with that and starting to go after that I can tell you the fruits of that are tremendous so to give you a kind of reverse situation in New Orleans we looked at the

seasonality and it's the reverse so summer hot and humid right now it's blazingly hot and humid so there was our area to go and really Target which we did we went after that and we thought we're going to do something about this so we started to place we had so many festivals in the rest of the year when you look at a place like New Orleans sure they have Mardi Gras they've got

the French Quarter Fest they've got the Jazz Fest but there's so many other festivals and they were choking themselves so what we did was we went to those Festival providers coming on board new and I would take them and introduce them to the entire hotel association of where to put those in in the summer season and Target those we turned summer now summer is just like any other part of the year the

seasonality is gone so really we couldn't do that if it wasn't stakeholders with their cooperation and starting to talk about ideas of that so I just want to thank everyone at the onset of this that's what gives research like this legs to have it go on and really start to get somewhere so I'll leave it at that for an introduction thank you thanks John uh I'd also like Patty we go to comments you kind of

spearheaded this effort uh in conjunction with FIFA Fall River City of Florida thank you yeah absolutely thank you for the opportunity um I think you know we went we it wasn't like we were waiting for the research in order to start doing work we definitely had some assumptions and I think in some cases the the data definitely supported um some of the things that we're targeting certainly The Culinary culture

of the city certainly um looking at some of the restaurant data and seeing that that's something that people are not only interested in but that they are actually actively coming to the city for and other things that um you know there were a couple other things that gave us pause and now we're able to adjust some of those strategies and see how we can move forward specifically I'm glad that you

mentioned seasonality John because we are already thinking about you know the holiday season and how do we bring visitors in during the colder months using different assets you know maybe not our Waterfront because that's very you know that's very seasonal but how do we you know highlight some of the other things like our historical tourism um and then gearing up for next year really wanting to um to do a little bit

more research and to do a little bit more get a little more insight on recreational tourism how do people um do people even know about some of our more natural assets and and so we have a lot of room to grow and I think that's where I took out of the research report and it has given us some um it has given us some Assurance to our assumptions which is what you need when you want to

get grants which is what you need when you want to move forward assumptions are nice but data is definitely better so right I think the focus I mean Fall River like I said this is small steps for Fall River coming forward when you look at the visitor profile you look at data driven opportunities for people to come to forward and spend money it's funny because we've been doing a number of

things and just the other night we were at Father Kelly Park for our summer concert series and I was walking around the park talking to people and there were people there from Somerset which really wouldn't probably even come over and enjoy a concert and um in Fall River on a Wednesday night but they were sitting there and last night we had a very successful uh kite night downstairs it

was great there was a lot of people there A lot more than I think most of us anticipated and uh it turned into something and when we see potential for things like that and for the things we're trying to do um I know uh recently we were up at the uh in the reservation looking at the Adirondack farm and think about what we can do there to promote outdoor Lifestyles and tourism in the city of

Fall River whether it's hiking using some of our existing waterways whether it's cooked Pond or any of them we're gonna we're gonna go across the city with this and we are going to keep it going and I think it's going to be very very important for the long-term future for the city of Fall River that's what we're looking at we're not looking at this summer we're not looking at next

summer we're looking at how do we build a base for the tourism industry to expand and flourish in the city and that's where we are and that's what this is about today the release of this report um and I'm glad you mentioned that you know we had some that you know there are more there are more Community focused events like the summer evenings in the park which are meant for the residents because that also

um adds to the you know to the the spirit of the city and what makes people want to come you know you have to you could have beautiful buildings and beautiful places to go but you also need that welcoming Community which we do have so it's nice that we have things that there are obviously initiatives that are geared more toward the greater Fall River area or maybe even Southeastern Massachusetts Rhode Island

but there are also opportunities that extend beyond that and the research showed us some of those Pockets either in other areas of the Commonwealth or even in such places as Pennsylvania New York New Jersey those have actually shown us some some you know areas of activity so um obviously that's not you know we want to go for the things that we have closer to us but as we move ahead

um there will be more opportunities and so I think that's something also that the research was able to help me kind of pinpoint where we should also be looking toward in the future right yeah and one of the things up from the report that I took away from it was the retail amount of people that come and spend um their money in Florida on the retail end of it we all think of

almost like the entertainment part of it the restaurants the parks the festivals the things we have going on but the retail numbers were a little bit startling to me because I did not know we were able to pull that much from it but again we're going to make the full report available to everybody that wants to go over it and read it and offer comments and suggestions and I think that that's the best way going forward

keep it open keep it transparent and uh and see what we get back for feedback you have to remember in in Fall River we've had a number of traditional Feast there's one this weekend at St Michael's we've had the day of Portugal we've had the Holy Ghost Feast now that we're sprinkling in these other events whether they're the concerts on the pier or the concerts in the park a Christmas concert

the things we're looking to expand maybe something with the auditorian homes there's things we're looking to do to bring people to Fall River to enjoy it as a city and and that's going to be the focus of our tourism Drive working with Patty and the people at Viva and Frank we can we can really make this work and we're going to keep doing it and we do not expect to click our fingers and have

this done in a day this is going to be a long process with our partners at UMass which I'm very pleased that we are working with the local University to help drive this so this wagon and uh we'll see where we end up here you bring up some good points in with that retail it's 25 percent that's a non-fall river uh individual and and that's sizable and what we try to do is

the research comes in we try to put perspective on on what it is and we compared it against Natural so 2.3 percent of all the visitors to Fall River or International visitors 47 of those come from Canada well Canada is right there so you can mark it easily to them so I said 2.3 percent and you probably think you know you're used to that and oh that's a small figure when you think about it that's 2.3

people per 100 it's a sizable figure so to put it into perspective when you look across the nation and all of those that really monitor their tourism when you hit four percent you're dancing out in the street you go wild four percent that's four people of a hundred you're already a 2.3 that is amazing so that's a market with a little bit of capitalizing on it you can groom that market to become something great so

within the figures there's a lot of them that kind of hang low on appearance until you start to look at what your competition is nationally nationally and then you realize wow we've really got something here and that's what we can help you with what has potential what seems to be a low liar but actually has the potential for enormous growth and there's so much of that here and and when we looked at the restaurants

oh when you talk about beverage and Retail and then the restaurants has themselves it's a major portion of what's going on and and that's why you're pulling so much from places like Rhode Island there they are right there they're hopping up to the fabulous restaurants here so that's just a sizable Market in itself and I you know I've looked at a lot of figures from my positions before and do comparisons

Across the Nation I can tell you what you have here is right and you can see when you look at the report there's analysis of those limited service restaurants going up to full service restaurants and within those segments of it there's also great potential for that your full-service restaurants are highly desirable there's certainly times that they even camp out in the season where

you can't even get into them well it happens to be the case of around you they can't get into them they also can't get into the hotels you've got Newport Rhode Island sitting there this past season not this summer but the past summer it was in the top six in the nation for hotel rates because they were allowed to just go really high with the hotel rate you use things like that to

see what's going on around you and what you can glean off of that people come into Newport they have no place to stay they get full they come there and they think we're going to get a hotel room no they think they're going to get into a restaurant no so here it is and this Jewel of the city offering phenomenal restaurants and Cuisine that is a huge place to go after it's already doing

well but there's so much room for growth in that and that's what we look at where's the growth factor what can be done here how can we extend that out so that's that's just some ideas around that Paul you you've got a lot of ideas on well one of the things that's been striking to me is that there are some some attractions here that are really very successful already and to serve as

anchors for bringing people in and I would count among that the battleship and and the Narrows Performing Arts Center as well as the the Lizzie Borden house and those are those are sort of three they have a lot of recognition Beyond immediately just the city or even just the towns next door people people and Newport people in Providence uh I'll know about that I've been to the Boston

suburbs so it seems like because those are generating steady and healthy levels of traffic and there's also the restaurant scene there's a lot of opportunity I think to cross Market between people who come for restaurants but why not stay for a show or people who come for a show but why not stay for dinner so that's that's another opportunity and because those attractions are really

kind of year-round Evergreen activities and so is restaurant dining that seems like a sort of a match made in heaven absolutely so with that being said anybody else have any questions so before we so I I did read the report and it looks like your data was basically coming from those three attractions but you use zip codes I know that you did some surveying but that it wasn't included in this report

is there a reason for that and how accurate is just using zip codes when you're trying to profile a tourist right right well there's definite limitations on the data that we did have because uh we're we're taking uh limited data from each of those different attractions and then trying to to sort it out the zip codes is one of the things that's comparable across all of them and so we had a complete data set that way

the surveys have actually been done we've got several several different events that we've actually surveyed but that's still uh in a sort of the process of data entry and Analysis so at the towards the end of the summer we're going to release that as well we'll even since now is you know it's your season will you be doing more surveying now that you know with more activity we're going to be doing a limited amount but

not not a time and that will come and I gather you you'll take that information and analyze it like what was done with the zip codes from this report okay how accurate is the zip code um data when you're I don't know it's I think it's pretty good I mean if the question is where where are people coming from then you can you can really use that to identify hot spots and you

know the if you you saw in the mass I mean we kind of color-coded the ones where there was more intensity West Warwick for example there's a lot of people that seem to come from there really really right yeah and zip codes become very important when you're looking at the 50-mile radius so the 50 mile radius is what's accepted nationally when you go for for Grants especially larger grants they want they

dictate that that's a true visitor with that 50 mile radius they consider anything within that 50 mile radius to be called what's to point this place in other words they say if I if I'm a resident and I don't spend my restaurants over there here in this restaurant my funds in this restaurant I'll go to something else I'll buy clothes are doing something that's simply displacement of downwards within

the area so zip codes become very important when you're looking at that radius especially if you're going after grants at some point in time and that's when they come in I do want to add on that we we will be doing actual intercept surveys so we'll be out there and we'll do this to kind of eliminate any seasonality scope on this so we'll do this throughout the year and we'll

actually be out at times not simply in a venue but actually on the streets capturing visitors and that's that's what you do you do those actual intercepts and you get your information there our intent in the long run is to create a real visitor profile so we can see exactly what's going on with their their income brackets household income their age their activity desires I'll give you an example we had 33 major

activities in New Orleans that we captured we could tell at any given time what was going on there with all of those so those are major attractions and we had broader lists that kind of like flowed off of those but that will take some time to get what we would say we can put our thumb on that that's a true visitor profile and where that takes you is we did The Five-Year projections for the state of

Louisiana we did them for all of New Orleans we could project out five years on what visitation was going to be once you get those visitor profiles so it is key because you can see what's going on now I can tell you this we also partnered with the CVB so the conventional Visitor Bureau would actually have a database of people coming in their chair their emails and we did pre and post visits we knew their

expectations coming in to the city and into the state and then we gauged it on how they thought their visit went so we did a pre and a post so those become important so just I want you to know that as we move into this this is our direction of where we're going to go so that we can be really certain of what we're producing and and what the potential is but I can tell you this

already there's tremendous potential here in Fall River it it's outstanding when you look at what's going on so you're saying that this report is is something someone will work okay this is just the beginning because as I mentioned in the beginning you need stakeholders to open up we've got requests in to Hotel yours and to restaurateurs to try to get at some of their historical data um but that's what we need a more

cooperation among the stakeholders as we do our other of actual intercepts and point in that information as far as hotels I mean we've got one we've got one and I know you know you explained this is just the beginning of the research but how you know and obviously I saw the um you know the tax revenue from the room's tax and not surprising we're not making much time in one hotel but how do you

and also that things are going to expand as far as you know what will attract people here do you have it is your task you know any of this to try to bring in more rooms bring in a hotel bringing you know maybe more diverse restaurants I mean is that that's a great question so we we did not ask that to begin with at the beginning we usually don't do

tasks to go in and specifically find out things with the different sectors and segments of what tourism comprises but it popped up so obviously there's a dearth of hotels within Fall River it's one of the reasons I brought up at the beginning that when you look at Newport you're looking at a city that was number six in the nation last summer season for the highest rate in the entire nation

that creates overflow so you start to think what's going on is there overflow can I justify it and then you look at the segments of the restaurant so I just want to give you an idea of if you're going to do that that's a complete study in itself when you consider when you look at let's look at hotels you start at luxury the very top of that then you go to upscale then you go to

full service mid-scale hotels then you go to basically limited service hotels then you come down and you're in the long visit extended stay and then you go to economy so right there you've got six layers of hotels if someone were to decide they want to do a study on this uh I'd be I'd be quiet to give them information we do their pro bono to help them but to guide them and what you're looking at because

it becomes very sophisticated as you start to think on it you don't want a failed Hotel but from my own experience as I look at it if there aren't one or two hotels being considered on the horizon I think it's a missed opportunity just because of what's going on though and and tourism creates that and the tax dollars can be tremendous simply tremendous of what you realize and then there's also restaurants so

thinking about the segments of restaurants and in limited uh type of restaurants here do quite well they equip the fine dining and that's what you're dealing with that's fine but there's ways of concentrating on both at the same time where you can go in and for whatever reasons makes one really do well that's what you want to accentuate and with the other one you find out things and make

it to really accentuate tremendous ability uh when I and I look at them nationally when you look at cities that start to really Burge and and really take a place in tourism those are if they've looked at their hotels and they've looked at their restaurants and restaurants can really do it and also I would encourage the city to look at the Press they get and how that's orchestrated so there's

nothing that that you know that can Define too small of an objective to Simply get an oppress about restaurants so we did that with New Orleans when we started small and built it well when travel and Leisure in 2017 declared New Orleans to be number one in the nation for fine dining we knew that seminal work had worked and that that after that we couldn't lose restaurant sales just went off the

charts in restaurants virgin and just went wild with creation and then how do you test that how do you say well that was a viable maneuver we did well with it well you look at attrition of restaurants and for those of you that study restaurants you know they have a very small shelf life you make it the first year you've done very well don't look at those figures like 300 percent

failure rate it's false is it 50 failure rate for restaurants nationally on a national basis yes so you want them to be successful so that's what we looked at the success rate well we beat the whole nation in there so the growth mirrored it coming on so that's what you want to look at you don't want to step on your toes ever hotels and restaurants but you you get to a realistic measure of what you can

do and what the growth is going to be and then what how you capture that over time but you have great potential there and I'm not telling you to run out and do unbelievable things with it but look at it and see what's possible you happen to have some great restaurateurs in the area so gauging on whether they want to add more into that but talking to a few of the restaurateurs here it is

they welcome other restaurants because that's how you build a restaurant Mecca as a city you have to have a critical mass of restaurants in order to be a heavy attraction now hotels are a little different you've got time so you pose a great question but once again I'll go back to that statement if you're not looking at one or two hotels now to increase by and I'm not telling you the segment to do it in

I'm not telling you which one is but I would tell you don't make it a luxury restaurant a hotel upscale yes luxury no it's the hardest thing to run it's the hardest thing to drop a positive bottom line on no you can look finest locations yeah so that's just a little background on that is that something that you know I absolutely with the expansion is 79 I mean I know hotels have been talked

about down there Joe so I'm assuming there's going to be at least one added there and I would think one maybe down towards the South End there's been talk about going forward oh yeah I was on the radio the day we were talking to some people looking at 79 about a hotel absolutely Prime spot you have this initial I I will call it an initial report because obviously there's still a lot more data you want

to collect you want to you know do some research on it what's the next step in this process Paul why don't you talk about some of the work you're doing right now that's happening well we're uh we're starting to to look at more what what are we going to do for uh actually trying to bump up I kind of put that Steve the the community chest of data so for example

the restaurateurs have been uh you know made positive noises about sharing sharing their records of who who comes and when and you know what are their zip codes that kind of stuff there's a lot of confidentiality issues with that nobody wants to actually reveal exactly what their revenues are for example or or what are the you know what what did they order right that kind of stuff so we have to be very cautious

with that and uh analytically it's it's uh it's it's kind of a challenge too once you get the data what do you actually do with that but that's that's one of the areas where we think that we could actually get get a lot of insight because if you actually start to chart out when people come and you have their zip codes and then you can sort of see the seasonality swings then then you can

start to say well here's the high period where we're actually too busy we couldn't use any more business or here's a little here's a trough where we could actually use more business and then that's where you want to put the promotions and the cross marketing those kinds of things I guess this is for Patty and the mayor um what are your next steps I I again that's great the research because I there's a there seems

to be but we have to like you know triple triple secret uh yeah people are just very sensitive about about that data yeah so I guess with this report and I'm obviously events are going on and you know you weren't waiting for anything absolutely but as far as you know with the art of money and and that whole contract with the city what is taking this data what is your next step

well I can say that just for the from from a summer perspective because I'm just just finishing um putting into place the summer advertising campaign that has a lot of different elements to it um again using we had we had bi-weekly meetings with UMass Dartmouth so I didn't just get the report and then we had I had had some inkling along the way so I used that data to help figure out

what we were going to do for the summer and we have some uh like for instance regionally up to a 60-minute drive we've got some advertisements on the um Boston commuter rail we're doing radio we're doing some geo-targeted ads I really took what nuggets they could and I think the biggest nugget which was a really strong assumption that I had about us our culinary attraction um that really doubles down on that and

I think also just finding ways um you know to engage different kinds of of culinary and not just having them go to restaurants but having some of the smaller businesses bakeries and whatnot we've just got so much and I think also um one of the big things that we did is we really refocused vivofallbrovert.com right now is is the city's um tourism-facing website so now it's it's it's got a different look to it it's a

little bit more polished it's um and we want to track and see where we're getting like you know I'm sure there are going to be people from here who are still going to look at our events calendar but I'm really looking for those people from outside the region and I want to track those numbers and for instance right now we have um a really limited campaign and again I just

I want to just try things without you know really you got to just try it and see how it works we have a really great promotion in um it's a contest and through local IQ and it's in Pennsylvania New York and New Jersey we're actually really popular in Pennsylvania which is amazing um and it's going on for about a month and we've gotten some like over 5000 entries and these are all people now who

can opt in and they've opted into different businesses and so now we're building a database and then that's where it's like coming into quarterly newsletters what's going on in Fall River come take a trip so it's all building so the Summer's been really exciting lots of Google ads um and now I'm starting to look toward fall and holiday I'm coming up with some of ideas because I do in restaurants for

sure we can have people eat all year long but also just you know trying to try to activate the city during those times because you know especially with this weather um you know our summer season is like this now so but we've got lots of things to do so really kind of I'm going to turn my eye to historical tourism next yeah I think what we're doing is just it's just foundational work I think when you

added um Patty Rigo excuse me our Advanced person Samantha Barbosa who we now have on board partnering with some UMass Dartmouth and the tourism um both survey and proposals going forward we're just laying the foundation for where we go from here and taking all these things and seeing what works and what doesn't is going to guide us going forward and getting some of the data that um Patty was just referring to from

other states why do people I mean remember last year we did that five five off of uh 195 which we're doing again you're doing it again so we're trying to get people to look at us and we're while at the same time our focus is improving the quality of life for everybody in the city that's what we're going to do we're going to try to improve our streets improve improve our lookability these are things that are

going on whether it's 79 our schools our parks but these again Joe to be specific this is just the found Foundation when we build up to where we're going to be it won't be it won't be in 23 but I have great vision for 30 31 I'll be long gone but at the same time if we can do the foundational work for people to come in here and say oh this is the way to go

forward's got a vision it's got a dream we'll keep it going Michelle a little set thank you thank you everybody thank you gentlemen appreciate it thank you thank you