Posted Nov 27, 2023, 8:07 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2022
Location: Mesa, AZ
Posts: 88
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Mesa's master tourism plan
Plan envisions Mesa as a $1B tourist destination
https://www.themesatribune.com/news/...ae9911f03.html
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Visit Mesa’s board of directors have adopted the organization’s first 10-year master plan for tourism to transform the city into a “major visitor destination” with direct spending by tourists exceeding $1 billion a year.
The plan, which aims to increase tourist spending from last year’s $710 million total, describes challenges and opportunities for meeting these goals with a mix of guiding principles and more specific objectives – such as establishing Mesa as a leading sports tourism and outdoor recreation capital.
Mesa would benefit from better transportation between the “visitor industry clusters,” or hubs of activity, spread across Mesa’s 133 square miles, according to the plan.
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Alison Brooks, Visit Mesa’s vice president of destination experience, said the plan’s “big vision” will be used to spin off the agency’s shorter-term strategic and business plans.
Those smaller plans will contain more of the “nuts and bolts” needed to grow visits and improve visitor experience, she said.
They will include more quantifiable goals, such as hosting 1.3 million overnight visitors and adding five new non-stop destinations to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport by 2026 – two targets from the current three-year strategic plan.
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They include as seeing a large, standalone resort built in Mesa and developing downtown into a creative and cultural innovation district.
But some concepts contained in the 10-year plan came to the attention of leadership primarily through the community engagement process.
One idea was extending light rail to the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport.
Kavanaugh said he is an advocate for public transit, but extending the rail to the airport “was not on my bucket list,” explaining that “politically, (light rail) seems to be a really heavy lift.”
“I think policymakers should be aware that that (idea) came from the public,” he said.
In another unexpected finding, community members said recreation access to the Salt River and Tonto National Forest is lacking.
“The mountains, desert and Salt River ecosystem (are) staggeringly beautiful but there are limited options for visitors and locals to experience the outdoor majesty,” the plan states. “People want to spend money in Mesa’s great outdoors but they’re challenged about how to spend it.”
Kavanaugh said comments about improving access to the water came through clearly during outreach, and he thinks it’s important to work on this area because the river is a big draw for Mesa.
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