[marothisu]

Chicago definitely needs better marketing. I'm full of anecdotes but I've met and also shown around numerous people from outside this country and I don't remember a single person saying "Yeah that's about what I expected." The general sentiment is that basically they thought it was just some city with not much to do in the middle of the country and that they thought it wasn't nice and that it had crime everywhere. Every. Single. Person i've shown around (which is not just a few people - in the multiples of large handfuls). It's the same thing every time "Wow, I didn't know there was so much here and I wasn't expecting it to be so nice." Usually what they know about Chicago the actual city has to do with the news - and it's basically only about crime these days. The expectation is a crappy city where crime is rampant even in tourist areas and it's not nice.

The people who know about Chicago are the ones who've actually been to Chicago, or maybe they've seen features on TV/Internet about it. This even goes down to my American co-workers here in NYC who were born and raised in the NE (or moved here 20 or so years ago from another country). Clueless too. Maybe back in the day people were less clueless, but considering the media talks about places to visit nowadays in terms of the bay area, LA, Miami, etc - Chicago kind of gets lost in the fold especially for people who are under the age of 40.

Just to get it in there, my fiance does marketing for a living (with a masters in it), and the very first time I showed her around the city her statement was "The marketing for Chicago is terrible.." I tend to agree. We all know about Chicago, and there are some people who are over the age of 40 or 50 who know about it, but for someone who is under the age of 40, it's not as in the forefront anymore. People are going to visit Portland, Seattle, SF, etc sometimes now before they come to Chicago.

Internationally, you could make a case for why they shouldn't "waste their time" in Chicago, but I think you'll be surprised at how many international travelers have Chicago as their favorite city after visiting. The problem is getting them to come in the first place. As someone mentioned before, a lot of international visitors go to national parks and what not - which makes complete sense. NYC makes sense, as well as DC/Philadelphia/Boston. And I do love cities like SF and LA, but if you say "Why would you visit Chicago?" then I could make the same case for those places too technically. People go to LA for Hollywood and think that movie stars are just roaming the streets everywhere. Most people wouldn't go if it wasn't for that expectation.