“Fargo is sexy.”
That’s what Olga Mazzoni, who talks up the region to Italian tourists, tells Charley Johnson of the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“Olga loves downtown Fargo – everything that’s down there,” the F-M CVB president explains to local skeptics. “She loves the HoDo, all the great restaurants, the fun shops.
“Sure, we don’t think of it that way,” he concedes. “But next time you’re downtown, step back and look around. Try to see it from an outsider’s perspective. It’s attractive. There’s lots to do, and everyone is polite and friendly. It’s a great place to spend a couple days.”
That’s sweet music to Fargo-Moorhead’s tourism industry, as well as the rest of North Dakota. While few residents might consider it a major draw for travelers, Charley begs to differ: Tourism is North Dakota’s third biggest industry (after the two goliaths, oil and agriculture) and – at a time when the others have dipped – continues to show steady growth.
In Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo – where a 3 percent lodging tax funds the community’s promotional efforts – sales of hotel rooms amounted to $101.6 million in 2016. “That’s only rooms. It doesn’t include all the other things visitors spend money on — meals, shopping, entertainment,” Charley points out.
Vacationers, of course, account for only one portion of that total. Business travelers, sports teams playing in tournaments, conventioneers and even the sector the industry knows as “medical tourism” all are tallied. But “pure” tourism – both domestic and international – plays its own substantial role.
For the past two years, the CVB has participated in the four-state Rocky Mountain International marketing coalition that targets overseas travelers. Dubbing their region “the Real America,” the cooperative – consisting of the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming – has generated real interest in exploring the heart of North America among eager European travelers.
Olga, that Italian fan of Fargo, is one of the group’s in-country reps overseas. Others are stationed in Scandinavia, the Benelux nations, France, Germany and Australia.
Charley and his counterparts across the region take part in major travel marketing shows here and across the Atlantic. He has twice been part of the team at Internationale Tourismus Börse in Berlin, the world’s leading travel show. A main focus of the delegation’s promotional efforts is meeting with European travel professionals who hold the key to bringing travelers. “There’s no question that our marketing is working, especially with the tour operators,” he says, “More than75 foreign markets are now offering U.S. tours that include us. Before, that number was zero.”
Most recently, he booked a fourth year at Reise Lives Messen in Norway. The Oslo event attracts 40,000 visitors. In addition to meeting with group travel companies before the show, he stood in Real America’s booth from 10 to 6 every day, chatting with an endless stream of Norwegians eager to find out more … and to share their own connections. “They want to talk about visiting their relations in Minnesota and North Dakota or their years at UND or the Concordia Language Villages. The first-timers have a lot of questions.”
The Real America group’s strategy is to market the entire region as a perfect trip for travelers who’ve already seen New York City, Las Vegas, Orlando and Los Angeles. “It’s very unlikely they’d just come to Fargo-Moorhead or Sioux Falls or even Minneapolis,” he observes. “But when you look at the whole region, it’s a different story. These four states are a hotbed of national parks. We’ve got more than enough of that ‘old West’ experience that fascinates them. These people like to get out and drive, see the country, visit small communities along the way … and ‘off the beaten path’ describes us perfectly.”
The group offers prospective guests a choice of 10 itineraries, with Minneapolis as a gateway and, often, the Mall of America as the last stop before going back home.
“Europeans travel so much more than we do,” Charley explains. “When they visit, they generally plan to spend from 12 to 21 days here. We have a great range of places to go and attractions to see, and travel is easy and safe.”
The same factors seem to also be heightening interest among U.S. travelers, he adds. In 2015, North Dakota fielded 20 million online inquiries. “We got more than that – 26 million — in just the first half of 2016,” he says. Thanks to contacts at major American travel marketing events like IPW and Florida-based Tourico, the region is showing up as part of more domestic tours.
Why the interest? Perhaps “Fargo” – the movie and the TV series, now launching its third season – have contributed to raising consciousness about the region. Charley, however, thinks there’s another, larger force at work.
“I’m inclined to think it’s Josh Duhamel,” he says. “Our campaign around him has been hugely successful.” A year ago, the first flight of ads featuring the actor garnered more than a billion impressions – that’s “billion” with a B – through TV and online placements.
The promotional fee paid to Duhamel, the Minot native best known for his leading roles in the “Transformers” movies and pop-culture celebrity, generated some controversy last year when the public learned he’d earned nearly half a million dollars through his participation. “Don’t let anybody ever tell you paying that money wasn’t a bargain,” Charley emphasizes. “The whole campaign has been hugely successful for us.” The actor, who readily shares his love of his home state, stars in marketing materials and advertising planned for 2017 as well.
The impact of successful tourism promotion of all kinds – conventions, sports, business and even journeys to Fargo for medical care – is hard to miss. The cities now have 5,500 hotel rooms, with another opening later this year. Occupancy is down slightly from its 2014 peak of 67.3 percent; but much of that can be attributed to growing competition, with the number of hotel rooms increasing 8.4 percent in 2014-2015 and another 4.8 percent in the last fiscal year. Overall, despite the dramatic dip in travel generated by the oil industry out west, the number of room nights is down just 2 percent.
Charley credits the growing number of stellar athletic facilities for generating and maintaining leisure travel. “The Sanford Health Athletic Complex, Scheels Arena, the new F-M Curling Club, of course the Fargodome,” he enumerates, “and now the new Hulbert Aquatic Center in West Fargo – they give us tremendous advantages in drawing state, regional and even national events.”
Asked to name his one big wish that remains unfulfilled, the CVB president doesn’t hesitate a nanosecond: “The convention center.”
He knows just what it would look like. It would have a 50,000 square foot exhibit hall that could be subdivided into smaller spaces; a ballroom of at least 25,000 square feet that, too, could be subdivided for simultaneous events; and 8,000 to 10,000 square feet of break-out meeting rooms.
“If we had our convention center, we could finally compete with Bismarck, Grand Forks, Sioux Falls, Duluth, Rochester, St. Cloud – all who have better spaces than we do,” he says.
Plans for that kind of facility were launched by a Fargodome study three years ago. Architects have been studying costs involved in four prospective sites, including the Dome as well as downtown Fargo, the West Acres area and a green-field site near Veterans Boulevard and 32nd Avenue South. Results of their preliminary work are expected to be unveiled in coming weeks.
Meanwhile, West Fargo has unveiled its own proposal for a convention center and exhibition space at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds. “I think both can co-exist. I think both would be real assets,” Charley observes.
So is Olga in Italy right to claim that “Fargo is sexy”? Maybe … or, at least, it may be getting there. It may not be Las Vegas or New York, but Charley points to the invitation to “North of Normal” on the CVB’s website, fargomoorhead.org: “For a Midwestern city, Fargo’s a little off-center.
“Come on up where it’s cooler.”
