With rules against national parks spending taxpayer money to market itself to visitors, and limited funding available to small communities located around the park, whose responsibility is it let the world know about Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park?
That question was answered in 2008 with the establishment of Destination Voyageurs National Park, a group made up of a wide variety of representatives from governments, adjacent communities, and public and private groups.
For years after the park was established in 1975, many local residents and officials were critical of estimates made by state agencies of visitors that would be drawn to the area because of the creation of VNP. Those estimates never came true. The idea of a high number of visitors that would come to the park brought with it the promise of economic stability and growth for the tourism-based communities around the park, known as gateway communities.
The mission of Destination Voyageurs National Park is simple: To connect people to Voyageurs National Park via implementation of an ongoing, comprehensive marketing and public relations campaign that will effectively encourage awareness and result in increased visitation and economic growth.
By banding together, members of DVNP are able to seek funding from state and regional groups to help market the recreational opportunities offered within and around the park and therefore add to the economy of the local region.
Toward that effort, several members of the communities that are part of DVNP are participating in the Heart of the Continent Partnership’s 2011 International Community Congress: Balancing Nature and Commerce in Communities that Neighbor Public Lands conference held this week at Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Grand Portage, Minn.
The goal of the International Community Congress is to build stronger economic, social and environmental connections between communities and their neighboring public lands for mutual benefit.
One of those members, Deb Wieber, president of DVNP, is also a member of the Ash River Trail Tourism Association.
Wieber told The Journal Tuesday from the conference that planning sessions are expected to result in development of an action plan for a specific project to push the purpose of DVNP forward and beyond what the local communities are able to do on their own.
“We’ve had some small successes with our limited funds,” Wieber said of DVNP. The organization began with an anonymous $5,000 donation in 2007.
Grants, provided this month by the International Falls Economic Development Authority and the Koochiching Development Authority, are intended to help DVNP secure a matching grant again offered by the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation agency.
Wieber explained that an IRRR grant received last year, which the Koochiching Community Development Agency matched, launched a Google advertisement campaign.
“We saw terrific results,” she said. The website hits increased by 400 percent as a result of the campaign, she said. In addition, the member sites located on the DVNP website also increased.
“People came from the DVNP site to the community sites, stayed in them longer, viewed more pages and the bounce rate was significantly lower than the average of the sites,” she said. “We call it a quality hit.”
Eventually, Wieber said DVNP plans to hire someone to lead the effort to market the region and partner with the six gateway communities, as well as Koochiching and St. Louis counties.
DVNP was the brainchild of International Falls Mayor Shawn Mason, who said that the concept came to her in 2007 as an inspiration in her sleep. She said it has drawn members from organizations and agencies that may not have had a unified vision years ago. Besides the gateway communities, DVNP also includes representatives from the Voyageurs National Park Association, Minnesota Arrowhead Association, Koochiching County Economic Development Authority, St. Louis County Planning and Development, Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation, Explore Minnesota Tourism, and Voyageurs National Park.
Mason, who volunteers on the DVNP board, said her hope for the long-range success of the organization is to bring other parties to the table who have embraced the DVNP vision and will help fund the projects and plans intended to raise awareness of the region that surrounds Voyageurs National Park.
The organization was discussed earlier this year when local representatives held Voyageurs National Park at the Capitol in Washington DC.
“We talked about the historic makeup of this group working together and all agreeing that Voyageurs National Park needs more awareness, an opportunity for more visitors,” she said. “This is a treasured land for people to use and enjoy, but it also has to have an economic boost to the gateway communities.”
