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| REGIONAL TOURISM GROUP RECOGNIZED AS "TOURISM TRAILBLAZER" By Buz Swerkstrom Wisconsin's Northwest Heritage Passage organization has won recognition as a "tourism trailblazer" for its marketing and partnership efforts. The Northwest Heritage Passage group, which promotes local artists and growers in nine northwestern Wisconsin counties, including Polk County, was one of five tourism organizations to receive a Wisconsin Tourism Trailblazer award from the Wisconsin Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus in early November. Wisconsin's Northwest Heritage Passage was rewarded for its Outstanding Marketing or Communication Initiative for an organization with a budget under $25,000. This past summer the organization published a new full-color map/brochure directing tourists to scores of art galleries, craft studios, organic vegetable farms, historical museums and other points of interest throughout its promotional area, which stretches from the Great River, the Mississippi, to the largest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. While there is no money attached to the Wisconsin Tourism Trailblazer award, Heritage Passage members believe the award will bring other benefits. Sue Mathews, director of the Polk County Information Center at St. Croix Falls, thinks the recognition will mean greater visibility. "Sometimes you have to have some award to make yourself more visible," Mathews says. Not only will the award make the organization better known to artisans and growers, she adds, but perhaps give it more legitimacy to some as well. "If they see it as a really worthwhile project, instead of our seeking them out maybe they'll start to seek us out," says Jerry Boucher, a member of the Northwest Heritage Passage board of directors. Boucher, a photographer and graphic designer who operates his Schoolhouse Productions business out of an old school building in Clear Lake, believes the award also will be helpful for the organization's grant-seeking efforts. A major goal of Wisconsin's Northwest Heritage Passage is the publication of a picture-packed detailed guidebook. "We'll be looking for lots of grant money for the book," Boucher says. "This book is going to cost a ton of money. It will be about a 200-page book." As planned, the book will cover 12 counties, and possibly 14. University of Wisconsin—Extension agents in several counties are coordinating a research project designed to quantify the economic impact of the arts in northwestern Wisconsin. Those research results should be useful in helping the Northwest Heritage Passage organization obtain grant money for a guidebook. Bob Kazmierski, UW—Extension community resource agent for Polk County, believes the study "will give some legitimacy to the craft industry." Armed with such information, prospective entrepreneurs who want to establish a craft-based business should find it easier to borrow seed money from lenders. "That's a real difficulty, particularly in rural America," says Kazmierski. Kazmierski also expects the study to show what impact the craft industry has on the livelihood of other businesses. The Wisconsin Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus presents the Wisconsin Tourism Trailblazer awards each year during the Wisconsin Fall Tourism Convention in an effort to increase the visibility of Wisconsin's tourism industry and destination marketing organizations. This year's convention was held in Racine. Jerry Boucher accepted the award for Wisconsin's Northwest Heritage Passage from Wisconsin Department of Tourism Secretary Jim Holperin. |
| Wisconsin's Northwest Heritage Passage, Inc. PO Box 454 417 1/2 North River Street Spooner, WI 54801 715-635-9303 www.heritagepassage.com Copyright 2004-2008 |
