Chamber shares tourism focus

MT. PLEASANT — In an update to the Henry County Board of Supervisors Tuesday, Mt. Pleasant Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Rachel Lindeen talked tourism, including RAGBRAI, the state fair booth, bus tours, and marketing.

According to Lindeen, the Chamber’s budget for tourism will be divided into three categories. One-third will go toward RAGBRAI, one-third goes toward bus tours and marking campaigns, and the final third goes toward Mt. Pleasant’s presence at the Iowa State Fair.

While excitement builds for RAGBRAI rides to make an overnight stop in Mt. Pleasant this summer, Mt. Pleasant Area Chamber Executive Vice President Rachel Lindeen says there isn’t much to tell just yet.

While she doesn’t have much information to share, yet, Lindeen says the rough estimate of 20,000 people will come through Mt. Pleasant for the event.

“We are excited to host RAGBRAI on our overnight Friday, July 26,” she said. “However, we as a very small group of city and chamber tourism, we don’t meet with RAGBRAI until the beginning of next week. At the beginning of next week we will get about a two inch binder full of how to.”

According to Lindeen, this binder will help them understand things like how to form committees, what to expect as an overnight stop, and some best practices.

Additionally, Lindeen says after this meeting RAGBRAI will begin meeting with community leaders for RAGBRAI once a week as they prepare, then representative for all the overnights will meet in Des Moines in the beginning of March, the whole route will be announced in April, and slowly all the information will come together.

“We understand there's a lot of excitement in our community to have RAGBRAI overnight, and I want to continue with that excitement, but I need everybody to take a breath,” Lindeen said. “We’re not withholding information; we just don’t know how it is all going to shake out yet.”

According to Lindeen, the marketing that is paid for from the third of the tourism budget allocated for bus tours and marketing, is not meant for locals to see.

“We want to recruit out so we took about a third of the funds and we worked on some marketing outreach through local internet,” Lindeen said.

This marketing included geofencing campaigns around the state fair and a Christmas campaign of activities around the Mt. Pleasant area that targeted the Quad Cities, Peoria, Macomb, Cedar Rapids, and Iowa City.

The bus tour portion of the budget still is in the works, according to Lindeen.

“We’re really working on our bus tours,” she said. “This is something you can’t make happen overnight. It takes awhile.”

According to Lindeen, the chamber has partnered with Iowa Tourism Industrial Professionals (ITIP) to recruit bus tour groups to the area.

“What they’re doing now is going out to trade shows and we’re part of Mt. Pleasant and Henry County as a part of the bus tour,” Lindeen explained. “I know we have six interested parties, and I hope six interested parties equals six interest bus groups, but we won’t know that for a while because that is happening right now in real time.”

The other part of the budget goes toward creating a Mt. Pleasant presence at the Iowa State Fair.

“Traditionally we have split that expense four ways with Iowa Wesleyan being the fourth partner, but with no Iowa Wesleyan in 2024, the state fair expense with that booth, which is fantastic and sees 1000s of visitors each day, is going to be split three ways between tourism, Old Threshers, and the city,” Lindeen explained.

Not all of this allocated money for the state fair will go to booth fair, but some will go toward travel and other expenses associated with making a presence for Mt. Pleasant and Henry County in at the state fair.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com