Leach Amphitheater, an outdoor amphitheater in Oshkosh, hosts live music, special events and festivals. Jim Koepnick Photo
For years, Green Bay sought to bring the NFL Draft to Titletown, partnering with Discover Green Bay — at the time called the Greater Green Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau — in a concerted effort to make it happen.
In May, Green Bay Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy announced that the draft would in fact come to the city in 2025.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to host a flagship event for the NFL,” says Brad Toll, president and CEO of Discover Green Bay. “Really, this is our Super Bowl.”
The city will see more than 240,000 visitors over the three days of the draft, with an estimated $20 million economic impact locally and $94 million overall for the state, Toll says.
With the COVID-19 pandemic having hit travel hard over the past few years, securing the NFL Draft is an exciting win for tourism officials across the New North region. Visitors organizations wisely used the downtime of the pandemic to focus on the future, including working on rebranding efforts, adding new venues and events, and making the region attractive for business travelers who are finally starting to get back on the road.
Tourism rebound
In June, Gov. Tony Evers visited Oshkosh to announce the state’s overall tourism industry experienced a record year in 2022, with $23.7 billion in total economic impact, passing the previous record year in 2019, which saw $22.2 billion. Statewide tourism generated $1.5 billion in state and local tax revenue and supported more than 174,623 jobs, according to the Wisconsin Department of Tourism.
In 2022, there were 111.1 million visits in Wisconsin, which was up 8.7% over the previous year.
Among the impact in the New North region:
- The Fox Cities saw $558 million of direct visitor spending, up 20% over 2021, pushing the total economic impact of tourism in the area to $729 million.
- Winnebago County saw $522 million in total economic impact, surpassing $509 million in 2019 and $459 million in 2021.
- Brown County saw $765 million in direct visitor spending, up from $633 million in 2021, with a total economic impact of $1.3 billion.
The NFL Draft
Years ago, when the NFL Draft was at Radio City Music Hall in New York and was looking for a new venue, Toll compared the capacity with what was available in Green Bay.
“I called [Director of Public Affairs] Aaron Popkey at the Packers and said, ‘Hey, Aaron, looking at that, it would fit at Resch Center. We should throw our hat in the ring,’ And he said, ‘We were wondering that same thing.’”
The city has capacity to host all NFL officials and guests, but “we expect fans will stay everywhere from Green Bay to Milwaukee to Madison,” Toll says. “They’re going to be stopping at cafes and buying gas at gas stations and spending money throughout the state. We know what a beautiful state this is, and soon a lot more people will know as well.”
That discovery of everything that Wisconsin has to offer — beyond the legendary football team — was behind the rebranding of the Greater Green Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau to Discover Green Bay in 2021, with the tagline “Beyond Legendary.”
“It’s been so popular,” Toll says. “A lot of people over the years have told us when they come here that they found so much more than they expected.”
Securing the draft was huge because business travel, in general, is still a little soft compared with previous years, says Toll, though conventions and meetings in the Green Bay area are “full steam ahead.” Discover Green Bay sales staff is back to visiting trade shows and sales, and two marketplace conventions are coming to Green Bay in August, including Going On Faith, for planners of faith-based travel, and IMG, the International Motorcoach Group — great timing, considering the NFL Draft will bring with it some transportation needs.
Currently, the area is “well ahead of pace in regard to room nights booked for future business and double the amount of leads sent out already this year over last year for new business events,” Toll says.
Growing amenities
Bringing events to Green Bay helps perpetuate that business, Toll says. “You have a much better chance of selling them on bringing business here because they’re actually experiencing it, rather than you just showing them a picture and telling them how wonderful it is.”
The opening of the Resch Expo, with its 125,000-square-foot exhibition hall, has helped, allowing Green Bay to bring back conventions like the Great Lakes Timber Professionals Association, which needs a lot of space for its logging and heavy equipment, Toll says. For the Wisconsin EMS Association, “we landed four helicopters in the parking lot and then pulled them into the expo hall,” Toll says.
Accommodations and amenities also are growing, with new Cobblestone Hotel & Suites open in De Pere, and a new Hampton Inn opening recently in the Stadium District, where a 100-room, five-star Legacy Hotel also is under construction.
Green Bay’s new visitor center is on schedule and on budget, Toll says, with an expected open date of Sept. 15.
Teams are working on interactive displays and storytelling within the facility, with programming for the public. “We’re so excited to have our local residents as well as visitors come in and enjoy the experience,” Toll says.
Adapting with trends
In the Fox Cities, Pam Seidl, executive director of the Fox Cities Convention & Visitors Bureau, says “certainly, business travel has changed, and I think some of that corporate market will be changed forever.” One thing that area hotels are noting is a shortened length of stay for business travelers, largely due to more companies continuing work-from-home or hybrid policies. “So we’re seeing that midweek business travel shrink a little bit,” Seidl says.
But the FCCVB is shifting with the trend, talking with those businesses about hosting their quarterly or semi-monthly in-person meetings to get the team together, Seidl says. “They still need to have that connection and are kind of demanding that connection … we’re definitely looking at that as kind of a future trend for business travel.”
The former Paper Valley Hotel renovation and rebrand to a Hilton “has been a big boon for our business travel, because having a Hilton flag is very important — it has a very popular rewards program with the business traveler,” Seidl says.
Events and conventions are back as well. Recently the region hosted the Toward One Wisconsin conference on equity, diversity and inclusion. “They had a record-setting attendance — we even blew past what they were hoping for … I think that that will continue more and more as people have that need to get together,” Seidl says.
The World Axe Throwing League and the World Knife Throwing League held their competitions in Appleton in December, and in November the same groups are returning for their U.S. Open.
Persistence pays off
Like Green Bay staying with the NFL Draft, Oshkosh tourism officials have been working on pitching certain organizations to host their events in the city. One recent success is the Pyrotechnics Guild International, the country’s largest fireworks convention, which will come to Oshkosh in August, says Amy Albright, executive director of Discover Oshkosh. “As you can imagine, if you’re lighting off fireworks, there’s a lot of logistics.” They were able to find a home for the convention at the Sunnyview Expo Center.
Discover Oshkosh also has been back to pitching the community at conferences and suggesting to local groups that they could bring their regional, statewide or national groups to Oshkosh.
“There’s always a big pride point when that local person can take responsibility and say, ‘I get to show off my town,’” Albright says.
Oshkosh has the benefit of worldwide recognition as the home of AirVenture and EAA, so “particularly military groups or groups that have anything to do with aviation, we feel kind of a leg up with EAA being here because it’s such a destination that people want to get to,” she says.
In May, Oshkosh hosted NIFA, the National Intercollegiate Flying Association — a group of 500 collegiate pilots from all over the country who compete in an event called SafeCon. “They’re doing landing and takeoff maneuvers, all sorts of aviation, kind of like the college championship of aviation,” Albright says.
In May, the city also hosted Baja SAE, bringing 1,000 student engineers from 86 universities to build small vehicles that then perform on a track — an event that helps workforce development in the region by exposing college engineers to Oshkosh Corporation, which hosts the event, Albright says.
“There’s repeat business. We really try to make sure that when people come to Oshkosh, they have a great experience so that they want to come back,” Albright says.
New amenities coming up for business travelers include a Tru by Hilton that will break ground this year near Oshkosh Corp., in addition to the TownePlace Suites, which opened in 2022. Developer T.J. Rodgers purchased the Oshkosh Northwestern building in 2021 and plans to turn that into a boutique hotel, Albright says.
Similar to Green Bay’s tourism organization, the Oshkosh Convention and Visitors Bureau underwent a rebrand to better showcase the city’s diverse offerings. Albright came to the organization about six years ago when it was known as Visit Oshkosh with “Wisconsin’s Event City” as its brand, which “at the time it made a lot of sense because that’s really what Oshkosh had going on for tourism,” says Albright. The organization started talking about the idea of a rebrand.
“And then the pandemic hit. If you can imagine being ‘Event City’ — I’ve gone on record to say it’s probably the worst brand that had existed during a pandemic.”
With every event canceled, Oshkosh was in the spotlight. “The part that was frustrating was that we really do have a lot more than events, and our brand wasn’t really representing that,” Albright says.
With support from a state relief grant, the organization used its time during the pandemic to focus on the rebrand, emphasizing its “pandemic-proof” assets such as lakes, the river, trails, golf courses and more.
“We realize that tourism is really just part of one big circle where if we’re building a place where people want to live, people want to visit,” Albright says. “And if we build a place where people want to visit, people want to live here.”
