The last of the seven regional listening sessions was completed on July 20th.  These sessions were held at various locations around the state including Iron Mountain, Sault Ste. Marie, Battle Creek, Dearborn, Frankenmuth and Alpena. Over 250 industry stakeholders representing both public and private sector organizations attended these sessions as part of the project's effort to share information about the planning process and to gather additional feedback regarding the plan's eight areas of focus.

Those eight areas are: 1) funding, 2) industry leadership and organization, 3) collaboration and partnerships, 4) public policy and government relations, 5) training and business leadership, 6) general promotion and media, 7) research and market segmentation, and 8) visitor experience.

Participant feedback at each session was collected and is available at http://tourismplan.msu.edu.

Issue Work Teams have formed around each of those areas and are currently analyzing the listening session feedback and creating a statement to more clearly define each issue area. These statements will soon be available online along with a feedback form so that anyone who may not have attended a regional session can comment on any, or all of, the topic areas.  The feedback received from the online form will be forwarded to the appropriate work team for integration into their work.

For the next couple of months, the project's focus will be on Issue Work Team activity.  In November the project's central coordinating team will begin the task of integrating all of the work accomplished by the Issue Work Teams into a comprehensive plan.

Additional funding to complete this strategic planning effort is still needed.  To date, $125,525 of the $200,000 goal has been raised.  Click here to view the list of project sponsors.  Future contributions would be greatly appreciated.  Special thanks to everyone who has already sponsored this project!