Our state has some wonderful representatives who act on our behalf to attract people to visit “The Mitten.” And while they do a fine job, I am guessing word of mouth is still the most effective way to get the word out on our region and attract tourists.
I have a theory that each time we take visiting guests out on the town, we become in a very organic tour service that has as part of its spiel some genuinely interesting stories and tidbits.
This was never clearer than this weekend, when at a State Fair themed wedding I discovered from the hash tag assigned to the event that many of the guests were from somewhere else. (see #ckwed)
By using the hash tags on our smart phones, we were able to coordinate our activities like a herd of cattle looking for fun, traveling en masse to places such as Mixology at the JW Marriott, Red Jet Café and the Winchester for the launch of the Nessie Project.
It is worth pointing out that this activity has a multiplier effect beyond the wedding guests spending dollars within our region, as a number of the herd quickly connected via Twitter with friends in other cities to share the fact that they were having a great time in metro Grand Rapids.
One of the wedding guests that was visiting our city was San Francisco’s Mary Ann Cotter, who turned a number of heads with her striking resemblance to Maggie Gyllenhaal. Those in the tech sector know Mary Ann as the Google international award winning creator of the Cooking Capsules app that won the top honors for the Android challenge. (Paging Meijer Corp.)
As we tooled around the city this weekend, Mary Ann and I had an interesting, real-time conversation about our lives in both cities. And we shared snippets of our adventures via Twitter with friends literally around the world. The 140-character feeds we blasted all weekend long then became snap shots of us having an adventure -- like tourist photos with us smiling in the foreground and Grand Rapids always in the background.
It is hard to imagine only few years ago that this new type of regional promotion could be harnessed in a very natural way to reach so many and so fast, but it is where we are now. And all of us with each 140 entry can be tour guides by default.
Choose local.…and often.
– Tommy Allen, Lifestyle Editor
Email:
[email protected]Twitter Tour Guide: @TommyGSync
Click here to continue to this week’s G-Sync events.Photo of Tommy Allen at El Toro: Grand Rapids Running of the Bulls provided by Terry Johnston
Press Releases for upcoming events in the West Michigan area should be sent to
[email protected]. Please include high res jpg images that are at least 500 pixels wide. Thank you. - Tommy
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