Marketing FDL

The president of the Fond du Lac Area Convention and Visitors Bureau says they have shown some strong growth in direct visitor spending the last few years, but there is room for improvement. The last two years Fond du Lac County has led the state in the percentage increase of direct visitor spending. But Craig Molitor says they would like to have more control over the tourism product. He says they are still about $100 million behind Oshkosh so their work is far from done. He says they initially got into staging their own festivals with the Sturgeon Spectacular, but expanded that with the Art All Around event. He says those events are staged at times when there aren’t a lot of visitors to the area. He says they are looking towards times when they can increase the number of outside visitors coming into the community. Molitor says another component of tourism product is having control over hotel rooms and convention space, which Fond du Lac has seen a substantial increase in and well see more of with the redevelopment of the Hotel Retlaw.