Our View: Duluth tourism too important for a flawed approach

While running for Duluth mayor, Roger Reinert stated, repeatedly, "It’s hard to tell an authentic Duluth story if you’re not a Duluthian.”

It was an easy political shot at the incumbent, who he was trying to unseat, after a $1.8 million annual contract to market and promote Duluth as a tourism destination was outsourced in 2021 to a Minneapolis firm after it long had been the purview and responsibility of local Visit Duluth.

However, with Reinert now mayor — and in spite of his apparent Duluth-first focus and commitment to ensuring local tourism dollars are spent locally and with a local firm — the latest renewal of the tourism-promotion and -marketing contract this week went not to Visit Duluth or even to the out-of-town Bellmont Partners of Minneapolis. Far more frustratingly to some, it went to an out-of-state firm, Madden Media, of far-off Arizona. The popular kneejerk reaction went something like: What does anyone from the heat of the southwestern Sun Belt know about attracting visitors in the frosty chill of Northeastern Minnesota?

A competitive bidding process produced the wildly unpopular result, a process not unlike the one followed by the previous mayor — but a process so legitimately and vehemently panned and criticized this time around that it demands a thorough review.

Make that a scrutinizing, with fixes surely seeming necessary so Duluth can get the result Duluth wants, so our all-important tourism industry is optimized to its fullest potential, so local expertise and talent are rewarded and celebrated, and so local money and jobs stay local.

Those should be goals no matter who’s in the mayor’s office. A bottom line is that local talent exists to effectively promote Duluth and market our city and region to visitors. Unfortunately, Duluth’s professionals were not adequately supported by City Hall, not by the previous mayor and now not by Reinert.

A total of 26 firms submitted proposals, including the News Tribune, which didn’t make it past a selection committee’s first cut. Five finalists emerged, including three Duluth hopefuls: AimClear, Hailey Sault, and Swim Creative.

When his AimClear agency wasn’t the recommendation, Marty Weintraub was among those who criticized the selection process’ lack of transparency, saying it was “rushed” and was “flawed by the absence of enough committee members with sufficient tourism marketing experience and insight,” as the News Tribune reported .

Additionally, he and others pointed out that Madden Media also does tourism marketing for Traverse City, Michigan, and Door County, Wisconsin, markets similar to Duluth that, like Duluth, woo visitors from the same Milwaukee, Chicago, Twin Cities, and other population centers. As campaigns and strategies are developed, will Duluth, Traverse City, or Door County get the Arizona agency’s best ideas and approaches? Who’ll get its second-best and third-best?

Local critics can take solace that Visit Duluth is seeking the stability of a new executive director, with the welcome goal of reclaiming its tourism-marketing responsibilities in two years, at the end of the contract with Madden Media, as the News Tribune reported .

We in Duluth also can be encouraged by Madden Media’s pledge to collaborate with and to work with professionals here over the next two years of its contract. “We have to engage the local teams,” Madden Media CEO Dan Janes said in the News Tribune. “We’ll be leaning into the local creatives that are out there in production, especially as we think about video and photo production.”

None of this is a minor matter. The all-important tourism industry is responsible for the amenities, niceties, attractions, and events we all enjoy. The industry is responsible for so much of Duluth’s the Northland’s vibrancy.

Tourism in Duluth has an annual economic impact estimated at $780 million, according to the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce . Ensuring that those dollars are invested locally allows them to be spent, again and again, what the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Minnesota Duluth refers to as a multiplier effect . It impacts job creation, contributions to nonprofits, healthy local spending, and more.

Just like all Americans, for their own self-interest, can support President-elect Donald Trump , recognizing that his success is our success, Duluthians and Northlanders owe it to our region and our prospects to support Madden Media over the coming two years. By all accounts, the agency is talented and knowledgeable. It scored as Duluth’s best option for a reason.

We can demand and expect excellent results from Madden — while we also work together to ensure the process used to award such contracts is fair and produces local-first and local-supporting results we all can love.