Work has recently started on a new “destination master plan” that will influence Bentonville’s tourism strategy for years to come.

Kalene Griffith, CEO of Visit Bentonville, and consultant Bethanie DeRosa of Hunden Partners discussed how they’re approaching the process during a Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce event Tuesday. 

Hunden Partners received a $198,000 contract to help draft the plan, which should be finalized within the next 10 months or so.

The creation of the master plan is an opportunity to ask, “What’s not being done? What could we be doing? What are we missing in our community?” Griffith said.

She said the final product will set clear tourism and recreation priorities for the next five to 10 years.

Throughout the event, Griffith emphasized that Visit Bentonville serves both residents and visitors, and she believes the same will be true for the new master plan.

“We’re not just serving that visitor. I want to reiterate that this is really, literally, we want to do more and find out what we can do to support the locals as well as our visitors,” she said.

Visit Bentonville has funded projects like Lawrence Plaza, the Quilt of Parks, Phillips Park, trails and public art – all of which benefit residents and visitors alike. The agency’s funding comes mostly from an A&P tax, which is paid on restaurant meals and hotel stays.

Both Griffith and DeRosa acknowledged that balancing the needs of tourism and residents isn’t always easy. 

A few weeks ago, Hunden Partners started meeting with some community members and is “getting ready to launch a broader effort,” that will involve more meetings, focus groups, and surveys.

“The last thing we want to do at the end of this is have someone raise their hand and say, I had no idea this was going on,” DeRosa said.

An audience member asked how the master plan process would accommodate residents who don’t necessarily want more tourism.

“We deal with this in a lot of different places. I've worked in beach destinations where you get on the island and you're having a conversation like this, and somebody says, ‘Well, I bought my house here now, so close the bridge.’ They want no other visitation,” DeRosa said.

However, she said that restaurant and hospitality margins are “so thin” that it’s difficult for those businesses to survive without tourism.

DeRosa added that she has seen these sorts of concerns more often from residents in outdoor recreation destinations. A good master plan, she said, goes beyond marketing by also addressing infrastructure needed to support visitors.

Griffith, who has been with Visit Bentonville for more than two decades, said the city’s tourism landscape has changed dramatically during her tenure.

“Twenty years ago, we were not a leisure destination. We were totally a business destination,” Griffith said. “And I would say that about every four years we have a different kind of visitor coming to our area.”

DeRosa described a master plan as a way to rally the community around specific goals and also “a way to say no to things.”

If ideas are suggested later that fall outside the scope of the plan, it might be an opportunity to say, “let's focus on what's in the plan first, before we get distracted,” she said. “So it helps drive that focus.”

Another audience member asked the two to identify any gaps they had already noticed that should be addressed by the new plan.

“So my default answer as a consultant is, I don't know, because we're not done, but it's part of what we're going to deliver here,” DeRosa said.

However, in her early meetings so far, DeRosa said there was one question that kept coming up: “if you are not here on business and you don't ride a bike, what is there for you?”

That could point to the need to diversify attractions in the area to continue tourism growth, she said.

Both the city government and the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce are in somewhat similar planning stages for their separate areas of work.

The city government is in the second stage of Plan Bentonville, a multi-year effort that involves refreshing zoning codes, updating population growth estimates, and creating a parcel-by-parcel map that shows expected land use across the entire city.

The Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce announced a plan to create a new regional economic development strategy in April. Work is underway in partnership with consulting firm Boyette Strategic Advisors.

Hunden Partners has been connected with both to find ways to coordinate and build on each other’s work.

/