Goals – All three towns have set goals to leverage tourism in support of local businesses (through increased sales opportunities) and to increase their non-resident tax base (through increased local optional meals and rooms tax revenue and short-term rental community impact fees).  

Strategies – All three communities have identified the strategy of increasing visitors, with Concord and Lexington also aiming to increasing the length of visits. Supporting activities include marketing tourism assets, leveraging the Minute Man Bikeway as conduit for visitors, and attracting a range of domestic and international visitors. Concord and Lexington also have identified process-related goals centered on relationship building, including among regional tourism organizations and other partners, and Arlington has emphasized collaboration as a general strategy.  

Opportunities to Amplify a Broader Range of Narratives – Arlington and Concord municipal staff have expressed a desire to expand efforts to supplement existing Revolutionary War sites and programming with additional narratives. Lexington’s tourism plan also cites assets that extend beyond the Revolutionary War, including cultural, recreation, and entertainment amenities. 

Existing Data Sources – Municipal partners can access or collect a range of related data about investment in tourism, visitor generation, visitors, financial impact, and visitor experience.   

Outstanding Data Sources – Municipal partners identified specific data needs related to, first, understanding and evaluating local tourism activity to appropriately advocate for tourism expenses or resources and, second, understanding visitor behavior and experience to improve visitor preferences. Potential avenues for accessing this data include surveys of visitors, residents, and businesses, some of which have already been conducted in the region.  

Data Challenges – Municipal partners have faced challenges collecting data on visitor interests and behavior, with existing local visitation data collection efforts often limited to visitor counts or incomplete. Partners also cited a lack of resources, including funding and capacity, for collecting comprehensive data. 

Collaboration – Select municipal partners expressed interest in sharing data among regional partners. This raises the challenges of developing and adopting consistent data collection and management practices and demonstrating the benefits of regional collaboration to community members concerned about differing levels of tourism investment. 

The regional data strategy proposes data categories, data points, and, as relevant, data sources, that municipal staff may use to monitor progress. Municipal staff can monitor local progress towards tourism strategy implementation and goals by tracking metrics related to five key categories: 

Local year-to-year investment in tourism, including:

• Financial allocations, grants, donations, and revenue 
• Funding toward strategic initiatives 
• Major tourism milestones

Interest generated by investment in tourism, including: 

• Website traffic 
• Social media traffic 
• Tourism inquiries 
• Metrics tailored to specific initiatives and events  

Visitor counts, including: 

• Counts at visitor centers 
• Counts at priority destinations 
• Counts during priority events 
• Counts indicated by charter bus tours 

Local financial impact of tourism, including: 

• Spending level (business health) 
• Spending impact (benefits) 
• Jobs and wages 
• Municipal revenue 

Visitor experience, with potential actions including: 

• Leveraging existing feedback platforms 
• Continuing or implementing a visitor survey 
• Considering a passport program 

Recommended next steps for municipal partners include: 

• Develop a spreadsheet or database to organize retrieved and/or collected data and data points. 
• Continue to build data collection and management partnerships between towns and between towns and regional convention and visitors bureaus. 
• Establish analytics accounts for tourism websites and social media accounts. 
• Select a CRM and implement ticketing of tourism inquiries. 
• Revisit information requested on sign-in sheets. 
• Continue to identify priority destinations and build relationships with owners, staff, and volunteers. 
• Continue to identify priority events and build relationships with hosts and organizers. 
• Continue or establish a local business inventory.  Continue or establish a visitor survey.