A shaky plan

    So the Tourism Master Plan has been released, and National Tourism Week is coming up soon. Time to step back and look at the state of the tourism industry in Dodge City.
    The world in financial crisis, gas prices on the rise again, and now a potential pandemic that has health officials threatening to close the borders and outlaw travel — not the best time to hope for better business at local attractions.
    The Master Plan was an idea that had been bandied about for years but nobody could agree on what agency should write it or what it should contain.
    In my view, the plan should address everything from redesigning the traffic flow around town to creating a "war chest" and going out in aggressive search of new television, movie and book projects that are set in Dodge City. Disappointingly, the current plan is much more limited in scope.
    It always sounds like a good idea -- let's get an expert to come in and organize our ideas for us and add some new ones to the mix. Then the consultant comes to town and has a meeting. Then another meeting. Then several more meetings. Then a summary meeting. Then a follow-up meeting. Then a wrap-up meeting. Then a post-survey-analytical-one-more-time meeting.
    By the time these meetings have taken place, the consultant has a great list of ideas drawn from the already-in-place ideas of the participants and from the discussion generated by the meetings.
    Just putting those ideas down on paper with titles and sub-titles would produce a perfectly acceptable report.
    For the outside expert-consultant process to really work, the consultant has to bring some startling new and innovative ideas to the table, ones that ingeniously bring all the great local ideas together into a major plan.
    Back in the 1980s a number of local agencies pulled together and hired three consulting firms to produce a visitor survey, a marketing plan,  and an attraction development plan for Dodge City called "The Dodge City Experience."
    That plan outlined dozens of suggestions, large and small, for improvements to the Dodge City tourism offerings. So far as I know, only two suggestions have been accomplished. The plan suggested "do something with that unsightly train station," and "put some bronze medallions in the sidewalks downtown to mark historic locations."
    Check and check.
    When officials suggested hiring Heberling and Associates to write the tourism master plan, it was partially to placate local rabble rousers who were promoting an alternative idea for development of the special event center. It was also partially a response to the growing concern that Boot Hill may be on the wrong track.
    Although the plan strongly recommends that a new business plan be developed for Boot Hill, it stops short of making specific suggestions about how to shape that institution in order for it to become a leader in the interpretation of western history.
    My biggest disappointment with the plan is that it offers no "big new ideas." Certainly it outlines enough studies and committees and meetings to keep the Arts and Tourism Coordinator busy for years. Measuring the results will be more of a challenge.
    There are lots of players: the CVB and its growing staff, the CVB Advisory Board, the new arts and tourism coordinator and a tourism committee so new that its mission and even its name are yet unannounced.
    If the tourism master plan results in the creation of a revenue stream to support attraction development, both by improving existing attractions and creating new ones, then all the effort and expense will be worth it. I'm just not sure the current document provides CFAB and others with enough of a road map to get the job done.