Summary of March 2019 Business Breakfast

On Tuesday, 12 March 2019 the town held a Business Breakfast at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Sturbridge. Our thanks to the Comfort Inn for hosting the town and for providing a wonderful breakfast to everyone. 

The focus of the meeting was on marketing Sturbridge to new visitors, residents and businesses. Below is a quick summary of what was discussed. If you want to see the full presentation, a link to that PDF can be found at the bottom of this page. 

Town Update

The Town provided a number of updates on local projects:

• The town is seeking grant funding to conduct an economic development benchmarking study and to develop a five year economic development plan.
• Sturbridge is currently conducting a Sign Inventory of all commercial / industrial signs in Sturbridge (click here to view initial announcement).
• The town's is focusing on the re-zoning of the Route 15 corridor (click here to view minutes of Board of Selectmen/Planning Board discussion).
• The Farmers Market, which will be open from 9 June through 6 October, is well underway and there are just shy of fifty vendors (click here to view Farmers Market page).
• Sturbridge recently worked with Williamstown to on its First Impressions program. Williamstown provided a great overview of Sturbridge through the eyes of a first time visitor and it is worth viewing (click here to see Williamstown's report of Sturbridge). 
• The town recently partnered with Discover Central Massachusetts on some recent campaigns as well as participating in the AAA Travel Show at Gillette Stadium. 

Marketing Sturbridge in 2019 

The town spoke at length about its efforts at promoting Sturbridge to a larger audience of potential visitors, residents and businesses. To do this the Sturbridge Tourist Association is preparing to undertake two major projects in the 2020 fiscal year. 

1. Develop a five year marketing strategy to identify who is our target demographic, where are they located and how best can we reach them. They wish to do all of this in a way that gives the town the largest return on investment. 
2. Develop a Sturbridge brand that helps the town market itself as a community with a diverse range of offerings to the widest audience possible. The goals is to help Sturbridge be recognized for the many wonderful businesses and experiences that can be found here. 

To help with these, the town is asking for businesses to help provide input and feedback on the marketing strategy and the town brand so that there can be community support in promoting these efforts. The town also discussed its various efforts to continue marketing while the two projets are underway including (but not limited to) the 2019 Visitor Guide, a new printing of the Trail Guide, their online marketing efforts with @visitsturbridge and their website visitsturbridge.org. 

Discover Central MA and Visit Widget 

Stephanie Ramey, the President of Discover Central Massachusetts, shared the various marketing tools open to businesses in central Massachusetts. In particular she focused on the new "Visit Widget" that can be found on the Discover Central Massachusetts website. This widget allows visitors to plan trips based on interest, geography, events, etc. It is a tool that allows businesses in Sturbridge to be viewed by a more tech savy patron. Ms. Ramey also discussed at length the different ways in which DCM was working to support tourism in central Massachusetts such as their event calendar which any business can post on. 

If you would like more information about Discover Central Massachusetts you can contact Ms. Ramey by clicking here or by calling 508-753-1550. 

Next Business Breakfast...

Our next Sturbridge Business Breakfast will be held in August at a location still to be determined. If you and your business are interested in hosting, please contact our Economic Development and Tourism Coordinator.