Thank you to everyone who attended our recent annual meeting. The event took place at the Minneapolis Convention Center (MCC) with a record 700 registered attendees.

We celebrated successes and candidly identified challenges. Among the successes was the record hotel room demand we had in conjunction with the Big Ten Women’s Basketball Tournament at Target Center (with a record 129,000 basketball fans) at the same time as the American Physical Society and its 13,000 physicists from around the world at the MCC.

Another record fell in June when we layered the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials at Target Center on top of many related gymnastics events at the MCC, plus an outdoor fan zone and a promenade of shopping and entertainment. We partnered with Minnesota Sports and Events and congratulate them on turning Minneapolis into Gymnastics City USA.

July brought another perfect example of layering events. The convention center hosted a major local corporate summit and the GALA Choruses Festival, with 122 choruses from around North America and the world. Plus, there was a sold-out Minnesota Lynx – Indiana Fever game at Target Center. So, we had the Caitlin Clark effect twice in 2024!

On the marketing and communications front in 2024, our efforts drove a record-setting 3.6 million visits to Minneapolis.org. Our Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame experience, a pop-up exhibit held alongside The Dayton’s Market, attracted more than 10,000 guests over the holidays. Along with our partners from the Minnesota Star Tribune, Minneapolis Foundation, Hennepin History Museum, and Mich’s Market, we got a glimpse into what a permanent, downtown, sports history exhibit could look like. Stay tuned!

We also shared our challenging reality with annual meeting attendees. In an increasingly competitive landscape, it is vital to have a road map to ensure Minneapolis remains a dynamic, competitive, and welcoming place for meetings, conventions, and events, as well as for business and leisure visitors.

The response to these looming challenges was the creation of “Destination Minneapolis: Charting the Future of Minneapolis Tourism” which is a 10-year plan for the future of tourism in Minneapolis. Our annual meeting attendees were among the first to get full details on this initiative, which will guide our city’s visitor economy for the next decade, ensuring we continue to compete on a national and global stage.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Meet Minneapolis board chair Tabitha Montgomery shared their thoughts on the plan’s creation and future implementation. We are grateful to the mayor for his role as chair of the steering committee, which was comprised of our diverse, 36-member Meet Minneapolis board members.

Chair Montgomery shared with attendees that tourism expansion is bigger than one organization and, “This is not a Meet Minneapolis plan. Hundreds of people took the opportunity to weigh in and help shape our future as a destination. There were difficult discussions in getting to the end product.”

The mayor asked for 1-2 big ideas. Our plan outlines six transformative opportunities that will continue to position Minneapolis as a premier destination and enhance the quality of life for our residents.

The Big Ideas are:

• Establish Minneapolis as the #1 city for women’s sports
• Enhance Minneapolis’ nightlife scene to be a vibrant, thriving nighttime economy
• Modernize the Minneapolis Convention Center to enhance competitiveness and create a signature convention district
• Improve connections to the central riverfront near the Post Office site and Upper Lock and Dam
• Embrace Minneapolis as a catalyst of the modern-day civil rights movement
• Develop an iconic event that showcases Minneapolis’ commitment to social justice

These big ideas form the impetus for what our future as a destination holds in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Cites such as Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Milwaukee have recently made major investments in their tourism infrastructure to ensure their future viability as destinations. Minneapolis, while having had recent success, cannot afford to rest on our laurels and ignore the needs of customers who have more options than ever to choose from.

Among the six big ideas, establishing Minneapolis as the #1 city for women’s sports and modernizing the MCC, and its adjacent campus, emerged as the ideas which can have the most immediate impact. This is based on our board’s feedback and the overall reaction to the plan.

Our region’s credentials are already quite impressive as a women’s sports capital.

• We are home to our four- (should have been five) time WNBA champion Minnesota Lynx.
• We also saw our Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) Minnesota Frost win the league’s inaugural Walter Cup.
• We’ve successfully hosted the WNBA All Star Game, the NCAA Women’s Final Four and the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championships.
• We annually host the Northern Lights Qualifiers, which brings tens of thousands of competitive female volleyball players to the city.
• And, as mentioned above, we did an incredible job hosting the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials and talks continue to host future USA Gymnastics events.

We have an enviable foundation on which to build.

On the MCC front, there is increasing interest in looking objectively at our future campus needs. Those dovetail nicely with the needs of surrounding residential neighborhoods that also desire entertainment and dining infrastructure within proximity. Many opportunities abound for us to create a gathering place where downtown workers, downtown residents, and visitors can seamlessly congregate. We are excited to see our MCC campus fill this need.

Looking ahead, we will be supporting “Purple Rain” the musical, an extravaganza led by Hennepin Arts and Paisley Park. They are bringing the pre-Broadway, world premiere to the State Theatre this fall. Just imagine thousands of Purple Rain patrons might be interacting with Vikings and Wolves fans, along with foodies from across the region and nation, over the same weekends in October and November!

The full destination master plan and regular updates on the plan can be found on our website.

Our call to action is now for us to secure our future as a destination. We invite you to be a part of this journey.