Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Experience Grand Rapids and Detroit

After seeing the Grand Rapids video today, I decided to check out the experience Grand Rapids webpage. After being highly impressed by how exciting the website made the city seem, I was curious about what Detroit’s travel and entertainment website looked like. In my opinion, though Detroit is a larger city and home to most of Michigan’s professional athletic teams, the website is not nearly as exciting. I am curious to see people’s reactions to the two websites.

http://www.experiencegr.com/

http://www.experiencedetroit.com/

10 comments:

  1. Completely agree. What this really shows is that Detroit is still years behind the times. If your website is stuck in the past, poeple are never going to believe that the city is doing everything it can to be proactive in todays market.

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  2. Very interesting observation -- I definitely agree! I'm rather surprised though, because having something like that seems like it would be relatively simple, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

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  3. I would think that...

    1. Detroit’s web site should be much better (larger city and as we learned yesterday it is filled with so many creative people). This is not the case. In my opinion a good website goes along way Detroit is behind the times.

    2. It is ironic that a city that seems to be stuck in the past has an outdated website. Some might say that Detroit has bigger things to worry about than a website. I say they need to get with the times.

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  4. Those websites are the cities' Convention and Visitors Buereau whos goal is to bring tourists in to stay overnight and increase the "buzz" about the region. Detroit's website is bad compared to GR because they have less "bed taxes" which is the CVB's primary revenue source.

    I did my SIP at Discover Kalamazoo, www.discoverkalamazoo.com, our own CVB.

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  5. For a city that relies so much on tourism (sports teams, casinos, concerts, etc.) nowadays, it's surprising that their website is so outdated. It seems counterintuitive that Detroit wouldn't try harder to draw people into the city by advertising its attractions.

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  6. While I agree that Detroit's website does need some updating, I don't think Detroit should focus on tourism within the city. It's not a feasible nor a very sustainable industry, and already the majority of their traffic comes from the sports attractions.

    GR has a great site. Everyone should go to Frederik Meijer Gardens and hang out with the butterflies, that was always the best field trip in elementary school!

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  7. The difference in these websites are pretty intense, and I do think Detroit's website is outdated and needs to be reinvented in a way to attract more people. And I want to question Liz's statement saying that Detroit shouldn't focus on being a tourism, although it should not be their main focus I think it could really bring some money into Detroit. It could be a start! Maybe not invest in only tourism expecting great outcomes but maybe encourage it.

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  8. Laura--Cool link to the Kalamazoo CVB! Even our website is more attention-grabbing than Detroit's! I agree with Chris... it's so ironic...

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  9. Toni and Chris, I wish i could "like" your posts

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  10. Checked out all three websites. Grand Rapid's website really makes me want to go there .If I were to judge Detroit by its website, I really wouldn't want to go there.

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