Comments on: County Board Briefed on Marketing, Finance

By: Lou Perry

Lou Perry — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:36:26 +0000

My food service count is based on published listings. I’ve found MetroTimes to be the most comprehensive. It doesn’t only list linen service restaurants, but places like the Fleetwood Diner. Other lists are advertiser driven, exclude regular places to eat, or listed because they are members of trade associations.
Yeah, MetroTimes doesn’t have it all. They list only one place serving pizza in Ann Arbor. The two monthly/by-monthly Metro Detroit lifestyle magazines, Hour and Ambassador, list no more than eight restaurants for Ann Arbor/Chelsea. Substainal amount of advertisers in these magazines are restaurants. The lists for Oakland County are a yard long. I blame AACVB, DAD and others for not getting our great restaurants, hotels, cultural venues and the like out to the public. What other Michigan City has a main street with one after another-unique dinning places and shops. Moreover, the numbers published only include Ann Arbor restaurants, not all in Washtenaw County.
The “Bomber Breakfast” at Bomber’s in Ypsilanti won the Food Networks award for the largest breakfast served in the country, and the price is right. It’s décor is special, celebrating the production of aircraft at Willow Run for WW II. Other than MetroTimes, it isn’t listed anywhere. Making sure our unique dining experiences listed along with our other excelsior attractions should be a key task for our organizations promoting our town to at least our surrounding neighbors. I have found no evidence of an effort and actions.
The Ann Arbor Observer list of events for the month of April is 39 pages long. I am taking an educated guess here that no other place in Michigan has so much going on and allot of it is free.
Say you’re sitting in your den in Bloomfield Hills (37 miles away from AA) and you are looking for things to do with your kids this weekend. In Ann Arbor on Saturday, there’s AA Juggling Club and they invite people with no experience, Kid’s open stage: Oz’s Music Environment, all for free. Where else other than AA could you do that? Thirty-nine pages of stuff to do; we know, does anyone else.
Been getting calls and emails with positive remarks about my Chronicle comments. I’ve also gotten communiqués from others saying, “Everyone knows about Ann Arbor,” “we don’t want throngs of visitors upsetting our wonderful city.” We’re not an amusement park, we are a destination, people may know of Ann Arbor because of UofM and football, but what else. Although on a different scale, we’re just like New York or Chicago.
It’s the job of those organizations financed one way or another by the community, should be figuring out how to grow our community if for no other reason to generate cash for our purveyors and for that reason hiring people. For me, they aren’t getting the job done and I see no plan to do so.

By: Rod Johnson

Rod Johnson — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:50:39 +0000

Please tell me you don’t really think there are only 123 “places to dine” in Oakland County. (And I think you might be surprised at their diversity.)

By: Lou Perry

Lou Perry — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:37:04 +0000

The struggles of our hospitality businesses. When I read this excellent report by Ms. Morgan, it got me thinking about all the missed opportunities that Ann Arbor Convention and Visitors Bureau, Downtown Development Authority, and the Chamber of Commerce have not capitalized.
I grew-up in the hospitality business in New York City and have consulted enterprises that includes Hyatt Hotels, Sheraton Resorts, and National Restaurant Association among others.
Each year I attend the Detroit International Auto Show pre-opening press events. I chat with press and auto manufacturer folks from around the world. Some of the 5,500 press people stay downtown Detroit, some stay at hotels in Oakland County, some at the airport and more than I would think, Macomb County. In all these years, not one person said they were staying in Ann Arbor. None knew of the culinary capitol of the state, none knew of our multicultural city that to some extend is European flavored and is relaxing. Besides press, there are upper and more management from all over the world.
On my 1290 WLBY radio program I’ve asked representatives of the AACVB why they haven’t made efforts to attract these visitors. Each person interviewed gave me a bunch of sophomoric excuses – “We are too far away from Cobo Center” (Macomb commute time is longer than to Ann Arbor); “the corporations make hotel reservations.” We have research operations in Ann Arbor from virtually every foreign auto manufacturers, has the hospitality business in Ann Arbor made any sales calls? Are we on the list of hotel destinations with unique dining experiences given to out of town Auto Show visitors? Besides the press an auto professionals, the show draws people from all over. Myopic or maybe lazy thinking is fully in bloom.
Moreover, I also do not think the CVB understands what we have to offer, how to generate business/traffic from Michiganders. O.K., we get zillions visiting on football Sundays, the motion picture filming around town crews and production companies drops a lot of dollars in the community, the art fairs bring huge crowds. But we are a pure gem and we can be doing so much more to attract visitors resulting in more business for Washtenaw County.
Oakland County has the second largest population in the state. It also has the highest per capita income of any county in the state. Its biggest draw is the Somerset Collection.
Few weeks ago, I was reading the Sunday Oakland Press. A newspaper comparable to AnnArbor.com on Sunday’s but thicker. There were ads from among others fun locations including Chicago, Toledo Zoo, Williamsburg, VA, and Frankenmuth. All of these destinations are further than the 45-minutes that it takes to get to Ann Arbor from Bloomfield Hills. Why isn’t our miraculous city drawing people in nearby communities to “vacation” in Ann Arbor? Under John Hieftje leadership, the city has won more awards than any other I know. We have lovely independent stores and restaurants, events, cultural and live music venues. We are the only Michigan town where so much abounds.
Ann Arbor has 274 places to dine, many unique with an exceptional variety of cuisines. Oakland County has 123 without the variety. This according to weekly MetroTimes and they are quite complete and accurate. Ann Arbor has a variety of places to lay your head on a pillow including bed & breakfasts that people seem to travel long distances to enjoy. This past Sunday we had Festifools in our streets. Nowhere did I see it listed as an event in any of the outside of Ann Arbor four Michigan newspapers I read.
My point, if the hospitality business community wants to generate more business, taxes is not the problem. Our hotel rates and I would assume banquet prices are in line with others in Southeastern Michigan. The barrier is how and to whom we market our wonderful, highly honored city.