By Patrick Fitzgerald
For WisBusiness.com
Deb Archer, CEO of the Greater Madison Convention & Visitors Bureau, addressed the need for working partnership between the city’s namesake university and its tourism bureau in Madison Monday.
Archer’s speech, “Educational Tourism and Making UW-Madison a Destination for Exploration,” was part of “The New Constellation” seminar series, sponsored by The Center for Biology Education and the Science Alliance at UW-Madison, as well as WISCAPE.
This part in the series was to present and describe ways in which the university and local tourism industry could facilitate a mutually-benefiting alliance that would heighten UW-Madison’s status as the focal point of education based tourism.
Tom Farley, marketing director for the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Archer’s speech was focused on highlighting the university as the intellectual and emotional center of Madison, in addition spelling out the area’s other non-university attributes as well.
“It’s broader than UW,” said Farley. “You’re enriched through our natural resources, people, industries, and activities that we do, so we’re taking these two common brand elements and linking them up.”
Farley said the Visitors Bureau and UW-Madison hope to expound on the university’s national associations and perceived leadership in the areas of biotechnology and science to showcase the area’s perceived ability to be seen as a nexus of research.
Farley also touted strong performance from private sector industries that are based in the area, as well as up-and-coming infrastructure coming to the UW-Madison campus that will be prime for science outreach. In the next four years, the university will see four new buildings open, including the Microbial Sciences building this fall.
“The more that we can create collaborations with UW-Madison, the more desirable we will be as destination,” Farley said.
“It makes a pretty compelling case.”
