Rochester generates $1.1 billion in 2025 tourism

All right, a new University of Minnesota extension report says that the city of Rochester, Minnesota generated $1.1 billion in economic activity last year. Here to talk all about it is Bill Van Bank with Experience Rochester. Hi, Bill. Hey, good to meet you. Thank you. So these are some big numbers. I mean, this is a lot of money that's coming into Rochester. A lot of people know Rochester as a major destination for health care due to Mayo Clinic, but this has got to be more than that. Tell me what's going on in Rochester. Well, we are the world's best, home to the world's best hospital for sure. And that drives a lot of visitation to Rochester and a lot of patients who come to Rochester for healthcare, but also spending some time here experiencing our restaurants, our trail systems, getting out and exploring the community. So that's a big part of it. But if you layer on the medical visitor, we're also a convention city. We compete against the Twin Cities. We compete against Duluth and Des Moines and Sioux Falls for conventions. And so that's another layer. And then we're also a big sports tournament town. So you start to put all those layers together as a regional hub, as Minnesota's third largest city, and those numbers are significant. So have you guys invested money in the tourism industry? I have to imagine that you've been working hard to make Rochester more than just a health care destination. I'm glad you asked that question over the last couple of years, we've really taken a deeper dive into Rochester. We like to call it the Mayo Clinic and story. Mayo Clinic brings a lot of visitors to town and we learn from those visitors as they come to our visitor booth. I came for Mayo Clinic, I came for health care and I didn't expect everything else. And so it's the and that we're really focusing on, how to tell the story of Rochester better to people who may not be aware of our great dining scene or our great trail system or the great recreation we have in our community. And we're even taking this to the next level. We're investing in a 10-year destination master plan process. So this economic impact study we just completed is part of that process to really set the baseline for what Rochester is today and how that trajectory will happen in the next decade. How has having that infrastructure there for the healthcare destination allowed Rochester to grow in various areas of tourism so quickly? Well, I think just because of the stability and resiliency of Rochester and the fact that we have a stable, Minnesota's largest private employer in Mayo Clinic. We have, we know that patients need healthcare year round. And so we can see that just with the stability of the visitation. One of the cool things is obviously Mayo Clinic is investing in their future, the Bold Forward Unbound initiative with over $5 billion in investment to create and reimagine the next phase of healthcare. One of the cool things on top of that is the Destination Medical Center initiative, creating better infrastructure in our community. We will have, in about a year, we will have a bus rapid transit system taking you from Mayo Civic Center all the way past the St. Mary's campus, about a two-mile stretch of a bus rapid transit system that will be free for all riders. Yeah, you're talking about the $5.6 billion Destination Medical Center redevelopment. This is a part of a 20-year plan. So you guys have been working on this for a long time. And it is aimed at attracting more visitors. Where is that money coming from, that $5.6 billion? It's a public-private partnership. It's the state of Minnesota. It is the city of Rochester. It's Olmsted County. And it's Mayo Clinic. So it's really an investment in infrastructure, public infrastructure. As Mayo Clinic grows its campus, the city of Rochester couldn't alone support that growth. So this happened in the legislative process back in 2012-2013, creating Destination Medical Center and really building an infrastructure grid in Rochester to support the massive growth of Mayo Clinic. Olmsted County generated more tourism-related economic activity than in any other county in greater Minnesota in 2025. How are you guys getting the word out to people outside of Minnesota? Sure, as we are the official destination marketing organization for Rochester, so we also have that responsibility to create marketing messages and showcase our community. And so we, last year, created a campaign, it's called This is Rochester, Really, to really peel back the layers that people think of Rochester as healthcare, but there's more to Rochester to explore. So we created a campaign that started last year, carried forward into this year to really show that Rochester has more than healthcare, and you should come and check out the community for great dining, for great recreation, for many other activities. And we primarily are targeting the Twin Cities Market, the Western Wisconsin part of the state, as well as Northern Iowa down to Des Moines. Those are kind of our feeder markets. We are a drive market, so we research, we have a lot of great data to show where our visitors coming from and how much they're spending when they're in our market. So that helps us really be uber about, uber targeted to those destinations. 6,200 hotel rooms in Rochester, so plenty of places to stay, that's for sure. Bill von Bank with Experience Rochester. Sure appreciate you making the time. Thanks for having me. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back after this.