Team effort

Things are heating up in Granbury and not just because today is the first day of spring.

More tourists are being served in the lakeside community thanks to a new volunteer initiative, stakeholder meetings, sales trips to promote the historic town, and bookings that have already been made or are being finalized by the Visit Granbury Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Staffers who work the front counter at the Visitors Center on Pearl Street just off the square served 386 walk-ins last month, according to Director Tammy Dooley.

“We’ve not only been busy, we’ve been swamped,” she said.

Turnout for the recently created weekly event Rise and Grind – an opportunity for stakeholders to share news about their business or upcoming event over coffee – has been growing every week, Dooley said, with 35 showing up last Friday. Local businesses having been stepping up to sponsor donuts.

“That tells me that the community is uniting, and this is what the goal was,” said Dooley, who was hired for the lead job last November.

“If we’re all rowing in the same direction then we are going to be unstoppable.”

HELP FROM COMMUNITY

Earlier this month Visit Granbury held its first meeting for a new volunteer-driven initiative called Visitor Information Professionals (VIP).

Ten people attended, Dooley said.

“We have way over-qualified, talented people – and that’s what we were hoping for,” Dooley said, adding that volunteers are “retired, they’re settled in and they love (Granbury) as much as we do.”

Meetings will be held monthly, but probably on varying days and at different times in order to accommodate a range of schedules, the director said. She noted that background checks are conducted.

Volunteers are being enlisted for such things as welcoming groups, helping with registrations at the Lake Granbury Conference Center (LGCC), thanking groups upon their departure, serving as tour guides on the city’s iconic green trolley and helping to stuff welcome bags.

Dooley said that the contents of the bags are customized according to the type of event and the amount of money the group will infuse into the local economy. Local businesses provide items for the bags, such as coupons or key rings.

“They love the coupons,” Dooley said of visitors.

About 3,000 welcome bags, or “swag bags,” have already been given away or committed, and Dooley expects to distribute 10,000 bags by the end of the year.

She said she hopes to branch out to include businesses in the volunteer-driven effort. The business side of the program will have the same acronym but will be called Visitor Information Partner.

Orange-and-white and maybe blue-and-white T-shirts will be provided to volunteers, Dooley said, and an appreciation party recognizing hours worked will be planned for the end of the year.

Anyone interested in participating can call Visit Granbury at 817-573-5548.

POUNDING PAVEMENT

Dooley and other Visit Granbury staffers will travel with conference center employees to Dallas later this month to promote Granbury at the Dallas Travel and Adventure Show at Dallas Market Hall.

They recently made sales trips to Austin and Houston.

In Austin, they fanned out in teams for pre-arranged meetings with business and association representatives.

In Houston, they worked a trade show to promote Granbury and the LGCC as a great place for regional meetings.

“They may have very large state conventions that are too big for us, but they have regional conferences,” Dooley said, adding that the conference center can accommodate groups of up to about 300.

The group from Gran-bury was “well received” and came back with “numerous leads,” she said, adding that Visit Granbury is in the process of negotiating several group events based on those meetings.

Dooley stated that Visit Granbury’s RFP (Request for Proposals) program has 23 RFPs currently in progress with the potential to book as many as 2,200 room nights.

Through that program, Visit Granbury works to match the needs of groups with local hotels.

“This place is booming, to say the least,” Dooley said. “Granbury is so wonderful to sell because we’ve got everything.”

kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 258