COUNTY PRIDE

MAKE THE MOST OF WHERE YOU LIVE WITH VISIT HENDRICKS COUNTY’S MANY RESOURCES

When the Hendricks County Convention and Visitors Bureau, now Visit Hendricks County (VHC), hired me 11 years ago, I remember telling a good friend of mine about my new job. After congratulating me, he asked two questions that have resonated with me ever since. Who would visit Hendricks County? Why do we even need a visitors bureau?

More than a decade later, maybe you wonder the same thing.

Tourism is thriving in our county, and plays a vital role in our economic development and making our community a vibrant place to live, work and raise a family. Hendricks County attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, and I have the numbers to prove it.

TOURISM’S IMPACT

In 2019, the most recent numbers we have, visitors spent more than $300 million in Hendricks County, including contributing more than $50 million in local taxes. For every dollar spent by a visitor, 59 cents stayed in our county, and tourism employed more than 4,000 people, making it our eighth-largest industry.

Those numbers reveal Hendricks County as a visitor destination, and that tourism remains a significant economic boon for our community, which is important because we alone can’t support our businesses.

Our restaurants, shops, entertainment attractions and especially our hotels depend on visitors to keep their doors open.

Without visitors, many of the businesses you love simply wouldn’t survive.

VHC’S ROLE

When our organization helps to promote and/or develop an attraction or event, we create a place where people want to visit. When we create a place where people want to visit, we create quality places where residents like you want to live.

We’ve learned that our visitors come for various reasons and with varying interests, and we’ve done our best to adapt our promotions to reach them. We spend significant time and resources marketing our destination to potential visitors within a driving radius of our county.

We highlight the places, events and attractions that make our destination special, including Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, Beasley’s Orchard, Hendricks County 4-H Fairgrounds & Conference Complex, Splash Island, the Mayberry Cafe, and the Embassy Suites Hotel & Conference Center, just to name a few of our major drivers.

We also don’t forget our hidden gems such as Avon Gardens, Rusted Silo, Oinking Acres, Who North America, The Tie Dye Lab and so many more. We have developed tools over the years to support our locally owned businesses and attractions including a robust website, visithendrickscounty.com.

We focus much of our efforts on getting people to visithendrickscounty.com, which receives more than one million page views per year. It is updated daily with the latest news and information for both visitors and locals, with information including:

• Listings for virtually every locally owned, tourism-related business in our county

• A popular events calendar

• An insider blog with new posts weekly, supported by multiple local writers

• A groups and meetings area for those hosting an event, planning a reunion or holding a conference

• A weddings section providing expert help for newly engaged couples planning their big day

• Many other resources including trip planning, an area for our tourism partners and even a section for locals

That site alone provides the help and resources anyone with interest in Hendricks County would need. Check it out today. You might be surprised by what you find, and you likely will learn something about your county that you didn’t know.

Plan A Trip

Whether using our resources to plan a staycation or planning a trip somewhere else in this great country, we highly encourage you to utilize your vacation days and make memories with your family and/or friends.

Studies show that time away from the stresses of work and daily life can be as beneficial to one’s health as anything else they can do. Next month we will celebrate National Travel and Tourism Week, a great reminder to plan that next vacation.

No matter where you go, we recommend turning to organizations like ours to find the expertise and tips you need to plan a trip. Instead of scheduling that usual vacation to Disney World or the beach, maybe find that road less traveled to discover an authentic, more affordable destination. DO YOUR PART

I hope my friend who asked me those questions 11 years ago is reading this today, because I’m sure I didn’t properly explain why Hendricks County is such a great place to visit. We need you, our residents, to recognize the importance of tourism and become ambassadors for our amazing destination, now and into the future.

Sign up for our monthly email newsletter and become a blog subscriber. You can register for one or both on our website. Request one of our free Travel Guides, which are great resources for locals too. If you or someone you know is planning a wedding, we also have a free Wedding Guide.

Finally, the next time you have friends and relatives visiting from out of town, take them to places right here in Hendricks County to support your community. If we help each other, everyone wins because there is so much to see and do right here in Hendricks County if you just take a moment to look.