Webinar Recap: Better Rides & Better Business through Cycling Tourism and Ride with GPS

On Thursday, July 13, the League co-hosted a webinar with our friends at Ride with GPS and Experience Fayetteville about the power of combining bikes and tourism, and the tools you can use to do it most effectively. 

Experience Fayetteville is the destination marketing organization and visitors bureau for the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas. As we learned on the webinar, not only has Experience Fayetteville made cycling a focal point for attracting tourists to their city, but they’ve invested in the role of a Director of Cycling Tourism, the only title of its kind that we’re aware of in the country. Brannon Pack, who fills this role, shared what it means to oversee Experience Fayetteville’s cycling initiatives, including building community and business relationships, developing cycling content, attracting cycling events and participants, and cycling advocacy. 

These efforts and investments are paying off: last year, Fayetteville became the first Gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community in Arkansas; Fayetteville is now home to 50 certified Bicycle Friendly Businesses (the third most of any community in the nation!), and a recent study found that biking generates an incredible $159 million in economic impact in Northwest Arkansas. 

One of the key ways Experience Fayetteville is working to bring more cyclists to Fayetteville — and encourage tourists (and residents!) to hop on a bike while there — is through the Ride with GPS Tourism Account. Through their Tourism Account, Experience Fayetteville is able to highlight rides, routes, and destinations for all types of cyclists on their website and in marketing materials. During the webinar, Alex Gay from Ride with GPS showed off features of the Tourism Account, including creating routes and embeddable maps, developing a library of Points of Interest in the community such as Bicycle Friendly Businesses and other key destinations and attractions, and marketing highlighted routes and destinations using Ride with GPS’s Ambassador Program. 

And best of all, Ride with GPS Tourism Accounts support making biking better thanks to a partnership between Ride with GPS and the League, where Ride with GPS will donate 20 percent of proceeds from all new Tourism Accounts to the League. Ride with GPS isn’t just for tourism bureaus and destination marketing organizations: cycling clubs, local events, tour operators, and millions of individual riders use Ride with GPS to create, record, and share rides and routes. Check out Ride with GPS today and watch the full webinar recording and download the slides below.  Reach out to Alex directly ([email protected]) if you are ready to get started creating a Tourism Account for your community!

Watch the video and download the slides below:

Download Slides