Uncovering Opportunities
Hoosier Hospitality: it’s not just a saying, it’s a lifestyle. Each year, Indy’s 28.8 million visitors are met front and center with our city’s expansive network of hospitality professionals. And with 84,000 jobs supported by tourism in the Indy region, it’s hard not feel the Hoosier Hospitality. People make the city here in Indy, and we have an opportunity to capitalize on the greatest defining feature our destination has to offer – its individuals.
Each year, Visit Indy hosts the Recognition of Service Excellence (ROSE) Awards, in which 70+ local hospitality team members are honored and celebrated for making Indy a great place to visit and explore. It’s an annual soiree that thanks the thousands of hospitality workers as whole. On a larger scale, it is a symbol of how Indy truly thrives from the hard work of our frontline workers, including front desk attendants, servers, ticket associates, and more. Regardless of wage, race, ethnicity, and age, our hospitality workers are here for you. And we’re here for them.
To truly invest in the 84,000 jobs supported by tourism, we have to take a deeper dive and understand the pipeline from which these opportunities emerge, uncovering hidden avenues where Visit Indy can make real impact to improve wages and benefits in a very accessible, low-barrier industry. We’re working to promote career pathways, recognizing that skills needed in hospitality, like customer service, empathy, and communication, are easily transferable and make people better employees in any job. To this end, we’re also expanding the ROSE Awards to include recognition of success of those who have found success, both through and outside the industry.
We want to better understand the employment and wage dynamics of the leisure, hospitality, and tourism industry locally, and are striving to improve the compensation of those frontline workers who make it all possible. And we’re building on our Super Service hospitality training to include a broader array of professional development offerings. Through upskilling workers, especially those who may not have opportunities for professional development, we create new opportunities to strengthen our Hoosier Hospitality.
We’re also embracing cultural entrepreneurship, whether its by connecting residents who can tell a good story or host a good tour with paying opportunities or its by growing the artists, musicians, and culinary talent that make Indy special. With visitors increasingly wanting unique, local experiences, we want to make sure our residents are in the best position to pursue their dreams providing them.
Want more details?
Check out these Destination Vision plan actions:
