Spotlight On: Jaimee Lucke Hendrikson, President & CEO, Visit Saint Paul
June 2024 — Jaimee Lucke Hendrikson, president and CEO of Visit Saint Paul, talked to Invest: about how the destination marketing organization collaborates with partners in all sectors to bring events to Saint Paul and attract visitors. She highlighted sports events such as the 2026 World Junior Ice Hockey Championship as a key step toward promoting the city and showcased how digital marketing has helped raise awareness of local festivals.
What have been some of Visit Saint Paul’s biggest successes in the past year?
Both Visit Saint Paul and our city council got fresh new leadership. Aside from my role as president and CEO, each department head is new in their position. It is an exciting time for us as we bring in experienced people within the organization and the industry. Additionally, we are growing back roles after our team became smaller post-COVID.
It is a great time for Saint Paul, and we are excited about what will come. Our bid for the 2026 World Junior Ice Hockey Championship in collaboration with Minnesota Sports & Events won, so we expect that event to be huge for the cities. That championship is a huge hockey tournament for players under 20. The teams come from various countries, so we will have an international audience of athletes and fans. The championship starts the week after Christmas, so the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026 will be incredible. As the capital city of the state of hockey, we are thrilled about it.
How is Minnesota and Greater Saint Paul growing in terms of sports tourism?
Minnesota Sports & Events was formed after the work to host the Super Bowl. It results from the collaboration between Meet Minneapolis, Bloomington CVB, and Visit Saint Paul. It focuses on working together to bring large, signature events that can impact Minnesota as a whole. Minnesota Sports & Events has grown, and the impact of the events that are coming is awesome.
Those include the Women’s Final Four tournament, USA Gymnastics, and the World Junior Ice Hockey Championship. We are pumped to have that support and to be able to bring in these bigger events.
What challenges and opportunities do destination marketing organizations face in the changing tourism landscape?
A key challenge is communicating what the organizations are, what they do, and their overall impact. Our work sells and promotes the city, so we often talk to people outside Saint Paul. That includes event planners we are trying to convince to bring their events here and people who want to know about our city. We are selling things we do not own and promoting a brand owned by the entire community to benefit the people who live here. Communicating that work, its value, and its importance is a challenge and an opportunity for us.
Additionally, COVID-19 was devastating to our industry. Things are coming back, though we haven’t fully recovered. Local facilities, such as the Saint Paul RiverCentre, Allianz Field, Xcel Energy Center, and CHS Field have brought people back to Saint Paul. People return for concerts, sporting events, theater, and festivals. Conventions and meetings have also picked up, but business travel has been slow to return.
What is Visit Saint Paul’s approach to sustainability as responsible tourism practices gain importance?
Our facility partners are a great example of that. The Saint Paul RiverCentre, the Xcel Energy Center, and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium are industry leaders in sustainability. As the only event complex in the world to achieve sustainability certifications from LEED, APEX-ASTM, and Green Globes, the facilities are known for sustainable events.
What partnerships has Visit Saint Paul fostered with the public sector to enhance the city’s appeal?
Collaboration is key to our work of bringing people here. We want visitors to have an excellent experience, which we cannot do alone. As a partner-supported organization, Visit Saint Paul has hundreds of businesses, attractions, hotels, and nonprofits with which we collaborate to ensure we deliver a positive experience. We work closely with the city of Saint Paul, the St. Paul Area Chamber, the Port Authority, and the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance.
We also partner with organizations that do similar work in other cities, such as Meet Minneapolis. We have great relationships with them and love the opportunity to work together to create better cities for all.
How has Visit Saint Paul adapted or expanded its marketing strategies to reach and engage diverse audiences?
In 2019, we passed an additional lodging tax of 1%. With that additional money, we budgeted to increase our digital campaigns to promote Saint Paul, but COVID hit. While that has delayed things a bit, digital marketing and digital campaigns continue to be our key focus.
We have seen great success in the number of people we have reached and in targeting the key personas and audiences we aim for. Knowing the type of visitor interested in coming to Saint Paul helps us ensure we get specific messages to those people. We are excited to see the growth in engagement through our website, social media, and email marketing. Communicating with people who want to learn more has been great.
What upcoming events and initiatives of Visit Saint Paul are you particularly excited about?
We refreshed our brand in 2023 and will continue to promote it. Additionally, with new leadership, 2024 is an opportunity to reintroduce ourselves organizationally. We launched an event marketing pilot program in 2023, where we allocated marketing assets to community and cultural festivals. We know that producing those festivals has been a financial struggle because of the shifts in sponsorship and increased event costs. We launched this program to help these events grow awareness and audiences. It included everything from our website, email marketing, social media, and digital billboards across the metro area. We also sent photographers to festivals so that they have photos to help market their events. We found great success in that program and will do it again in 2024. Some events did not immediately return after being canceled during COVID-19, and we’re seeing those come back in 2024.
How is Visit Saint Paul promoting off-the-beaten-path tourism destinations in the region?
We call our visitor guide an insider’s guide because we include local people who share their favorite places in Saint Paul as insiders. In this year’s guide, our insiders are muralists who are part of a project bringing seven new murals to downtown Saint Paul. Each mural represents one of Saint Paul’s cultural destination areas and brings greater appreciation and awareness to the diversity of the city’s neighborhoods. The visitor’s guide is a great way to discover new places like the neighborhoods and cultural areas of Saint Paul, such as Little Africa, Rondo, District del Sol, and Little Mekong.
What are your outlook and priorities for Visit Saint Paul over the next few years?
The outlook is spectacular. We look forward to positivity, continued recovery and improvement, and new ideas in the city. Our top priorities are continuing to bring events and visitors into Saint Paul, being bold in sharing our city’s story, collaborating and leading within the community, and defining and celebrating who and what Saint Paul is.
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