The Wisconsin Dells started out as a small Resort town who’s located in the scenic Wisconsin Woods Nestle longer River. First came the frog boat tours that peaked people’s interest into visiting the “Dells”. In the 1950s another attraction, the idealistic lake town pyramid of water skiers. this kept the Tourists coming through the summer helping the hotels grow. Wisconsin Dells had long been a tourist city and even a creative city before the waterparks but hadn’t really found a very unique niche.
The Wisconsin Dells was your typical Summer boom town. this is all until The Polynesian redid part of its building in 1994 and moved a small part of its water parks indoors. For the next few years through the winter it was packed. Word spread of the indoor water parks that they could bring their families to in the dead of the Wisconsin winter.
This is when a good old fashioned Rat Race began between the other 19 local business owners. Each needed to build a portion of their water parks indoors in able to keep up with the Joneses if you will. As each competed that have the best indoor water park they grew better and more elaborate until today you have such water parks as the Kalahari Resort which touts in an impressive indoor water park made to look like a jungle in the middle of Wisconsin. The Kalahari Resort is actually one of the biggest resorts in the Wisconsin Dells. It opened in May 2000 with 756 guest room suites condos and 5 bedroom condos making it the second largest Resort in Wisconsin. It has four restaurants and 7 eateries as well as a theme park. The water park itself is roughly a hundred and twenty five thousand square feet. it had the first indoor uphill water coaster and first surfing simulator. That’s not nearly all though indoors they also have silver water slides and lazy river a wave pool and interactive play structure. (Interactive play structures, What even is that!?) They also have, for the summer, several water slides outside another Lazy River and three more interactive play structures. This is just one of many hotels. The big five hotels are Mount Olympus Water & theme park, Wilderness territory, Chula Resort, Great Wolf Lodge, and the Atlantis Resort. all side by side competing to be the biggest and best water parks. This competition has set the Wisconsin Dells up a great way financially and Entrepreneurial.
In many ways this is the Vegas of the Midwest. Large magnificent hotels bring visitors from 3 + hours around just for leisure. Last year almost $415 alone was spent on lodging in the Wisconsin Dells. These visitors had to eat somewhere another 309 million was spent on food and beverages. might as well stop in the shop while you’re close 212 million spent on retail shops. there was another hundred and forty-six million spent on Recreation and 82 million spent on Transportation. that’s a combined contribution of 1.5 billion dollars to the Wisconsin Dells Community. Not only that this number has increased for the last 8 years in a row.
Noah’s Ark one of the Premier hotels in town upwards of 10,000 visitors in a single day. the Kalahari Resort is in the midst of a 35 million-dollar room expansion to accommodate more guest. the point here is the city is in economic boom and it’s all due to a funny little arms race between hotels.. the town centers around water parks and capitalizes on the tourism and brings in 1.5 billion dollars for its residents. this demonstrates exactly what creative City developments is about. Use the unique novel and fun to help Drive tourist out of major cities into smaller communities that have really fun unique things going on. Just like the Wisconsin Dells becoming the capital water parks of the world.
encourage your town to be more like the Wisconsin Dells. Even if you’re just starting out with frog boat tours or pyramid of water skiers. Something unique will attract people and you can start from there.
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