The Planning Process

The process of building a tourism master plan for Essex County is as important as having and using the plan itself.  That process needs to bring the various businesses, organizations, and governmental entities that have strong interests in the success, marketing, investment, development, growth, and management of tourism into a strong, more collaborative relationship.  All sides need to be heard in the process – and all sides need to feel they have been heard and are involved in collaboration.

Egret Communications will guide a process that “consults” individually with key players and brings people together for managed discussions. 

• The process will work, in the early stages, to build a common understanding of each Essex County destination’s important tourism issues and opportunities. 
• Then Egret will work with each tourism community (including public partners) to analyze the data and identify tourism gaps, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and competitive threats. 

• From that analysis, Egret will lead a collaborative discussion to create a vision for each destination’s tourism product and infrastructure development, management, marketing, and organization.
• Finally, Egret Communications will sit down with key partners to review the vision and chart a path to make it happen.

The process itself will be designed to strengthen and restructure the partnership among all the players that guide, support, participate in, and benefit from Essex County’s tourism economy.

The planning process that Egret has outlined includes six crucial steps:

1. Assessment
2. Analysis
3. Designing the Future
4. Charting a Path
5. Integrating the five Destinations’ Plans
6. Unveiling the Master Plan