Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
On September 28, 2026, the Montgomery County Council’s Economic Development (ECON) Committee held a work session to review the Visit Montgomery Strategic Plan, funding structure, and the future of the Sports Tourism Task Force. Chair Natali Fani-González opened by highlighting the new MARC train connections to Baltimore and previewing the fall work session schedule. No public testimony was taken. The committee heard presentations from Visit Montgomery CEO Kelly Groff and consultant Aviva North (Caragio Group) on the brand assessment and the five-year strategic plan.
Brand Assessment & Strategic Plan: The brand assessment, conducted by Miles Partnership, concluded that Montgomery County has a meaningful claim as Maryland’s cultural capital but that sub‑brands (e.g., Tastemakers Trail, MoCo Eats) remain fragmented. The strategic plan contains five imperatives: brand unity, visitation growth & balance, destination connectivity, community & stakeholder engagement, and organizational capacity. A key finding was that overnight visitors have declined by 1.35 million since 2019 (from 3.95 million to 2.6 million), while day‑trip visitors held steady at 5.6 million. The plan aims to boost overnight stays and diversify beyond federal government travel.
Competitive Funding Analysis: Visit Montgomery’s current budget is approximately $2.5 million, derived from a 7% hotel motel tax plus county enhancements. The consultant compared this to peer DMOs: Fairfax County’s budget rose from $3.1 million to $9.9 million; Arlington is studying a Tourism Improvement District (TID). Visit Montgomery’s budget is lower per hotel room than many competitors, and its advertising budget ($600,000) is managed without an external agency. Overnight visitation recovery lags behind regional peers.
Funding Structure Options: Council staff (Bilal Ali) proposed moving to a “base budget” of $2.5 million (same services) regardless of hotel tax fluctuations, and a separate “grants, incentives, and programming fund” (starting at $200,000) to pilot new initiatives, attract events, and support sport tourism. This would decouple Visit Montgomery’s funding from the volatile hotel tax and provide stability. A TID—adding an assessment on hotels—was also discussed but not recommended at this time.
Sports Tourism Task Force: The task force, created jointly with the Education & Culture Committee, has helped coordinate events across agencies (e.g., an Asian food festival redirected to the fairgrounds). The committee discussed formalizing the task force as a permanent forum housed at Visit Montgomery to ensure continued cross‑agency collaboration. A joint committee work session with Education & Culture will be held to amend the original resolution.
Good morning, everyone. Today is September 28th already. Welcome to the Economic Development Committee work session. We have a lot going on in the fall. And I just want to start by talking about what's coming up. So everybody's on the same vote. But before I say that, I'm just going to highlight highlight that today is a really special day too because Mark Rail is starting connections between Montgomery County and Baltimore City faster. Now you don't have to transfer by union station. And I think that's a win-win because I do spend a lot of time in Baltimore City and I love taking the Mark Trail, the Mark train there. You can take it here in Rockville and many other places in Montgomery County. So it's just another way that the state is pushing connectivity through our public system. And I think that's a win for everybody. So I wanted to say that. The second thing is I want to talk about the upcoming work sessions for econ. After the one that we're going to have today that I'm very excited about with Vincent Montgomery. So we're going to dig into that. On October 12th, the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation, as you all know, they're going through their strategic plan. They sent comments to the council and to the county executive. We are going to be now dividing that work session into two committee work sessions in Econ and a full council work session. So the first one will be on October 12th. And we mentioned that we are going to do some follow-ups on how we can modernize our economic development funds. So we're going to be talking about that, plus the first work session of the Economic Development Committee Strategic Plan on October 12th. Then on October 26th, we're going to have session number two for the economic development strategic plan. And on that same day, we have another very important item, and it's the Wheaton Urban District Boundary Bill. As you know, I introduced that to extend the boundaries for the urban district in Wheaton. So we're going to take care of that bill that day on the on October 26th. Then on November 5th, highly important work session with DPS. We're looking into permitting reform. So there are quite a few issues that the council, especially in the last couple years, we have seen with DPS, and we have some ideas to offer to reform DPS. So it's just going to be a briefing that day because some of the issues that we're going to be covering on November 5th are going to end up being bills or ZTAs that the next council needs to take on. And then finally on November 9, we're going to have our follow-up work session on the retail study. As you all know, we had a session looking at how to, you know, what kind of changes we should have in retail for Montgomery County, kind of like what we did with the office to housing work sessions where where we ended up with a bill and for the tax abandon to incentivize property owners to convert half-empty office buildings into housing. So the same idea goes through the retail study. So that's November 9. I'm very excited about it. We're going to have a pretty cool ideas that I'm not going to say right now, but stay tuned for that one. So it's going to be a pretty busy fall. And just to end again with the Economic Development Committee, the MCEDC strategic plan. As I said, two work sessions for econ October 12th, then October 26th, and then it goes to the full council on November 10th. But we're not going to be voting. These are just briefings. Why? Because by law, the county executive needs to submit comments to the council by January 15th. As you all know, we are in a transition mode. We're going to have a new county executive. So to ensure that the next county executive, whoever that is, just to be neutral here, has enough time to really dig into these issues.