After a prolonged national spotlight, Minneapolis tackles its optics
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Minneapolis started out the first months of 2026 in the global spotlight. The ICE surge brought an unprecedented number of federal agents to the city, which led to illegal detainments and harassment by agents, and the deaths of Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti. Many of the city’s residents got a lot of attention nationally for their organized resistance against ICE actions and mutual aid efforts, as well.
Meet Minneapolis, the city’s tourism agency, is tackling how to present itself to tourists after months of upheaval. The agency is launching a new tourism campaign this month.
MPR News host Nina Moini spoke to Melvin Tennant, president and CEO of Meet Minneapolis about his plans.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Use the audio or video player above for the full interview.
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It’s an unusual time to be launching a tourism campaign in a city that just received all of this national attention over a lot of heavy news. Why now?
During the surge, many of our local businesses and community members were impacted, and we want to be able to try to support them by inviting visitors back. We have a great story to tell: we want to tell people that we have a lot of authenticity and diversity to experience. This is very different from what was conveyed in the headlines that we saw over the last few weeks and months.
There's a lot of ground to make up with regard to lost wages of workers, lost revenue from businesses. So we're playing catch up right now, and getting back to what our job is, to promote Minneapolis to the world.
We know that the city has struggled since 2020 and the murder of George Floyd. What has tourism looked like in the years since that? And how has it been impacted again over the last few months?
It has been very volatile. We had a crisis within a crisis with the pandemic and killing of George Floyd. May 25, 2020, that date is seared in many of our minds. We had begun to make progress on inviting visitors to our city. And Minneapolis was a little slower to recover than other cities around the country, because we relied so heavily on business travel into Minneapolis. That business travel never completely recovered. So we were always still behind, trying to recover.
Leading into 2026 we were very optimistic, because we have a number of large events and conventions planned. And then when we saw the emergence of Operation Metro surge, a lot of those hopes were dashed. We’re having to play catch up again.
The tourism industry has taken a lot of abuse over recent years, but we're a very resilient industry. The response to the ICE surge has created a sense of pride for many of our locals, but also greater Minnesota, because they see the same news that we see. We need to reassure people from the rest of the state that we're inviting them to Minneapolis. That we've got lots to share.
Some people have a really poor opinion of the city. It seems difficult to change people’s minds. How are you doing that?
People might see that certain places are unsafe— I would argue that any major city has areas that you want to be careful in. I would urge visitors to place the same level of attention to personal safety on visiting Minneapolis as they would any other city.
On a more positive note, it's important for us to convey the message that we're very much a regional hub for greater Minnesota and the nearby states. This year, for example, we have many major conventions and special events. That’s how people plan their visits to Minneapolis. They're looking for a major event to be the anchor and then build a visit around it. Things like WWE SummerSlam or the Savannah Bananas that are coming up in in August, those are great, high-profile events. We know we're going to have a lot of visitors for those, and we also have a number of major conventions that are coming this year. Even during the ICE surge, some of those conventions continued on. We did have a couple of cancelations, but we had major conventions that were still happening, and very successfully.
The No Kings rally in St. Paul is expected to bring tens of thousands of people to the Twin Cities. How are you thinking about that event?
With events like this, we are not directly involved in the planning, but we are a good information source to make sure that if there are any street closures or any other minor inconveniences, we're able to convey those to visitors. We want to be a trusted resource for all of our visitors that are making plans to come visit.
