Wisconsin Dells Convention Hosting Stage II - Public Private Partnership

The Village of Lake Delton has given the Kalahari Resort 10 million publicly collected dollars to build a convention center ( 212 thousand square feet) capable of serving large regional - national groups.  This is a public - private partnership forged to create a physical location designed to attract a huge new population of shared customers in to the Wisconsin Dells area.

The new convention center is expected to become operational in the 4th quarter of 2019.  A key piece will be the staffing.  The Wisconsin Dells area lacks the local population to staff these tourism business modals.  The Wisconsin Dells area must import their labor from outside of the Country through the J1VISA Program.

The high cost of importing labor from outside of the Country through the J1VISA Program contributes to a much higher than normal business lease failure rate across the Wisconsin Dells area.  This has created a much lower density of individual business operators.  Said another way - one operator typically occupies multiple business locations in the Wisconsin Dells area.

Now that one business operator is occupying multiple business locations across the Wisconsin Dells area - when the off season starts , some of the business locations are closed down.  This is a pragmatic approach to saving resources.  The business operator may operate 4 locations in the summer season, and then close three locations in the off season - and operate just the one business location for the majority of the year.

The visitors can benefit from online sites like Wisconsin Dells Conventions HUB who publish information on the availability of local business modals throughout the year.  Nothing worse than scheduling a visit to a business modal only to find the location is closed.  The Wisconsin Dells area has entered stage II of the convention hosting industry.