North Little Rock Tourism: Building Trust and Engagement in the Hispanic Community

Social Impact Framework: Engagement with All Community Populations

What was the issue you were trying to address?

North Little Rock has both a hotel tax and a prepared food tax. It is a priority to collect these monthly taxes from more than 400 permit holders.

Engaging with non-native English speaking permit holders was a big pain point. We found language barriers and cultural differences often led to misunderstandings. With the growth of staff, we sought to break down these barriers between marginalized community members in the restaurant industry and our organization.  

What were the stated objectives of this initiative?

1. Better clarify the purpose of the Advertising & Promotion Commission and the impact of tax collection.  
2. Identify accessible ways to promote becoming a permit holder in North Little Rock.
3. Understand the experience of this community and make improvements.  

What were the specific metrics you used to measure the success of your efforts?

Our metrics surrounded permit holder engagement: We aimed to contact each owner and manager at least once a year, and support restaurants through social media by including them on special events and blog posts. 

What were the specific outcomes and results of your efforts?

Building Trust:  

Connecting with permit holders allowed us to build trust in our community. It gave individuals the opportunity to voice their experiences and share their hardships. Many permit holders now take comfort in our relationship, and come to us for questions, guidance, and support.

Outreach helped us better understand our community members. With many Hispanic owned restaurants in North Little Rock, we now know that the community doesn’t just want to be celebrated during Hispanic Heritage Month. Rather, they want to be acknowledged all year.

From a process standpoint, all related documents are now translated into Spanish and the program used for collection can also load in Spanish. While we are still working with the city and on our own website to build out resources, examples of various communication pieces are below and support our permit holder experiences. 

Expanded Partnerships:  

We've deepened our relationships with local Hispanic business organizations and community leaders. This has led to increased collaboration on events, marketing campaigns, and resource-sharing.

Since 2022, we have had a partnership and board presence with Seis Puentes, a local Hispanic outreach organization. As a board member, my role is to do the most I can by showing up: Showing up for backpack drives, fundraisers, and meetings. 

Cultural Events:  

We've organized several cultural events celebrating Hispanic heritage and cuisine. These events have been successful in attracting visitors and showcasing the vibrant culinary scene in North Little Rock.

North Little Rock is now very active with the Hispanic Heritage Festival. We introduced a fund-raising component raising over $800 last year and have opened it up to corporate sponsorships this year. Seis Puentes is involved as well, attending fire inspections with food truck owners so there is no language barrier when obtaining a permit.  

Example of Invitation:

Example of Welcome Letter: 

Example of Remittance Instructions:

Example of Tax Breakdown: 

What other best practices or key lessons can you share?

Be patient. Trust takes time to build, just put one foot in front of the other. Eventually you will get there.  

Be willing to listen and pivot; your ideas of issues may not be the issues at hand. Sometimes the smallest of ideas or gestures have the largest impact. Your organization doesn't need a huge budget to make things happen.