Steve Holloway hopes his new website will be a resource for Carmel residents, tourists and newcomers alike.
ExploreCarmelIN.com lists things to do, places to stay, places to eat and entertainment options in Carmel.
“Although we’ve lived here since 1974, we can’t keep up with everything that’s going on,” Holloway said. “I decided what we needed was a site like a lot of other large cities that have a database of where to dine, where to go for entertainment, and that was the genesis of explorecarmelIN.com.”
The site has been live for approximately a month, but Holloway and his business partner, Cheri Moore, have been working on it since October 2020.
So far, Holloway said they’ve received “excellent feedback.”
“It’s pretty exciting,” he said. “We are working with the City of Carmel and a couple of restaurants, and we are just letting people know the site is there and available for businesses and activities and entertainment.”
Holloway said the team is focused on Carmel right now, but the long-term plan is to offer a similar site in the surrounding areas.
“There’s so much to do, we wouldn’t mind expanding to some of the other cities on the north side of town, like east to Fishers or west toward Zionsville,” Holloway said. “But our plans right now are to concentrate solely on Carmel.”
In addition to locals visiting the site, Holloway said it serves a purpose for people who visit Carmel, too.
“The amount of tourists we get is increasing exponentially, whether they’re coming into town for softball, soccer and baseball games up north in Westfield,” he said. “We anticipate we will have a 50/50 visitor base on out-of-town visitors and locals, so it’s a paradigm certainly changing in Carmel where we have a lot of visitors. There’s new businesses coming to town for their corporate headquarters and people transferring in without a history of the city, and we hope they visit (the site) as well.”
