Think Like A Visitor

  One of the lessons I learned during my years leading a destination marketing organization (DMO) is that culture is never accidental. Whether a CEO actively shapes it or simply lets it evolve on its own, an organizational culture will emerge. The question isn't whether your organization has a culture. It does. The real question is whether that culture is helping your team thrive or quietly undermining everything you're trying to accomplish. As CEOs, we spend a great deal of time thinking about marketing strategies, visitor spending, stakeholder relationships, budgets, and board expectations. Those responsibilities matter, but none of them can compensate for an unhealthy workplace. I've seen organizations with outstanding strategic plans struggle because employees didn't trust one another. I've also seen organizations with modest budgets accomplish remarkable things because their people genuinely believed they were working together toward a common purpose. Trust is ...

  Tourism has long been viewed as one of the safest subjects a destination marketing organization (DMO) can champion. Visitors spend money, support local businesses, generate tax revenue, and create jobs. Yet today's DMO CEO knows that tourism is no longer immune from controversy. In many communities, tourism has become intertwined with debates over short-term rentals, housing affordability, downtown development, major events, infrastructure, traffic, and quality of life. The question is no longer whether these conversations will happen. The question is whether your organization will help lead them constructively. The first responsibility of a DMO CEO is to recognize that resident sentiment matters just as much as visitor satisfaction. A destination that loses the support of its own community will eventually lose its authenticity as well. Residents are the destination's ambassadors. Every interaction a visitor has with a restaurant server, retail clerk, museum volunteer, or nei...

  The Most Successful Destinations Aren't Always the Ones With the Biggest Budgets One of the biggest misconceptions in destination marketing is that success belongs to the organizations with the largest budgets. While adequate funding certainly helps, I've watched small and mid-sized destinations consistently outperform better-funded competitors. Their secret isn't more money. It's better alignment. When tourism organizations, city government, downtown development groups, chambers of commerce, arts organizations, and economic development agencies all move in the same direction, remarkable things begin to happen. Marketing becomes more effective. Investments become more strategic. Visitors enjoy a more consistent experience. Most importantly, the community begins telling one unified story instead of several competing ones. Unfortunately, many destinations unintentionally work against themselves. Multiple organizations create separate marketing campaigns, host competing ...

If you've ever asked a destination marketing organization CEO what they accomplished during a particularly busy week, you may receive an answer that sounds surprisingly ordinary. They attended meetings, traveled to conferences, met with elected officials, spoke at a civic club, visited local businesses, answered countless emails, and spent time with community partners. To an outside observer, especially a board member, that can seem difficult to measure. After all, where are the immediate results? Where's the marketing campaign? Where are the visitor numbers? The reality is that much of a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) CEO's most valuable work is invisible. Unlike many leadership positions, success is often defined not by what happens, but by what doesn't happen. A community disagreement never becomes a public conflict because relationships already exist. A funding issue is resolved before it becomes a crisis because trust has been built over years, not days. ...

  One of the greatest misconceptions about leadership is that CEOs make decisions because they have all the answers. They don't. In destination marketing organizations, the opposite is usually true. Every significant decision is made with incomplete information. Visitor trends shift unexpectedly. Economic conditions change. Political priorities evolve. Hotel development timelines slip. Weather interrupts events. Funding assumptions change. Consumer behavior rarely follows a predictable path. If you're waiting until every variable is known, you've probably waited too long. The most effective Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) CEOs understand that leadership isn't about certainty. It's about making the best possible decision with the information available today, and remaining flexible enough to adjust tomorrow. The Myth of Perfect Information Boards often ask, "Do we know enough to move forward?" It's a reasonable question. But there's a hidde...

  One of the biggest misconceptions in destination marketing organizations is that an effective board meeting is one that delivers the most information. CEOs often arrive with dozens of pages of financial reports, marketing updates, committee notes, research summaries, and staff activity reports. The assumption is simple: if board members have more information, they'll make better decisions. In reality, the opposite is often true. The challenge facing today's DMO board is rarely a lack of information. It's information overload. Board members are volunteers. Most are business leaders with demanding careers who may only devote a few hours each month to governance. When every meeting feels like drinking from a fire hose, strategic conversations are replaced with operational questions, and opportunities for meaningful leadership disappear beneath stacks of reports. One of the CEO's most important responsibilities isn't simply managing the destination—it's managing u...