Think Like A Visitor

One of the hardest lessons I learned as a destination marketing organization (DMO) CEO was that a good idea can still be the wrong idea for your organization. Destination marketing organizations attract ideas. Someone wants the DMO to sponsor a new festival. A community organization proposes a partnership. An elected official has an idea for a new event. A board member suggests a program they saw in another destination. A local business wants help promoting something. Most of these requests come from good people with good intentions, and many of the ideas are genuinely worthwhile. But worthwhile doesn't necessarily mean strategic. As a CEO, I always found saying yes easier than saying no. Yes builds goodwill. It makes people happy. And it makes us appear collaborative and responsive. But every yes has a cost. It requires money, staff time, attention, meetings, emails, follow-up, and, perhaps most importantly, organizational energy. Eventually, enough small yeses can pull an organiz...

  When people ask what a destination marketing organization (DMO) does, the conversation usually turns to advertising campaigns, visitor guides, websites, and social media. Those things certainly matter, but after spending decades leading a destination marketing organization, I've come to believe that one of a CEO's greatest responsibilities has very little to do with marketing itself. It has everything to do with bringing people together. In my experience, the most successful destinations are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the communities where leaders understand that progress happens when organizations stop working beside one another and start working with one another. Tourism doesn't exist in isolation. It intersects with economic development, downtown revitalization, arts and culture, parks and recreation, chambers of commerce, local government, hospitality businesses, nonprofits, and residents. When those groups share a common vision, remarkable ...

  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. ...