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Advocacy is a responsibility every destination organization leader should adopt as part of their critical skills in their role. Now more than ever, we are tasked with going beyond just sales and marketing of our destinations and advocating for our community to the world's stage. Each month join Andreas Weissenborn to go through our sector's history on pivotal moments where advocacy was used to change the course of their destination’s future. These are the stories of the architects of destina ...
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Welcome to a special 2 of 3 podcast episode arc around the release of our brand-new research study, Destination Promotion: A Catalyst for Community Vitality. The report emphasizes the pivotal role of destination organizations in shaping the economic and cultural landscape of communities far beyond the realms of traditional tourism. Our discussion t…
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Welcome to a special 1 of 3 podcast episode arc around the release of our brand-new research study, Destination Promotion: A Catalyst for Community Vitality and its key findings. The report emphasizes the pivotal role of destination organizations in shaping the economic and cultural landscape of communities far beyond the realms of traditional tour…
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Today’s podcast episode and the first for the new year takes into the realm of community connectors for the greater good of collaboration. (a tongue twister) As destination organizations, our role and primary stewardship is the Community! We foster economic development, quality of place, and community vitality. All through the power of collaboratio…
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Today’s podcast episode and guests is our final one for 2023 and a reflection of our advocacy committee for destinations international. Destinations International is a tapestry of volunteer committees and task forces that help guide and initiate much of the output and direction the association takes year after year. Committee members constitute a m…
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The 2023 Advocacy Summit in Little Rock, AR brought forward major releases on behalf of Destinations International and our ongoing advocacy efforts. Listen to the advocacy team walk through all our releases and with links to everything in the show notes. Community Vitality Wheel: Community Vitality Wheel | Destinations International Destination Eff…
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Today’s conversation and guests to the show are here to discuss the flagship research project that was just released at Annual Convention, the 2023 DestinationNEXT Future Study. What is the future study for those unaware? Well, Picture this: Over 800 destination leaders from 62 countries, all coming together to share their take on the sector’s tren…
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As a listener of the show, we talk tales of advocacy of both the past and present but today is one hypothetical for a near-term future. This isn’t going to be your typical talk around A.I that we have heard in our sector but instead, all about understanding how A.I can be used for Destination Advocacy. To talk through these possibilities, I’m happy…
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Today’s conversation and guest is a deeper dive into one of the largest regional demographics of our membership of destination organizations, which is in the Southeast corner of the United States. Destinations International understands we can’t always be everywhere and try to work with regional and community entities that geographically represent t…
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Today’s conversation and guest are unlike one you have ever heard on our show before and I am not just talking about the who, what, and where of the story (all of which are great!) but really understanding what “a good place to live is a good place to visit” means to a destination few of us have been. Something I know our guest hopes to change for …
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Today’s conversation is all about ship building in a sense. Running a destination organization is tough, managing one in a pandemic is tougher but what about trying to actually be creating a brand-new destination organization through a once in a century event? (We hope) Today’s guest is all about what it’s like to launch a ship in the roughest of w…
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Today’s conversation and guest is intended to be a peak behind the curtains of managing the destination’s brand through extremely polarizing times. I’ve mentioned at lengths at which the world has begun to spin, it seems in more illogical ways and an outcome of that resulting in issues and policies entering the zeitgeist of our communities in a pol…
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Starting out 2023, this is the first year I think we can confidently say what a return to business events looks like for our industry. In the past 3 years, we’ve seen the ebb and flow, the starting and stopping and starting again of business events navigating the pandemic and its many variants and also various country-level regulations around the m…
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2022 for many of us could be called the next normal year through our progression of the pandemic timeline we are all in. With the return of events, holiday gatherings, social events and other pre-pandemic activities, some might even call it “normal.” With that, we have seen some societal norms shift as well, and one I would argue being the biggest …
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At the start of 2022, we at Destinations International outlined 8 strategic issues and opportunities for the sector and around the world in our next normal. The 8th issue we outlined was climate change and the many climate crises many of our destination organizations find themselves in. For some, this might be a recent or new challenge they are fac…
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One of the reasons why we wanted to start a podcast was to tell the tale of advocacy of our sector across major moments, both present and past. With our guest today we get to actually talk about advocacy an entire millennium ago and how it shaped a destination’s future. You might know him as Chief Instigator for DMOPROZ and fellow podcast host of D…
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As part of Destinations International’s eight core issues and opportunities for 2022 for our sector, I’m pleased for today’s guest to talk about both sustainability and values of the business events community to help bring to the world stage. Matthias Schultze and the German Convention Bureau have been leading with sustainable development goals for…
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The Destinations International Foundation is the "incubator" of new things for our sector. It is our industry’s "think tank." The body of experts supplying advice, ideas, and approaches to specific issues. The group works to process ideas, research a topic, analyze a strategy, or create an agenda. The Destinations International Foundation Annual Ch…
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One of the pillars of becoming a community shared value is answering the question of who is our customer? Long time listeners will know the answer to this and that being the community and resident. However, it’s one thing for us to understand the resident being our customer, it's another if the resident understands us, the destination organization?…
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One of the many things we watch for in destinations is what we call flashpoint politics or events. Largely an event that takes place within a destination, largely outside of the control of the destination organization but yet, leaves the destination organization remaining to pick up the pieces. One of the largest events we have seen in the history …
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Strategic planning is a key pillar to every advocacy plan, and essential for the future of our community's visitor economy. We talk today with Andrew Hiebel President/CEO of AACB and Australia's plan for the next decade of their visitor economy. AACB Website Thrive 2030 Destinations International Events The Architects of Destination Advocacy Podcas…
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No story in 2021 has captured the advocacy department's attention like the story of Visit Duluth. In short, the city of Duluth Minnesota has selected an outside/out of state agency to represent the community of Duluth with the role of Visit Duluth taking a much much smaller role in the representation of the community. This after a lengthy RFP/RFQ p…
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For Veterans Day, we wanted to talk to a veteran in our industry about both his service to our country and his destination. Wes Rhea, president, and CEO of Visit Stockton talks to us about his time in the military and the skills and knowledge gained that put him on the path to being a great destination leader. Wes shares his experience during his t…
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We wanted to do something special for one of our pillar tools with Destinations International and the celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the event impact calculator (EIC) https://destinationsinternational.org/event-impact-calculator Today we will be talking to two special individuals that many of you know if you have used EIC and that is Chr…
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For this episode, we want to try something a little bit different with our guest and talk with someone who helps destinations and engages with destination organizations on this very medium we are speaking today. Adam Stoker of Relic Agency joins us today to discuss the growing podcast ecosystem and how destination organizations should consider this…
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For this episode, we want to introduce Cassandra McAuley, Vice President, Communications & Stakeholder Engagement at Tourism Calgary. For today, we wanted to dive into 2017 Cassandra and the unveiling of the 10 year, Destination Strategy. To learn more about the inflection, the research, and undertones that lead to such a monumental long-term inves…
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For this episode, we wanted to introduce you to the newest member of our team, Gabe Seder, Senior Director of Advocacy Policy and Program Development. Gabe has been with us just shy of a year and a half and has literally been put through the gauntlet of trial by fire for our sector and the pandemic. However, Gabe’s work with our industry goes back …
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For this series, we wanted to tell the story of usual and unusual suspects in our sector's history and key advocacy moments for them. We intend for these stories to tell the tale in full, containing both joy and triumph or crisis and disappointment. Each month we will be joined by a guest to tell their role in a key moment in their destination’s hi…
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Welcome to the first podcast series from Destinations International, produced exclusively by Relic Agency. For this series, we wanted to tell the story of usual and unusual suspects in our sector's history and key advocacy moments for them. We intend for these stories to tell the tale in full, containing both joy and triumph or crisis and disappoin…
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