Schedule

In a world overflowing with AI generated information, trusted storytelling has never mattered more. Join us for an inspiring, hands on session with Smithsonian—America’s storyteller—to uncover how authoritative content can elevate your digital campaigns and spark deeper audience engagement. Whether you’re navigating tight budgets or striving to stand out in a crowded landscape, you’ll leave with actionable strategies, fresh ideas, and Smithsonian backed insights to strengthen your brand’s narrative. Following the success of our 250 Places to Celebrate America partnership, we’re offering an exclusive preview of Smithsonian’s new initiative for 2027—Hidden Natural Wonders— and concrete guidance on how to use this idea to amplify your destination’s visibility and impact.

Takeaways: 

• Elevate your narrative with actionable storytelling strategies designed to deepen audience engagement and strengthen the impact of your content.
• Make your brand unforgettable by harnessing the authenticity of your UNESCO sites, historic locations, iconic landmarks, and national parks to stand out in an increasingly crowded content landscape.
• Boost your visibility through proven approaches for structuring, positioning, and distributing stories so they are more likely to be surfaced and amplified among your target audience and summarized by generative AI systems.

How do you evolve a legacy brand without losing what makes it iconic—especially when multiple destinations are involved? Using Route 66 as a case study, this session goes beyond campaign execution to explore how Oklahoma is navigating the complexity of modernizing a historic brand across state, city, and smaller destination partners. From aligning 11 smaller destinations around a shared vision (“The 100 Greatest Miles”) to balancing local priorities with statewide strategy, we’ll unpack the real challenges behind collaboration, brand consistency, and decision-making.

Takeaways:

Attendees will walk away with practical insight into how to:

• Align multiple stakeholders around a single brand vision.
• Balance legacy storytelling with modern traveler expectations.
• Manage tradeoffs between local control and regional impact.
• Execute a cohesive strategy across destinations of different sizes.

In a follow-up to last year's popular session, Amir Eylon will return to the stage and seed the conversation with some timely leisure travel insights and travel trends facing DMO's and challenge the audience to discuss how they have been, are, or can apply these insights into their marketing efforts!

Takeaways: 

• Some quick and actionable insights about   American leisure travelers. 
• Actionable applied ideas from their peers.
• Inspired ideation of solutions   among the roundtables.

DMOs are under pressure to adopt AI, yet many lack a clear path from experimentation to operational impact. This peer-to-peer roundtable grounds the conversation in Visit Mesa’s AI roadmap, including what worked and what did not. Then the session shifts to facilitated discussion so attendees can compare approaches, address stakeholder expectations, connect AI efforts to ROI, and identify realistic next steps they can implement immediately.

Takeaways: 

• Evaluate where your DMO is on the AI adoption spectrum.
• Prioritize AI efforts based on organizational readiness, value, and capacity.
• Identify concrete next steps to advance AI adoption responsibly within your organization.

Most travel is driven by an invitation, not advertising. Before a visitor ever steps foot in your destination, your residents have already set the tone. If local perception lags behind reality, your biggest marketing asset—the community—remains untapped. This session explores how Philadelphia and Buffalo moved beyond traditional tourism ads to build "place brands" from the inside out. Using Philadelphia’s "sports-fandom" strategy as a blueprint, we’ll hear how to treat a city like a team to unlock genuine resident advocacy. Then, we’ll dive into the tactical execution from Buffalo’s rebrand, showing how to secure community buy-in through high-visibility, locally rooted activations—from ice sculptures and murals to transit wraps and temporary tattoos. Learn how to transform your residents from skeptics into a mobilized force of brand ambassadors who invite, energize, and advocate for your destination.

Takeaways: 

• Master a practical framework that connects resident pride directly to visitor growth. We’ll show how shifting your focus inward improves the visitor   experience on the ground and turns locals into a high-conversion "invitation engine" that outperforms traditional advertising.
• Learn a repeatable method to uncover your destination’s “shared local truth” — the emotional connector that locals already rally around   (Philadelphia’s is fandom; each destination’s may be something entirely different).
• We'll provide examples of scalable, low-to-mid-cost activation ideas that can be adapted by destinations of varying sizes to build community buy-in and visibility.
• We'll provide guidance on how to track shifts in resident price and downstream performance.

If your community is asking, “Why are we doing another tourism plan?” or “Is this just going to collect dust?”, then it’s time to reset the conversation. Creating the plan matters, but implementation is what actually drives change. This roundtable session is infused with a panel to help participants focus on how to move beyond the document and use the strategic plan as a practical, everyday tool to align partners, guide decisions and actually get s**t done.

Takeaways:

• Apply best practices to build implementation steps into the strategic planning process.
• Institute steps to hold strategic planners, the destination organization, and community stakeholders accountable for delivering impactful results.
• Establish communication and follow-up to report success stories and challenges as part of the effort to strengthen community involvement and support.

Destinations face pressure to justify tourism funding but rely on outdated metrics that miss full community value. The Arizona Office of Tourism shares real-world experience transforming impact into data stories that win support from boards, officials, and residents. Attendees will co-create communication plans for scenarios like overtourism, resident sentiment, or political headwinds—leaving with actionable frameworks to implement immediately in their own communities.

Takeaways: 

• Connect their current strategy to measurable tourism objectives.
• Identify other sources of data to include in their reporting beyond social media impressions and taxes.
• Develop a draft communications plan tailored for different audiences with specific storytelling tactics.

AI has become the loudest word in travel marketing, but underneath the buzz, DMO leaders are wrestling with real questions that rarely get honest answers. What actually changes when a visitor types a question into ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of Google? Does your content structure matter to a language model? Can you influence how AI platforms answer questions about your destination? And is your agency actually equipped to help… or just repackaging old deliverables with an "AI" label?

This roundtable cuts through the hype. Facilitated as an open, practitioner-level discussion, we would tackle the myths DMO marketers hear most — in vendor pitches, conference keynotes, and board rooms — and replace them with ground-level clarity. The goal is for attendees to bring their skepticism, their unanswered questions, and their real experiences and leave with actual clarity. 

Takeaways: 

• A clearer framework for evaluating AI vendor claims.
• Practical content and GEO strategies grounded in what LLMs actually respond to.
• Peer perspectives on what other DMOs are testing, investing in, and walking away from.

Destination marketing is evolving rapidly — but many organizations are still investing time, budget and energy into tactics, channels and reporting practices that no longer drive meaningful value. As traveler behavior, technology and stakeholder expectations continue to shift, destination leaders are being forced to make harder decisions about where to focus, what to prioritize and what to leave behind. 

This peer-to-peer roundtable will bring destination leaders together for a candid discussion on the strategies, metrics and legacy practices that may no longer serve the industry. From outdated reporting habits and overused marketing tactics to channels losing effectiveness and investments that no longer differentiate destinations, attendees will openly discuss what they are rethinking, reducing or walking away from entirely.

Takeaways: 

• Identify outdated marketing tactics, reporting practices and investments that may no longer create meaningful value for destination organizations.
• Explore how destination leaders are reevaluating channels, content strategies and success metrics in response to changing traveler behavior and stakeholder expectations.
• Exchange candid peer-driven Data & Insights on what organizations are cutting, evolving or deprioritizing — and where they are choosing to reinvest instead.

Events are often judged by attendance numbers, but attendance alone doesn’t tell the full story. As destinations face increasing pressure to justify investments, recruit the right opportunities, and demonstrate value to stakeholders, many are asking: Which events create the greatest value? How should success be measured? And what information is needed to make smarter event decisions?

Join this interactive roundtable discussion as we explore how destinations are evaluating event performance, defining event value, and identifying opportunities that align with their goals. Participants will share challenges, best practices, and emerging approaches to event measurement and strategy.