Schedule

Every destination, no matter the size, likely has some connection to a celebrity, whether a famous author was born there, or a movie star calls the city home. During this Take-Off Talk, Sarah Townes, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer for Experience Columbus, will share how Ohio’s capital city leveraged being the hometown of legendary horror author R.L. Stine of “Goosebumps” to create a PR-led moment that had huge results and drove visitation. Attendees will gain insights into how Experience Columbus’ “Get Goosebumps in Columbus” campaign came about, the incredible results and tips for how attendees can identify their own possible celebrity connections and generate creative campaigns to drive tourism. 

Takeaways: 

• Learn how to research and brainstorm what celebrity connections your destination has and create a compelling event or campaign around them. 
• Discover what goes into partnering with a celebrity, from contracts to event planning.
• Learn marketing and communications strategies for maximizing the impact of your campaign and how to work with national media to pitch your story idea and help facilitate coverage.

Stop acting like a rigid DMO and start operating like an elite tech company. This "Take-Off Talk" explores how to restructure for speed using a "Move Fast and Break Things" mindset. We’ll share how we audited every task, eliminated legacy operations like traditional event services, and adopted an "Agile Tech Stack"—from Google Gemini AI to Scrum principles. Learn to remove blockers, automate the mundane, and lead a high-output team that prioritizes progress over perfection.

Takeaways

• The "Stop-Doing" Audit: How to identify and courageously eliminate legacy operations that no longer serve your mission (and how to rebuild them for modern impact).
• Implementing an AI-First Workflow: Practical ways to use tools like Google Gemini to build "Gems" (repeatable prompts) for internal HR, sales prospecting, and automated reporting.
• The Agile Meeting Rhythm: A blueprint for running daily Scrums, quarterly retrospectives, and blocker-removal sessions that replace "status updates" with actual momentum.

Destinations are under increasing pressure to generate non-tax revenue without compromising community trust, yet many still rely on outdated sponsorship and naming-rights models. This session reframes sponsorship as a strategic value exchange, not just logo placement. Attendees will learn how to identify and monetize both physical and non-physical assets, avoid common pitfalls, and build long-term partnerships that align revenue goals with stewardship and brand integrity.

Takeaways: 

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Identify monetizable assets beyond traditional naming rights, including experiential, operational, and partnership-based opportunities.
• Evaluate sponsor fit to ensure alignment with destination values and community expectations.
• Structure sponsorship deals that prioritize long-term value over one-time transactions.
• Understand common pitfalls related to brand safety, public perception, and contract structure.
• Apply a repeatable framework for sponsorship strategy that destinations of all sizes can scale.

This case study explores how forward-thinking destinations are disrupting traditional placeholder marketing by centering authentic, culturally rooted storytelling. Moving beyond generic promotion, successful destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are aligning tourism, community stakeholders, and economic development around a shared narrative that reflects local identity and lived experience. 

Attendees will learn how these purpose-driven campaigns are built from the ground up, rolled out to residents first, and scaled to drive external demand. This session offers practical, actionable blueprints for destinations of any size looking to transform their local culture into their greatest competitive advantage.

Takeaways: 

• Lived Culture Audits: A repeatable framework to tap into local subcultures and resident sentiment so your brand is built from the inside out, not in a vacuum.
• Economic Development Alignment: Actionable blueprints to tie your rebrand to talent recruitment and resident retention—plus the non-tourism metrics needed to win city council buy-in.
• Stakeholder Friction Management: Practical strategies for expanding your narrative beyond legacy pillars (like horse racing or generic beach imagery) without alienating traditional stakeholders.

After a seven-year absence, the format of the Great Debates are returning and not for small talk.

This is a reimagined Rumor Session built for the world we’re actually living in: AI-fueled narratives, half-truths, and leaders who too often dodge reality. So let’s ask the only question that matters:

What are the facts and what’s real?

We’re putting the industry’s biggest rumors on the table and calling them what they are: fact, fiction, or somewhere uncomfortably in between. No panels hiding behind safe answers. No vague consensus. Just sharp debate, real perspective, and clarity. Debaters will provide facts, receipts and the occasional industry expert testimony to prove their points.

The goal:
To confront the rumors shaping our industry and arm every attendee with the truth, so WE ALL can go back to our destinations and cut through the noise with confidence to our stakeholders and residents.

These rumors have gone on long enough.

So we brought Ted out of “retirement” to lead the debates on what's fact and what's fiction.

Let’s clear the air.

Destination marketing organizations are operating in an environment that demands more alignment, agility, accountability, and cross-functional collaboration than ever before. As expectations from boards, communities, partners, visitors, and internal teams continue to expand, many DMOs are rethinking how talent is organized, how roles are defined, and how accountability is shared across the organization. This session explores how leading organizations are redesigning team structures and staffing models to better meet today’s demands. 

Through real-world examples, candid observations, and facilitated discussion, attendees will examine what is driving these organizational shifts, what changes some DMOs are making, where those changes are succeeding or struggling, and what lessons can be applied in their own contexts. The session is designed to spark peer exchange on how destination organizations can better align people, structure, and expectations to achieve stronger performance.

Takeaways: 

• Understand the larger organizational pressures driving changes in DMO team structures.
• Examine emerging approaches to talent design, staffing models, and cross-functional accountability.
• Learn from real examples, including lessons, tradeoffs, and common mistakes.
• Compare how peers are structuring teams and identify ideas to consider within their own organizations.