Schedule

Celebrating Excellence in Destination Marketing

Meet the 2026 Finalists

Discover the innovative campaigns, impactful programs, and exceptional leaders recognized as finalists for the 2026 ESTO Awards.

Take a moment to relax and recharge in the Wellness Lounge, sponsored by Granicus Destinations. Don't miss the opportunity to receive a complimentary chair massage from a professional massage therapist during the following times:

Monday, August 24: 12:25 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, August 25: 10 a.m. - 3:45 p.m.

Wednesday, August 26: 8:30 a.m. - 11 a.m.

As organic reach declines and paid social grows, destinations must rethink engagement. In 2024, Visit Nebraska launched a community-first model around its Nebraska Passport program. What began as an experiment is now a statewide group with thousands of members, daily user posts and tens of thousands reached—without paid promotion. Public groups, not pages, are the future.

Takeaways: 

• Stop talking at people. Let them talk to each other. We’ll show how shifting from a Page to a Group changed everything and built real connection.
• Let your community do the marketing. With simple prompts and encouragement, your audience can become your loudest, most trusted advocates.
• Protect the space so it stays positive and useful. Clear rules, light moderation, and transparency keep a government-run group safe, welcoming, and on mission.

Destinations can extend their storytelling beyond traditional tourism channels by embedding themselves into culture. This session walks through how Visit Savannah partnered with LoveShackFancy and Saks Fifth Avenue to let the destination live naturally inside a luxury retail and fashion brand's world — generating earned media, cultural relevance, and measurable results without leading with tourism messaging. The takeaway isn't the partner. It's the strategic approach, and how destinations of any size can apply it.

Takeaways:

• Assess  brand alignment and audience overlap before pursuing a cultural partnership, using the Savannah × LoveShackFancy collaboration as a real-world example.
• Design lifestyle partnerships to prioritize cultural relevance and earned storytelling, allowing the destination to live naturally within a partner’s world rather than forcing traditional tourism messaging or direct conversion.
•  Apply lessons learned from the partnership by identifying what Visit Savannah would refine next time.

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.

As AI reshapes how travelers discover destinations, Visit Milwaukee chose innovation rooted in authenticity. This session shares how we launched Ask LeRoy, an AI-powered AR guide featuring Hall of Famer LeRoy Butler, while using AI to enhance partner listings and pairing it with human-led storytelling. The result: a 10% YOY increase in web traffic in 2025, bucking national trends.

Takeaways: 

• Website Strategy: How to integrate AI into your destination website in ways that improve discovery, user experience, and performance without sacrificing   control or clarity.
• Brand Storytelling: How to pair AI innovation (like Ask LeRoy) with human-led, place-based storytelling to protect brand voice, deepen engagement, and drive measurable growth, including a 10% YOY increase in web traffic.
• Pitfalls to Avoid: Common mistakes destinations make when adopting AI, from generic chatbot experiences to misaligned KPIs, and how to avoid undermining   trust, traffic, and authenticity.