Week 14 of 26 Tough Conversations for Destination Leaders
Next week is National Travel and Tourism Week.
There’s going to be a lot of great content. You’ll see stats about economic impact, posts celebrating local businesses, maybe some behind-the-scenes moments from your team. It’s a good week for the industry.
But it’s also a good moment to pause and ask something a little more honest.
Do your partners actually understand what you do?
Not in a surface-level way. Not just “they promote the destination.” But do they really understand the scope of it?
Because most of the time, they don’t. And that’s not a knock on them. It’s just the reality of how different everyone’s day-to-day looks.
Your World Isn’t Their World
Think about who your partners are.
A restaurant owner is trying to keep up with staffing and food costs while making sure every table has a good experience. A hotel team is focused on occupancy, service, and operations. A retailer is thinking about sales and foot traffic. An attraction is managing programming, tickets, and guest flow.
They’re busy. They’re in their own world.
They’re not sitting in on strategy discussions about market positioning or reading tourism trend reports or thinking about how your destination stacks up against others in the region.
So when they hear from the DMO, they filter it through their own lens. What they care about is simple and fair.
“How does this help my business?”
If we’re being honest, that’s usually where the conversation stays.
The Gap We Don’t Always Talk About
There’s a gap between what DMOs actually do and what partners think DMOs do.
On one side, you’re looking at data, trends, audience behavior, and long-term positioning. You’re thinking about how the destination shows up in the market, how visitors move through the experience, how partners fit into a bigger picture.
On the other side, your partners are seeing campaigns, social posts, maybe a few mentions or features, and trying to connect the dots back to their business.
If we don’t actively close that gap, it creates a pretty limited understanding of your role.
And when that happens, the relationship starts to feel transactional.
“Can you promote me?”
“Can I be included in this?”
“Why wasn’t I featured?”
Those questions aren’t wrong. They just come from an incomplete picture.
It’s More Than Marketing. But We Have to Show That
The truth is, DMOs do a lot more than marketing.
You’re shaping how people perceive your destination before they ever arrive. You’re paying attention to who your audience is and how that’s changing. You’re working across partners who don’t always see eye to eye. You’re trying to make the visitor experience feel cohesive, even though it’s made up of hundreds of individual businesses.
That’s not a simple job.
But here’s the part that matters.
If partners don’t see that work, it might as well not exist.
You can say it in presentations. You can include it in reports. But unless it shows up in a way that feels real and relevant to them, it won’t stick.
Understanding Builds Over Time
This isn’t something you fix with one presentation or one meeting.
Understanding builds in layers.
It comes from consistently showing how your work connects to what they care about. It comes from sharing the “why” behind decisions, not just the outcomes. It comes from bringing them into the process instead of just delivering results.
And it takes repetition.
Not because partners aren’t paying attention, but because they have a lot of other things competing for it.
What This Can Look Like in Practice
This doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does have to be intentional.
It might look like sharing a simple breakdown of who you’re targeting and why, and connecting that directly to the types of visitors partners are seeing. It might mean giving a clearer picture of how a campaign fits into a larger strategy instead of just reporting on performance.
It could be as straightforward as sending a quick update that says, “Here’s what we’re seeing right now and here’s what it could mean for you.”
Over time, those moments start to add up. Partners begin to see patterns. They start to understand how your decisions are made and where they fit into it.
And the questions change.
Instead of “Can you promote me?” you start hearing “How can I be part of this?”
That’s a very different place to be.
Why This Matters Right Now
Weeks like National Travel and Tourism Week are important because they create visibility.
But visibility without understanding only goes so far.
If partners don’t understand the role of the DMO, they won’t fully see the value. And if they don’t see the value, it becomes harder to build the kind of alignment that actually moves a destination forward.
This isn’t about over-explaining or over-communicating.
It’s about making sure the people you’re working with have enough context to engage in a more meaningful way.
A Question Worth Sitting With
As you head into next week, take a minute and think about this.
If one of your partners had to explain what your organization does to someone else, what would they say?
Would they talk about marketing?
Would they talk about visitors?
Would they mention strategy, alignment, or experience?
There’s no perfect answer, but whatever comes to mind is probably a good reflection of what’s landing.
And if it’s not where you want it to be, that’s not a problem.
It’s just an opportunity to start being more intentional about how you bring people into your world.
Where This Goes From Here
The destinations that are going to be strongest moving forward are the ones where partners don’t just participate, they understand.
They see the bigger picture. They know where they fit. They feel like they’re part of something, not just being asked to show up for it.
That kind of alignment doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s built over time, through consistent, clear, and human communication.
And it’s worth the effort.
Reach out to learn how Destination Innovate can support your strategy.
