Tourism Talk blog

We are joining with the U.S. Travel Association this week to celebrate National Travel and Tourism Week (NTTW). You have heard us say this before, but Tourism Matters. And here's why... Why travel matters in Raleigh, N.C. We pass popular tourist sites like Marbles Kids Museum every day; we may...

We’re happy to announce that the 2019‒2020 edition of the Official Visitors Guide to Raleigh, Cary and Wake County has been provided to the printer. We expect the Visitors Guides to ship mid-May, and you should start seeing them by late May. Here are a few notes about this year's...

As much as we wish we could, there are not enough hours in the day and members of our staff to be able to greet visitors personally and provide them with the information they need to have a great Raleigh area experience. So many years ago, the Bureau developed a Tourism Ambassador program, a corps

You have heard and seen us talking about the second annual Wake County Hospitality Job Fair, which happened last Tues., March 5, 2019. Over 55 employers were on hand to talk with several hundred applicants about job opportunities at their businesses. We are sharing some photos from the Fair below,

In case you missed it—GRCVB released its 2018 Year-End Tourism Industry Report last month. These numbers are of interest to all of us in the Wake County hospitality sector. ............. 2018 Year-End Tourism Industry Report Wake County hospitality industry has one of the best years on...

When I was 17, my mother was not content to let me lollygag about without a job, so she went down to the local Tastee Freez in my little town and convinced the owner, Alan B., to give me a part-time, after-school position. (I remember a few things about Alan B. to this day. He did his bookkeeping

In the first Tourism Talk post of 2019, we outlined the three talking points GRCVB will be reiterating in much of our communication this year. The first of those and perhaps the most important is the Value of Tourism. We explained in detail why tourism matters to Wake County in the second post of

In all likelihood, you have seen a story about Raleigh/Wake County floating around the last few days from The Washington Post, written by Melanie D.G. Kaplan. If you missed it, you can read it here. It’s a stellar piece and highlights many of the visitor attractions, museums, restaurants,...

Tourism has a way of feeling secondary to other forms of economic development in a community, maybe because it represents a transient group of people or because some equate tourism with vacations, free sightseeing and off-hours entertainment. It tends to not carry the import that it deserves. But

Often during election seasons, you will hear candidates and their advisers talk about staying "on message"... that is, to not get distracted by tangential topics or issues that would take the focus from where it belongs—on that which is official and most important. During 2019,...