^{GRCVB award winners at the 2024 Tourism Leadership Conference. From left: Vimal Vyas, CDME, vice president of data, security and digital innovation; Derek Allman, associate director of marketing and communications; Amber Harmon, design manager; Carly Delengowski, CGSP®, content marketing manager; Jonathan Freeze, CDME, EDP, vice president of marketing and communications; and Jan Johnson, president, Avenir Bold.}

On Dec. 4-5, several members of GRCVB’s Marketing & Communications and Destination Data & Technology teams (plus team members from advertising/marketing communications agency of record Avenir Bold) attended the statewide Tourism Leadership Conference, held in Durham at the JB Duke Hotel. This annual conference is organized by the North Carolina Travel Industry Association (NCTIA) and features update sessions from travel leaders about the current industry climate specific to our state.

This year’s agenda included a marketing update from Wit Tuttell, executive director of Visit North Carolina; a legislative update session with Brian Lewis and Skye David, NCTIA lobbyists; informational breakout sessions; and a plenary session called “Bring Your A-Game: How You Can Increase Your Effectiveness in Leadership in Any Situation” by MediaOne vice president of brand partnerships and director of culture Mike Robertson.

At the conference each year NCTIA also presents its Tourism Achievement Awards to honor and showcase innovation, best practices, creativity and results accomplished through our industry’s attraction-level and destination-level marketing efforts. At the 2024 Tourism Leadership Conference, GRCVB was honored with four awards, including:

• Best of Show, overall (for best exemplifying complete packages of innovation, creativity and results across our award submissions);
• Platinum for our 2023-2024 “Let’s Make It Happen” leisure campaign video advertising in the Leisure Marketing category;
• Platinum for GRSA’s latest sports destination overview video in the Group Visitors category;
• Platinum for our illustrated Sales tradeshow booth in the Convention Marketing category (see an example of the booth setup here).

“A lot of hard work by GRCVB staffers, GRSA division staff and the Bureau’s agency of record Avenir Bold made 2023-2024 another outstanding year for Raleigh area tourism,” said GRCVB vice president of marketing and communications Jonathan Freeze, CDME, EDP.

“As I always say, we don’t do this work for the chance of winning awards—rather for the sake of growing our area’s tourism economy, but it’s still nice for our efforts to be recognized competitively as best in the state by NCTIA’s judges; the teams can take that much more pride in what they’re doing each day for Wake County.”

During the same awards banquet, Freeze also had the pleasure of presenting NCTIA’s Charles Kuralt Award (mass communications award) for bringing exceptional, positive public attention to the State of N.C. to Wake Forest resident and the Bureau's former colleague at the North Carolina Museum of History, Kerry Burns. 

Since his departure from that museum, he has continued to run his own @northcarolinakerry accounts on TikTok, Instagram and a Facebook page, producing quirky reels that hit home with native North Carolinians and transplants. Burns was honored to receive special attention for his influencer work from NCTIA this year!