Tourism Talk blog

Let me tell you what happened to me last week. On Monday, my colleague in the Marketing Department, Carly Delengowski, was working on a blog post for the meetings section of our website that highlighted renovations at the John Chavis Memorial Park and Community Center. Because I'm the keeper of...

A few weeks ago, we published in the Tourism Talk blog the first Tourism Talk microcast in which GRCVB's executive vice president Loren J. Gold described a piece of legislation that creates production tax incentives for groups wanting to plan esports events in Wake County and North Carolina....

Like it did with virtually everything else, the pandemic affected implementation of the 10-year Destination Strategic Plan (DSP) we launched in 2018. Some of the eight priorities in the DSP had to be shuffled in 2020, some received different levels of focus this fiscal year than originally expected,

We lost an all-timer last week, and as a result the Raleigh sports industry will never be quite the same. Davin “Dave” Olsen arrived in Raleigh, from Hartford, with the Carolina Hurricanes in the late ʼ90s. For the past 25 years or so he was the general manager of PNC Arena and,...

In 2019, GRCVB launched its "All Access Wake County" program, which encourages all Wake County hospitality partners to provide stellar customer service to those with disabilities. The call from GRCVB to our partners is to go above and beyond what the ADA requires and make extra effort on...

For many of you, this will be a reintroduction to Jessica because you already know her from her eight years at GRCVB. Jessica Holt was recently promoted from a manager role to director of GRCVB's Public Relations and International Tourism Department. She's a shining example of a crop of...

With 2021 winding down, here are 21 things in the Greater Raleigh sports tourism industry that I’m thankful for as we head into the holiday season: 1. Our GRSA staff. You won’t find a better or more hard-working group anywhere in America. That would be Tori Collins, Jason Philbeck,...

How about some good news about the recovery of tourism to start this Monday morning? According to Tourism Economics, U.S. leisure travel volume for 2021 will reach 91% of its prior volume in 2019. Looking ahead to 2022, they expect 94% recovery and full recovery by the first half of 2023. Wake

GRCVB hosted its first hybrid Annual Meeting on Thurs., Aug. 19, 2021, virtually and in A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Here’s a summary of the meeting... Wake County welcomed 12.9 million visitors in 2020, which was a decrease of 29% from 2019....

We're making available the Official Media Kit for 2021‒2022, a collection of GRCVB-sanctioned avenues to promote your business or organization to potential visitors. Just as a reminder, every hospitality partner in Wake County already gets free, year-round exposure from the CVB,...