Tourism Talk blog

Let us clue you in about a great resource on visitRaleigh.com. The Partners section of our website has all kinds of great information and resources for area hospitality businesses/organizations, including access to PIXL, links to all the parts and pieces of the Destination Strategic Plan (DSP),

Representatives from North Carolina travel and tourism, including GRCVB president and CEO Dennis Edwards, were in Washington, D.C., recently for Destination Capitol Hill, the U.S. Travel Association’s annual event for leaders in the travel sector. The group had successful meetings with Sen....

If you haven't visited the official Visitor Information Center (VIC) in downtown Raleigh recently, stop by and take a look. The walls are sporting a vibrant red which gives the space a new energy. Kessa Stevens, CGSP ® , GRCVB's VIC manager, is on hand to answer questions and provide...

It's as if we were prescient. About two and a half years ago at this time, we in GRCVB's Marketing Department had started working with our advertising and creative agency, Avenir Bold, to develop a new theme for destination advertising and promotion. We were looking for an idea and...

Tourism Talk Live is back again in 2022, and we're excited to share with you updates about destination marketing for Raleigh/Wake County during the upcoming season and fiscal year. For the uninitiated, we've written a Q&A to get you familiarized. What is Tourism Talk Live? Tourism Talk...

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,

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...

Why tourism matters. We talk about that a lot, but the relevance of tourism to the health and vitality of Raleigh and Wake County has never been more apparent since the pandemic began. We are teaming with Destinations International, the international association for destination management and our

The Wake County Board of Commissioners allocated $2.67 million of their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to the GRCVB in late summer 2021, which was included in our 2021-2022 fiscal-year budget and business plan. These funds brought our budget back to nearly pre-COVID levels and put us in a

One of the benefits of being part of the Wake County hospitality community and a partner of GRCVB is the free listing every area business gets on visitRaleigh.com. (As an aside, the website garners almost three million uses every year, and some of those user eyeballs are landing on your listings.)