Tourism Talk blog

Everywhere we go these days, someone is taking our temperature. So this week, we are "taking the temperature" of GRCVB and of tourism in Wake County. We asked Dennis Edwards for his honest appraisal of the current pandemic situation from his role as president and CEO, its impact on the...

GRCVB, just like many organizations throughout Wake County, has learned to evolve and discover how best to sustain its core mission in the ever-changing landscape of 2020. Many plans disrupted this year required fresh creativity and a willingness to pivot to make them work. That went doubly so for

Last week you heard from the Greater Raleigh Sports Alliance on how that team at GRCVB has been working hard during the COVID crisis. This week you are hearing from the Marketing and Communications Department and its director, Jonathan Freeze, CDME. On March 23, 2020, we officially activated the

At last year's Annual Meeting in Aug. 2019, we announced that GRCVB would establish a series of tourism educational offerings called "Tourism U" for our partners and other interested stakeholders. Tourism U was designed to explain the cycle of tourism, specific to Wake County, as well...

We don't know if you have noticed, but there's not a lot of employee turnover at GRCVB. It has been awhile since we added it up, but we must have hundreds of years of collective experience at the Bureau. There are about 20 members of our staff who have been here at least 10 years and some...

Earlier this week in Tourism Talk, we mentioned that GRCVB along with several local allies will be traveling to Austin, Texas, in March to represent Raleigh at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2020. In case you missed it, here is information that was released to the press on Tues., Feb. 25, 2020. Raleigh

Because of the 2019 Annual Meeting and previous Tourism Talk blog posts, you may already know that one of the key talking points for GRCVB this year is the value of tourism. Why does tourism matter and what difference does it make in the local economy, to the vibrancy of our area and to each of us

At GRCVB, there seems to be a cycle of buzzwords that we use in our meetings and hallway conversations. In the last year or two, I have heard master plan, disruption, deep dive and "move the needle" tossed around quite a bit. One phrase that has always been around but that we’re...

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

Once a quarter, you should be seeing emails appear in your inbox inviting you to GRCVB’s See for Yourself (SFY) Fam Tours. The SFY series was created to provide a chance for hospitality partners and particularly front-line staff to be visitors in their own area. They can “see for...