Tourism Talk blog

A destination always brings out its best spooks and ghost stories during this week leading up to Halloween. With a haunted history like Wake County has, there are plenty of ghouls and goblins for us to talk about. That concept reminded us of a story, written by Ernest Dollar, executive director of

The GRCVB Convention Sales Department hosted its fourth annual Meeting Professionals Summit on Thurs., Aug. 11, 2022, at the Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley to educate, network and promote best practices among meeting planners, area hoteliers and venues, as well as enjoy a candle-making class

GRCVB hosted its 35th Annual Meeting on Thurs., Aug. 18, 2022, at A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Here’s a summary of the meeting... GRCVB Board of Directors chair Mark Zimmerman reported top-line 2021 and 2022 tourism numbers. At the close of the...

We believe there are some people in our area whom every hospitality partner ought to know (or at least know about). Today we want to introduce you to Duarte Morais, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at N.C. State. Dr. Morais is the cofounder of

We start planning GRCVB's Annual Meeting in February of each year, and in a task that is related to my role as creative director, I get to be project manager. As we have been planning, I have been thinking about similar meetings that are presented by our local hospitality partners and...

For the last few months, we have been posting blogs and sending emails in anticipation of the The Kennedy Center's Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD ® ) Conference being hosted in downtown Raleigh from Aug. 1-5, 2022. Many local hospitality stakeholders and partners have...

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,