Tourism Talk blog

It's finally beginning to feel like fall in Raleigh and Wake County. The leaves are changing, the temperature is starting to cool, and we're looking ahead to the holidays and new year. What better time to meet with friends and colleagues to network and share destination marketing updates...

Resilience: (noun) re·​sil·​ience | \ ri-ˈzil-yən(t)s \ Specifically organizational resilience: the ability of an organization to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions, to survive and prosper. In 2018-2019, our...

During the 2022 GRCVB Annual Meeting in August, president and CEO Dennis Edwards mentioned that the Bureau is participating in a comprehensive project to bring stability back to our hospitality workforce after the pandemic. "The City and County recently appropriated $1.25 million to Capital...

It's always good to see deserving colleagues recognized for the quality of the work they do. That happened at GRCVB recently when two, relatively long-time department heads were promoted to vice presidents in their respective areas of responsibility. Jonathan Freeze, CDME, who has been director

Since everyone else is heading back to school, we figured it was time for us, too, so we are bringing back live and in-person Tourism U classes, GRCVB's award-winning learning track for tourism and destination education. We launched Tourism U 100 Level in 2019 and tested several in-person...

A report released Aug. 18 by GRCVB revealed that Wake County welcomed 15.8 million visitors in 2021, a 23% increase over 2020. These nearly 16 million visitors who traveled to Wake County spent $2.3 billion in our community, a 40% increase over 2020. After numbers declined in 2020, both visitation

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 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...

Here’s something we haven’t been able to say for a while—the Official Visitors Guide to Raleigh, Cary and Wake County is back! The guide is in the early stages of production with a targeted publication date of Feb. 2023. The last time we announced a new Official Visitors Guide...

Featuring: Adam Sa cks is president of Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company dedicated to analytically-based consulting to the tourism sector. For more than two decades, Adam has worked with destinations, industry associations and companies around the world in the areas of opportunity and