Tourism Talk blog

So far, 2022 has been an exciting return to form for Raleigh and Wake County tourism. With outdoor sports events never having left, festivals bouncing back from dormant years prior and conventions/meeting groups returning en masse, leisure and group business, it seems, are back. And it's only...

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 Ed Tomasi, cofounder of Subnation and an integral part of our area's strategy to position Greater Raleigh as the first-choice destination for...

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),

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...

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,...

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