Explore St. Louis and the Business of Tourism

Yeah.

So you made the transition from hospitality, then then going into working for convention of visitors and tourism boards and and kind of you.

I think you just hit it.

But when you went when Myrtle Beach and I think you did a great job in Puerto Rico post COVID.

the hurricane and all that, and Puerto Rico is a hot place to be right now, too.

What lessons did you learn there in kind of helping run communities? A little bit different than a hospitality organization, but running a community, because you're helping the community tell their story and say, hey, come visit us.

What did you learn there, and what's your takeaways from that?

Well, one of the first things I learned that wasn't what I had expected was that the job, although it was described as sales and marketing and leading that effort, it was as much about leaning into the community.

In the case of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a very small town that attracts millions of visitors, but they wanted to expand and diversify their base and also attract other industry.

Well, that presented challenges with infrastructure and public funding and workforce.

And so I had to work in and with and throughout the community to build alignment and strategies that could bring people in.

But in this particular case, you can't just go build a highway.

You've got to make sure the community is with you on that.

So I spent a lot of time really leaning into the community.

It was interesting because when I interviewed for the job, every question they asked me was about how I would market to the customer.

But when I got the job, just about everything I was doing was creating alignment within the community.

Puerto Rico is similar in that they had 78 communities and many of those had never really been marketed.

And marketing a surfer community on the west coast of Puerto Rico is much different than San Juan.

This is a city that's over 500 years old.

So finding the unique niche and identity that each community fit in and then trying to bring that together in one overall destination brand.

but still having to work within all those communities.

So when people in St. Louis complain about the number of municipalities, I just laugh because I've already dealt with that.

It's nothing new coming here.

And at least we have power in all the municipalities, right? Some of those municipalities might not have had power.

That's correct.