Stakeholder Engagement

Travel Nevada is tasked with supporting its rural communities. Each year, $1.4M in Rural Marketing Grants are awarded to non-profit organizations to fund tourism marketing projects. Starting with a thorough review of grant data for the last five years, I wanted to insure the grants provided equity across Nevada’s six territories and numerous tourism organizations requesting support as well as streamlined process to be more transparent by:

• Updating the application and evaluation questions to elicit more meaningful metrics and developing an economic impact calculator to better evaluate programs reported to Legislature. 
• Implementing a rubric to set evaluation standards and expanding the internal review committee, benefiting from cross-departmental expertise and overall buy-in.
• Reduced the number of applications by 75% by moving to one submission per organization and one grant cycle per year, to maximize staff time dedicated to the reviewing grants so that more time could be spent working with partners on their projects.
• Developing a sliding scale for the match program (currently a 50% match is required) to allowing those with fewer staff and lesser budgets the ability to compete for grant funding.

The improved process and transparency have been widely accepted, and ongoing training continues to encourage more organizations across the Silver State to consider applying.

Visit California’s legacy co-op marketing programs were a patchwork of initiatives that operated in silos and lacked cohesiveness with the overall brand. Tasked with amalgamating the disparate programs, I created a more united framework that allowed for more partner participation across a broader sector of industries. 

With limited staff resources and ongoing requests to do more programs, I set out to reimagine the co-op strategy to:

• Insure programs align with the brand strategies and core business goals of the organization
• Create stakeholder opportunities for all budget levels
• Establish criteria to simplify the vetting process for future opportunities
• Insure the cross promotion of all programs through owned, earned, paid and trade marketing channels.

The new streamlined structure supported airlines, attractions, golf, retail, ski resorts and wineries and provided turnkey solutions for partners. The realignment received glowing approval internally with staff and vendors, as well as with existing and new partners. Within the first year, partner participation grew by 17%

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In order to capitalize on the Chinese travel boom and retain its leading competitive edge, Visit California needed to prepare the state’s tourism industry to better serve Chinese travelers through quality control and customized services.

I created and directed Visit California’s China Ready platform, connecting stakeholders with California receptive operators and the Chinese travel trade. The state-wide educational program combined seminars on cultural travel preferences, market trends and media consumption habits. The events included hosted networking sessions with leading experts and travel trade representatives.

Following the success of nearly a dozen events, we received requests for additional training sessions. To scale the program for a wider audience, I compiled event content which lived on a dedicated section of the Visit California’s industry website that included a comprehensive toolkit with educational materials, resources, case studies and best practices for attracting and providing for the Chinese traveler.

Similarly, at San Francisco Travel, I initiated partner market briefings aimed at distilling market intelligence and travel trends into insightful and relevant analyses. Along with my colleagues, we produced market briefings on 14 countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas which were widely praised by partners.