Posts by: Leslie McLellan

In the past it was always difficult for small, independent hotels to compete with larger hotel brands. Over the past few years the tide has turned, and now unique, indie places are all the rage. Travelers are looking for standout experiences and have become much more selective regarding where they...

  We’ve had a few questions recently regarding TripAdvisor and Yelp review responses. After covering this quite a bit with some of our clients, we thought we'd share a few of those tips with you about how to respond to both good and bad reviews. Good Review Response Tips We always say that...

We've shared thoughts before about how to build a stronger team of tourism partners, and 3 ways for a DMO to be a better community partner, but now we'd like to address a big problem we see in tourism partner online presence. Bottom line: many of your partners really need your help and...

"I have 50 million followers who will do anything I tell them to do." Oh horrors! How many times have you heard some version of that statement? It was a line on the TV series "Suits" a couple of weeks ago, which goes to show that influencer marketing has definitely gone...

Have you ever thought about working out your website? For many of us, once we get our website up, we don’t pay a lot of attention to it. Just like our bodies, however, our websites can droop and lose their shape quickly. The following are 5 “core strengthening” exercises for you...

Think about this idea.... Are you looking for a straightforward way to connect more effectively with your tourism partners? A private Facebook Group for them might be the answer. It’s a wonderful way to bridge any communications gaps between your CVB, DMO, Chamber, or Main Street organization and individual partners. Benefits of a Private...

We speak a lot about event marketing, but generally it is in the context of annual events, not events with a short lead time. Quite often in destination marketing there are festivals and events that spring up out of nowhere; it's great to have these new events, but they often...

Locals are the soul of your community, and a key part of your destination marketing. More than likely, your locals were tourists before they decided to move to your community and perhaps start a business there, because tourism is key to economic development. From a tourism standpoint, those then-visitors-now-locals obviously liked...

Is your organization a true community partner? You work hard to build your community....business by business, person by person. Now that you've gathered this group, are you being a good partner to them? For the past several years, we have been hunkered down working on our own organizations and businesses, just...

(Part Two of a two-part series - here is Part One, about what urban tourism pros can do - by our “Co-Founder Emeritus ” Becky McCray, who is now focused on speaking and writing about small town business and rural entrepreneurship. She helps you shape a better future for...