Choosing business hours should involve more than asking, “What works for us?”

In this episode of Destination Roadmapping, Vicky looks at how shops, museums, attractions, visitor centers, and downtown businesses can choose hours based on actual customer behavior—not habit, convenience, or generic advice.

Using West Yellowstone as an example, she explains why even a town with millions of visitors can miss opportunities when businesses are closed during peak visitor activity. You’ll learn how to review customer patterns, identify gaps in the visitor’s day, coordinate hours with neighboring businesses, use seasonal schedules, and test changes without committing forever.

Because visitors may forgive limited hours. They are far less forgiving when the hours posted online are wrong—or when every door is locked precisely when they are ready to spend money.

You do not need to be open all the time. You need to be open at the right time—and dependable when you say you will be.

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What happens when your town shares a name with another destination and visitors find the wrong hotels, events, attractions, or even the wrong state?

In Episode 52, Vicky looks at the very believable myth of travelers arriving in Austria when they intended to visit Australia, then brings the problem closer to home. From Huntsville and Springfield to Salem, Madison, Columbus, and Washington, shared place names can create real confusion online.

You’ll learn how to make your destination easier to find and harder to confuse by consistently using your full location, connecting your name to a specific identifier, conducting a confusion search, improving digital details, and getting community partners to use the same location language.

Your town may share its name. It doesn't share its identity.

A quick note:: The Destination Roadmapping 50th Episode Thank-You Giveaway ends at tonight, July 29, 2026, at midnight Eastern. Enter using the link below for a chance to win a one-hour Destination Roadmapping strategy session or one of five goody boxes. Everyone who enters will receive the Destination Roadmapping Small Town Fix-It Toolkit.

https://forms. gle/TQNnP38GzXC1BnW16

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Being historic can be one of a community’s greatest tourism assets, or it can be a very comfortable excuse for offering visitors remarkably little to do.

In this episode, Vicky explores the difference between documenting history and creating an experience. You’ll learn how to move beyond dates, plaques, and attractive old buildings by focusing on people, choices, consequences, and the ways the past still shapes your community today.

Success is not simply teaching visitors your history. Success is helping them find themselves somewhere inside it and giving them a story they will carry home.

Plus, the Destination Roadmapping 50th Episode Thank-You Giveaway has been extended through July 29 at midnight Eastern. One person will win a one-hour strategy session, five people will receive a gift box, and every entrant will receive the Small Town Fix-It Toolkit.  Enter here: https://forms. gle/TQNnP38GzXC1BnW16

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In Episode 50 of Destination Roadmapping, we’re talking about the small details, honest experiences, and unexpected moments that make visitors remember a community long after they leave. Because memorable places usually aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. They know what they do well, they make it easy to enjoy, and they give people something worth talking about later.

And to celebrate Episode 50, we’re kicking off a giveaway.

Enter for a chance to win the grand prize: a 1-hour Destination Roadmapping Strategy Session. Five additional winners will receive a goody box and everyone who enters will get access to helpful worksheets and checklists.

Enter HERE

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How many opportunities has your organization lost because nobody answered an email?

You'll probably never know.

A sponsor looking for partnership information. A vendor asking about booth space. A volunteer ready to help. A performer hoping to be part of your event. They reached out because they wanted to work with your organization—and then, silence.

In this episode, Vicky explores why unanswered emails are more than an administrative headache. They're missed opportunities that can quietly affect sponsorships, vendor recruitment, volunteer engagement, and your community's reputation.

You'll learn five simple ways to make sure inquiries don't fall through the cracks, including how to assign ownership, improve response times, and create a system that keeps opportunities from slipping away.

Because sometimes the biggest opportunity for your community isn't finding new people.

It's responding to the ones who have already found you.

Coming next week: Episode 50! Join us as we celebrate with giveaways, free resources, and a chance to win a one-hour Destination Roadmapping Strategy Session.

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What if the problem isn't that you need more vendors?

What if you already have too many?

In this episode of Destination Roadmapping, Vicky challenges one of the most common assumptions in event planning: Bigger is always better. More vendors may sound impressive, but if attendance and spending aren't keeping pace, you could be creating a tougher environment for both vendors and visitors.

Learn how to recognize the warning signs that your vendor marketplace has outgrown your audience, why vendor success is a better metric than vendor count, and five practical ways to create a stronger event experience.

In this episode:

• Three signs you may have too many vendors
• Why visitors don't care about your vendor count
• How to measure vendor success
• The importance of variety and vendor curation
• Why shrinking your footprint may improve the experience
• How to know when your event has earned the right to grow

Because the healthiest events aren't the ones with the most vendors, they're the ones where visitors leave happy, vendors make money, and everyone wants to come back next year.

#EventPlanning #TourismMarketing #DestinationManagement #MainStreet #CommunityEvents #SmallTownTourism #EventExperience #DestinationRoadmapping

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Many community organizations have a phrase they rely on when resources get tight:

"We'll figure it out."

At first, it sounds admirable. Resourceful. Resilient.

But what happens when "we'll figure it out" stops being an occasional response to unexpected challenges and becomes the way your organization operates every single day?

In this episode of Destination Roadmapping, Vicky explores The Capacity Mirage, the illusion that everything is fine simply because the work keeps getting done. However, behind the scenes, organizations are being held together by a handful of exhausted people who continuously fill the gaps, prevent crises, and quietly compensate for systems that no longer work.

You'll learn how to:

• Conduct an honest capacity audit to identify hidden vulnerabilities
• Recognize the "hero systems" that rely too heavily on one person
• Determine what can be simplified, sunsetted, or removed entirely
• Protect staff and volunteers from chronic burnout
• Redefine success beyond simply surviving another season

Because resilience should help organizations navigate occasional challenges.

It should never become their long-term staffing plan.

If your team is running on determination, duct tape, and the hope that somebody will save the day one more time, this episode is for you.

Thanks for listening!

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Getting someone to visit once is great.

Getting them to come back is where the real magic (and sustainability) happens.

This week, Vicky dives into The Return Visit Formula: seven practical strategies for turning one-time visitors into repeat guests. Learn how to build experiences that aren't easy to finish in one visit, market your destination through the seasons, create collections and trails that inspire return trips, and leverage the small-town advantage of making people feel known.

If you've ever wondered why some communities develop fiercely loyal visitors while others struggle to generate repeat business, this episode is for you.

Because the goal isn't just getting people to visit.

It's making them ask, "When can we come back?"

Thanks for listening!

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Sometimes the most exasperating phrase in tourism, events, and community development is:

“We tried that already.”

In this episode of Destination Roadmapping, Vicky explores why communities often abandon potentially good ideas because a similar version failed once before. Over time, complicated situations get reduced to simple conclusions:

• “Live music doesn’t work here.”
• “Nobody comes downtown at night.”
• “Food trucks failed.”
• “People won’t pay for tickets.”

But are those actually facts or just stories that have been repeated long enough to become accepted as truth?

You'll learn how communities develop organizational folklore, why past failures create fear-based decision-making, and how current leaders often inherit assumptions they were never around to question.

Along the way, you'll discover practical ways to challenge outdated conclusions, evaluate ideas more effectively, document lessons learned, distinguish between failed concepts and failed execution, and use small-scale experiments to test new opportunities without taking unnecessary risks.

Because sometimes the thing holding a community back isn't a lack of ideas.

It's a conclusion they stopped questioning years ago.

And that might be worth revisiting.

Thanks for listening!

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Every successful event eventually faces the same dangerous question:

“What should we add next year?”

In this episode of Destination Roadmapping, Vicky dives into the Expectation Escalation Problem, when communities stop focusing on creating a great experience and start chasing bigger, busier, and more complicated.

From overcrowded layouts and volunteer burnout to events losing their identity entirely, this episode explores why growth is not always improvement and why some festivals quietly collapse under the weight of their own success.

Importantly, Vicky doesn't just identify the problem she breaks down practical ways communities can avoid and mitigate the escalation trap by:

• improving comfort before complexity
• editing aggressively instead of endlessly expanding
• protecting the personality of the event
• building around realistic volunteer capacity
• and redefining what sustainable success actually looks like

Because sometimes the smartest thing an event can do is stop trying to outdo itself every single year.

Thanks for listening!

Look for new episodes each Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and in the meantime...

Connect with Vicky on LinkedIn