Destination management organizations occupy a strange place in the travel ecosystem. They exist to promote places — countries, cities, regions — to travelers around the world. But they rarely control the product, they almost never touch the transaction, and their ROI has always been notoriously difficult to measure. Which raises a question that’s hard to avoid right now: do DMOs still matter?

The short answer is yes, but not in the way they used to.

The traditional DMO playbook — trade show presence, destination campaigns, visitor guides, and PR pushes — is being upended by a combination of forces: AI-generated travel content, the rise of social media as a discovery channel, and a traveler who is increasingly self-sufficient and algorithmically guided. The role of the DMO as information gatekeeper is effectively over. The new role is something harder to define, and far more interesting.

At the same time, destinations are under new pressures. Over-tourism, climate-related disruptions, and the political volatility of international travel — particularly for inbound US travel in today’s geopolitical moment — are forcing DMOs to think not just about driving more visitors, but about attracting the right visitors. That’s a fundamentally different mission, requiring a fundamentally different skill set.

This episode examines how DMOs are reinventing themselves for an AI-native, socially connected, and politically complex travel landscape, and what destination marketing done right can look like when it creates durable economic value for the places and communities it serves.

Follows

Gilad Berenstein – host

Cara Whitehill - host

Janette Roush  — guest

Meaghan Ferrigno — guest

Go Deeper

• Destinations’ high-stakes game with AI - Travel Weekly
• Small businesses say they’re having a good summer as Americans travel closer to home - AP News
• Winning the Algorithm: Why Destination Marketing Must Evolve in the AI Era - Sojern
• The Five Foundations of a DMO: New Measures for a New Paradigm - Zartico
• Building a Personal OS in Claude - Janette Roush