Some, like Maura Gast, are well known. Others soon will be. Like Meilee Anderson of Seattle Southside Visitor Services. On the concept of DMO relevancy, she recently wrote:

“If DMOs disappear, who is left to tell the story to meeting planners, group leaders, media and individual leisure travelers?
Visitors will call our center asking for help. They’ve read dozens of pages from different websites about our area but they need to talk to a real person who’s been to these places that can answer questions like:

– I want do these five things while I’m in town. Can I really do all this in one or two days?
– Is this really appropriate for my 12 year old AND my 5 year old?
– OK, I’ve got it narrowed down to these places I want to see.  Where’s the best place to stay that’s central to all of them?



So are we relevant because we’re real people making sense of the web?


I know things you don’t read on Google. For example it’s really hard to be in a wheelchair at Pike Place Market on a Saturday in August.

And you can’t take a stroller up to the top of the Space Needle. You have to park the stroller outside in a place with no locks. And that’s a scary thing for a Mom to do.

Are we relevant because, here in our office, our Visitor Center staff is made up of real people that go and do things in our area? We have the 20-something with a single perspective, 30-something with kids perspective and a Baby Boomer lens.


Does this perspective make us relevant?
 
It makes us relevant only if the visitors know we have it.”

And that should be a key focus for all of us.