The City Using Its Tourism Board to Lure Young Professionals to Relocate
Skift Take
How the Columbus tourism bureau is partnering with the local economic development organization represents a major role shift in the destination marketing industry.
A major trend among destination marketing organizations (DMOs) today involves partnering more with their regional economic development organizations to entice young professionals to move to their city, settle down, and contribute to the local tax base.
That has always been a primary role for the economic development agencies, but now they’re partnering more strategically with DMOs who are more in tune with the travel motivations of 25-35 year-olds. The thinking is before someone relocates to a city they're usually going to visit first. So cities should start at the beginning with tourism promotion to attract people for the weekend, while concurrently promoting the destination as a place to build a life and career.
For example in Ohio last year, Experience Columbus partnered with the Columbus 2020 economic development organization to create the LifeInCbus.com website. The portal is a content aggregator that pulls both social media content using the #lifeincbus hashtag and blog content from Columbus’ various lifestyle blogs. The streamlined user interface features one simple dropdown menu with links to bot
