Retiring Visit Philadelphia CEO Reflects on 4 Decades on Tourism's Front Lines
Skift Take
Levitz uses her weaknesses as strengths and has remained a humble leader, despite the outsize impact she has had on Philadelphia's booming tourism industry during the past four decades. Every destination can learn something from her leadership.
If longtime Visit Philadelphia president and CEO Meryl Levitz had been born more of a gifted musician, the tourism experience in Philadelphia would look a whole lot different today.
Levitz announced earlier this year that she will retire at the end of 2018 after a successor is hired, bringing to a close a 40-year career promoting Philadelphia tourism. Forty years of promoting a single destination is a rarity these days for any tourism official, so Levitz's highly regarded tenure is a lesson book on the ups, and the downs, for an entire industry.
Levitz played the piano growing up and is mulling a date with a Cajun accordion that's sitting in her study at home once she has more time to practice technique. Hence, her love of musical metaphors.
“I'm not at all musically talented but I want to make the music come on for Philadelphia,” said the 70-year-old Illinois native who has lived in Philly most of her life. “I want to make the music come on for Philadelphians, I want to make it come on for the people who work with me, and then I want to turn up the volume.”
The spin has always been, of course, that Philadelphia has what anyone could want in an urban visitor experience. Thriving arts, nightlife, diverse culture, award-winning food, walkability, public transport, and connectivity.
Located within a five-hour drive of roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population, Philadelphia and its surrounding region are easily accessible for domestic and international tourists and some 43.3 million people visited the destination in 2017, a record high.
On a recent muggy morning, it was difficult not to catch the rhythms of Philadelphia. The average walking pace on a Center City sidewalk isn’t as hurried as that of midtown Manhattan. But many people are on a mission to get somewhere, and there’s certainly plenty of things around town to get to. At a Primo Hoagies sandwich shop, part of a chain that was founded in Philadelphia, on Market Street a few blocks from Independence National Historical Park in the Old City, local businessmen and women and tourists queued up for their lunch selections. It’s a peaceful co-existence of visitor and locals that you don’t always see in different destinations.
Situated in a tall building in Center City, appropriately positioned to be in the center of the action that it markets on a daily basis, Visit Philadelphia’s office is what you’d expect on first glance from a typical large city tourism board. But
