Marketing Can't Fix a Product Problem with Michelle Guevara

Adam Stoker opens with the conveyor belt of audience and visitation: the generation that grew up loving your destination is aging off it, and their kids are bored. Adam Stoker opens with the conveyor belt of audience and visitation: the generation that grew up loving your destination is aging off the end, and marketing can't refill the front. Then Michelle Guevara, Director of Destination Experience at Visit Greenville, South Carolina, shows what fixing the product actually takes. Her in-house survey of Greenville hotels came back 65% understaffed, so she built a hospitality career pathway with the Greenville Chamber and Greenville County Schools — this after a student interest survey ranked business and administration at 12% and hospitality and tourism at 1%. Michelle also covers the downtown conference center first studied in 2015 and redesigned for 2026, the Certified Tourism Ambassador program that reached 900 people in under three years, and the five-course dinner with technical college students that ended in three job offers.

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