Trust Is the New Reach: The Future DMO Has to Earn the Room
Why the next era of destination leadership depends less on what we build with AI, and more on whether our communities trust us enough to lead.
AI can write the SOP. It can’t earn the room.
Rafat Ali with Skift recently wrote about a new wave of AI initiatives emerging from national tourism organizations, from intelligence platforms to ecosystem playbooks to government-built productivity tools for operators.
His piece, Should Tourism Boards Build AI for Their Stakeholders? helped name something many of us are already feeling: the job description of a tourism organization is expanding.
It is a fascinating glimpse into where destination leadership may be headed.
But as I read it, I kept thinking about a different question.
Not: What can tourism organizations build with AI?
But: Do our communities still trust us enough to let us build anything that matters?
I began exploring this idea earlier this year at Destinations Florida. Later this month, I’ll take it to Destinations International’s Annual Convention in Portland in a talk called From Crisis to Credibility: How Modern DMOs Earn Trust in a World That Doesn’t Trust Institutions. The premise is simple: trust is the new reach. Destination stewardship is the strategy.
For decades, destination organizations were rewarded for attention.
Impressions. Clicks. Campaigns. Room nights. Earned media. Heads in beds.
Those metrics still matter. But they no longer tell the whole story.
In many communities, the harder question is not whether we can attract visitors. It is whether residents, elected officials, operators, and partners believe we are managing the visitor economy in a way that benefits the place they call home.
And that is a very different kind of work.
It is less glamorous than a campaign launch.
It is harder to photograph than a ribbon cutting.
It rarely gets applause in a boardroom.
But it may be the work that determines whether destination organizations have the authority, funding, and permission to lead in the next era.
The credibility model
Rafat Ali framed the emerging AI role of tourism organizations through three models: intelligence, ecosystem, and productivity.
That framing is useful because it shows how quickly the role of tourism organizations is expanding. Some orgs are making destination data more useful. Some are creating conditions for industry adoption. Some are building tools that do the work directly for operators.
I would add one more layer underneath all three:
The credibility model.
Because before you can ask operators to use your tools, partners to trust your data, residents to support your funding, or elected officials to defend your work, they have to believe the institution itself is worthy of confidence.
AI may accelerate the work of destination organizations. It may help us analyze sentiment, summarize research, train teams, improve productivity, personalize content, support small businesses, and make better decisions faster.
But AI will not solve a trust problem.
In fact, it may expose one.
If the data is messy, the governance is unclear, the community is skeptical, and the strategy is disconnected from the place, AI will not fix the institution. It will scale the weakness.
That is why I think the future of destination leadership is not just about who builds the smartest tools.
It is about who has earned enough trust to use those tools in service of the community.
The work no one claps for
When I arrived in the Florida Keys in 2024, it quickly became clear that we were not simply launching a new campaign.
We were rebuilding credibility.
The organization had to modernize systems, rebuild stakeholder communication, develop a strategic plan with public input, invest in data, open more doors to community participation, and reintroduce the idea that destination marketing is not separate from destination stewardship.
That kind of work does not always look like marketing.
It looks like infrastructure.
It looks like building systems people only notice if they fail.
It looks like answering the same community question one more time.
It looks like showing up at the chamber, the Rotary, the advisory committee, the county meeting, the stakeholder session, and the uncomfortable conversation before anyone forces you to be there.
It looks like explaining what tourism pays for in plain English.
It looks like building the internal systems that allow your public promises to actually be delivered.
One of the lines I’ll share at DI is this:
Transparency is not a press release. It is an operating posture.
For most of our careers, transparency meant something polished, approved, and sent out after the fact.
But real transparency is different.
It is leaving the door open before anyone thinks to knock.
It is inviting people into the process before they become critics of the outcome.
It is putting the data, the decision-making, and the tradeoffs close enough to the public that they can see how the work actually happens.
That can feel risky.
But in a low-trust environment, open governance is not the danger. It may be the thing that protects you.
Destination stewardship starts with permission
Destination stewardship is often described in beautiful language, and it should be. It is about balancing economic prosperity, resident quality of life, culture, conservation, and the long-term health of the place.
But before stewardship becomes a strategy, it has to become believable.
Residents have to understand why tourism matters to them.
Businesses have to see themselves in the work.
Elected officials have to trust the organization managing the investment.
Staff have to believe the strategy is more than a poster on the wall.
And the DMO has to stop acting as if promotion and community trust are separate departments.
They are not.
In the Florida Keys, we have been working to show residents what tourism pays for in their own terms: tax relief, environmental restoration, local culture, community events, and the services that help sustain a place with extraordinary beauty and extraordinary pressure.
The number matters.
But the lived experience matters more.
If no one in your community can repeat your value-of-tourism story back to you, then the report did not do its job.
That is not a communications problem. It is a trust problem.
AI will test whether we have done the deeper work
Tourism organizations are being asked to do more than market destinations. We are being asked to help entire visitor economies adapt.
That includes AI.
It includes data.
It includes workforce support.
It includes small business education.
It includes crisis readiness, resident sentiment, sustainability, accessibility, and the growing complexity of managing places people both live in and visit.
But none of that works if the institution is not trusted.
A DMO can launch an AI playbook. But will stakeholders use it?
A tourism board can build a data platform. But will partners believe the data?
An organization can publish a stewardship plan. But will residents think it reflects their lived experience?
A destination can say it values community. But has it built the systems for the community to be heard?
Those are the questions that matter now.
The next generation of destination leadership will require more than marketing fluency. It will require institutional credibility.
Trust is the new reach
I still believe in reach.
I believe in great creative.
I believe in smart media.
I believe in brand storytelling, sales strategy, PR, content, research, and all the work that gets people to choose one destination over another.
But I also believe this:
Reach without trust is fragile.
You can buy attention. You cannot buy permission.
And in a world where institutions are questioned, budgets are scrutinized, residents are tired, and technology is changing faster than most organizations can absorb, permission may be the most important asset a DMO has.
That is the argument I’ll be making at Destinations International.
The modern DMO cannot just be a marketing organization.
It has to be a steward of community vitality.
A translator of data.
A convener of partners.
A builder of public confidence.
A place where strategy, operations, governance, and community engagement are connected instead of siloed.
AI may change how we work.
But trust will determine whether we are allowed to lead.
The technology will keep changing.
The human requirement will not.
Trust is the new reach. Destination stewardship is the strategy.
