Destination Marketing Podcast Episode 32: Will Seccombe
Will Seccombe: The things that were working 20 years ago, the things that were working really well for destination marketers five years ago are not going to be the same things that successful tourism marketing people are going to be doing in the next three to five years. We're at a place in time where the successful programs of a few years ago are no longer going to be relevant in the next three to five years. If I can help all destination marketers think that way and work that way, and then learn from each other as they're exploring and coming up with new ideas, we'll all be better off. Adam Stoker: Welcome everybody once again to the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker, excited to be with you on the week of Thanksgiving. You won't hear this till a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, it's a little bit of a shortened week, but we're really excited to bring another episode to you. We have got a special guest today and I'll get to him in just a minute, but before we dive in too far, I want to remind everybody if you haven't already joined the destination marketers LinkedIn group, we're getting more and more people every day. We're sharing insights. We just shared the results of the Oregon campaign in there last week and it turned out really great. I actually had one of our friends from Italy that's listening to the show asking a couple of follow-up questions. We were able to get with Kevin and get answers for them as a result of posting that question. Join the destination marketers LinkedIn group if you haven't, and then if you have specific questions for the show or specific questions for me, just email DestinationMarketingPodcast@relicagency.com and we'll either get your topic on the show, if you have a suggested guest, maybe we'll bring the guest on the show, but send us direct messages that way and we can make sure that we get those answered. Really excited about our guest today. He is the president and CEO of Connect Travel. His name is Will Seccombe. Will, welcome to the show. Will Seccombe: 01:53 Hey Adam, great to be here. I'm looking forward to logging on and listening to Kevin's episode. He and I have crossed paths for years in the tourism marketing business. Adam Stoker: He was a great interview. Really, I was a little disappointed because we had technical difficulties that we've never had with any other episodes. Kyle, our producer had a little bit more of a challenging job cutting it all together. I thought it turned out great, but I would have liked to go deeper with Kevin, but because of the technical difficulties that's kind of where we ended up. He was great and their campaign is just fantastic. Will Seccombe: Yeah. They're doing great work. Adam Stoker: Well, awesome. We have a little bit of an icebreaker we do when we bring people on the show before we just get right into the meat and potatoes. I want to ask you, this is a travel podcast. Tell me, what is your dream destination? If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? Will Seccombe: Well for the last 30 years, it's always been someplace that I'm representing, right? So now I get to talk freely about where I really want to travel and not just where I'm promoting. Adam Stoker: That's right, you're not beholding anymore. Will Seccombe: Yeah. I'm not beholding anybody. I would have to say that I would like to go back to Lake Como. I absolutely loved the one day I spent there and I'd like to explore it a little bit more. Adam Stoker: And where is that? Will Seccombe: In Italy. Adam Stoker: In Italy. Okay. Will Seccombe: In Northern Italy Adam Stoker: Okay. Will Seccombe: Yeah. Adam Stoker: Now, what makes Lake Como special? Will Seccombe: 03:14 The history, the mountains, the lake, the beauty. It's an extraordinary place. I've fallen in love with some of that Northern Italy area from Chianti up to Milan and got to spend a day in Como, and it was something that lit a fire. Someday I'll go back. No question. Adam Stoker: Is that maybe your favorite place you've ever been then? Will Seccombe: That's a hard one to say. Very different. When you grow up in Colorado and get to see all the incredible mountain towns, there's an incredible power to the mountains and the beauty there, you kind of flip that to being on the beach and promoting attractions and destinations and beaches and there's an incredible power to being on the water and then you go to a place like Rome or Florence or Milan and you see some of the incredible history. I just returned from London and Edinburgh and just seeing the castles and the history of the Highlands. There's something powerful about all kinds of travel and something special that I think you take out of any kind of vacation. Adam Stoker: Well, that probably speaks to you being a lifer in the industry, right? You enjoy all aspects of it. Whatever it is that you're doing, you enjoy it. I feel the same way. Will Seccombe: Right. The power of travel, in my mind, is just being able to see new cultures and understanding new destinations and the people have made those places so special. I think there's an incredible power in learning about history and just traveling back from Edinburgh and understanding the amazing culture and history of a destination over hundreds and hundreds of years is extraordinarily powerful. I think there's amazing power in travel and the connections that you get and the connections that you make with new cultures, new people, new ideas, new thinking and as a father of four and a husband, I think probably the most powerful thing that travel does is open your eyes and explore and create incredible bonds and memories with your family. Adam Stoker: Yeah. I've got young kids. I actually just recently became a father of four. I guess I was a father of three for a long time and I just became a father of a fourth. Will Seccombe: Congratulations. Adam Stoker: 05:30 Thank you very much. We're getting to the point where we can kind of go do stuff with our kids and they get it. We've done Disneyland a couple of times. My oldest three are girls and my youngest is a boy. Watching them at Disneyland is just crazy and you're down in Florida, you probably did the Disney World thing plenty when your kids were going through that phase. I just took my daughter on a whitewater rafting trip in Vernal, Utah and on the way there they stop and you see these petroglyphs up on the mountain and we actually hike up and the guide gave us a little tour of it, and to watch my daughter have it click, you know, these people lived here thousands of years ago and the things that they wrote on the mountain and everything, It's a different experience. Sharing learning experiences like that with your kids is just different isn't it? Will Seccombe: Yeah, it is and I'm in a different age bracket, but I took my youngest with me to London and Scotland along with my wife. The first time she's traveled with me in 20 some years on a business trip to world travel market not too long ago and we spent three days up in Edinburgh, Scotland and doing the same thing is remarkable, right? When you get to see that these buildings and people, the lives they lived and the history that was in those places for thousands and thousands of years and exploring a castle is pretty cool with a 17 year-old daughter, but it's also pretty cool going to a pub and having her order a cider and get away with it. Adam Stoker: Yeah, that's great. I guess to experience all those firsts is just a lot of fun to be a part of that with your kids. Will Seccombe: That's right. Adam Stoker: Tell me, you're obviously in the industry and we're going to get to your role and everything but tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up in the tourism industry. You've got a long career in the industry. How did it come about? Will Seccombe: 07:28 I think one of the things about travel is it tends to draw people who get into this business because of passion in one way or the other. I think more so than the traditional business route in a lot of ways. I was born and raised in Colorado. I learned how to ski when I was three and skiing was my thing. After organized college, high school sports were done and I had the opportunity to start as a sales guy for Vail and Beaver Creek Resorts out of college and was out representing Vail and Beaver Creek to meeting planners, travel agents, tour operators in seven states in the US and that really kicked me into the travel business. Originally, I was in the ski business and ultimately over a couple of different ski areas and running marketing at a Loveland ski area where I crossed paths with Kevin Wright who I think, three or four years later, after I left Loveland became the marketing director there as well. Adam Stoker: Yeah. Well, I'm going to stop you there real quick. It almost seems like the ski industry, especially in Colorado is the gateway drug to the tourism industry because we've had several people we've interviewed here on the podcast, and they're like, "Oh man, I started in skiing and then it evolved into being in the tourism industry." It's fun to hear that that's your path as well because skiing really does seem to be that gateway into the passion for the entire industry. Will Seccombe: I think you look at it as certainly people that are coming up in the Rocky Mountain West. That was the industry in travel and tourism certainly at the time, right? That was the one driver that was bringing people from out of state and out of the country into the US for that incredible activity and the sport and passion of skiing. That's the entry point there, that or the hotel industry in a lot of ways. Now living in Florida, if you come to Florida, you're probably starting at a SeaWorld or at Disney world or Universal and that's your entry point and if you find a pathway through that business there's incredible opportunities and directions where those careers can, from an entry level job can take you up into an amazing career and there's some extraordinary stories of people starting off as lift operators, Roger Dow, the president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. The spokesman for the industry in the United States, started as a lifeguard at a pool in Florida. That's an amazing industry and a lot of opportunities to create memories for people. Adam Stoker: Absolutely. Let's talk career wise, you were at Loveland Ski Area and then you kind of moved into another portion of the industry. Do you want to tell us about that? Will Seccombe: 10:15 Yeah. It was funny in the ski business, at the time I was the director of marketing mountain services at Loveland, which is probably the coolest ski area experience I've ever been around. Loved it, had to ski in, ski out office and had a blast. It was the fastest growing ski area in the state for several years, but I had the opportunity to go and switch sides. It was either go to another ski area. Again, in the business, you're most likely to move up, you have to move around. So, it's go to another ski area, bigger job, bigger mountain. I got the opportunity to go down to Denver and be where I was born and raised and become the first ever vice president of marketing at the Denver Convention & Visitor's Bureau, and that was a fun experience. While I had served on the CVB board for Clear Creek County as a representative of Loveland Ski Area and had participated and partnered with the local DMO in Vail, it was kind of their first real entry point into the destination marketing space, certainly on the staff side and working with a really dynamic city. The Mile-High City where I was born and raised, went through a really exciting transition over that time with new baseball fields, a new airport, and new basketball arena. We had an amazing run of evolution of the community while I was there. The irony is now I go back and I can barely recognize the city. It's continued on that path for the last 20 years. That community has continued to grow and from a tourism perspective, I'm sure I haven't seen the numbers lately, but the work that they're doing now is much more elevated than we were doing 20 years ago, I can assure you. It was funny, Connect Travel owns and operates the eTourism Summit and we celebrated 20 years of running the eTourism Summit this October and one of the presentations was digital marketing and the evolution for the last 20 years and the presenters did an amazing job. It was pretty funny to look back and see what that first website that we ever built for the Denver CVB back in, I guess, it must've been '98 or '96 and how far it's evolved and certainly the marketing that the team at Visit Denver is doing now is much more advanced and much more focused than what we were doing when we first started back in, I guess '95. Adam Stoker: Yeah. Boy, how the landscape has changed and maybe we'll talk about that a little bit after we get through your background because you have seen a big change in evolution in the industry, but let's talk about where you went after Denver. You were there for several years and then where'd you go? Will Seccombe: I was the VP of Marketing Denver for five years, really focused on building co-op marketing, leisure marketing programs and as you remember back in Colorado in one of the infamous case studies in the power of tourism marketing, right at that time, the Colorado tourism board got voted out of existence that sunsetted out. Adam Stoker: Yes. Kevin talked to us a little bit about that. Will Seccombe: 13:23 Colorado tourism lost 30% of market share overnight and the first real example of politics and the tourism industry and understanding what kind of damage can happen when there's no tourism marketing. At the time the state decided to put a million or $2 million into funding a new Colorado tourism organization, obviously, Visit Denver were very involved in trying to make sure that the organization was set up and structured the right way and really adding value to the tourism industry. I was on the advertising search committee and we looked and found and hired a new advertising firm and about a year or so later they recruited me over to run the tourism marketing for the state of Florida from the advertising agency side. I ended up working for that agency as kind of the VP of tourism and the VP of account service and ultimately the COO of the agency. We did Colorado tourism and some amazing work as we rebuilt that brand for five years and did some amazing work for Aspen and the Broadmoor and Colorado Springs and some really cool tourism accounts over that five years. It was a fun evolution, again, to see the business from the operations side, to see it from the DMO side and then to see it from the advertising agency and PR agency side for five years. That was a nice way to round out understanding what the tourism industry looks like. Adam Stoker: Yeah. I mean the fact that you've seen it from all angles has to have played into you moving into your current role at Connect Travel because I feel like the preparation that you got through all the different stops in your career allows you to put together these conferences in such a way that they are so laser focused on growth for the destination or for the destination marketer or you've got stuff for other people, not just the marketers within the destination. Tell me how that kind of prepared you for your current role and what you're doing now. Will Seccombe: 15:28 Yeah. Again, I've always been really focused on the evolution of tourism marketing and it's funny looking back to see what we were thinking the future of destination marketing would be back then, when we were building the first website for Denver or the second website for Colorado Tourism when I was at PRACO, which is now Vladimir Jones. Then after five years, I spent about three years really focusing on digital tourism, marketing, consulting for the travel industry, working with destinations, working with resorts and attractions and built to it at the time, which was the first ever online travel magazine and it was called SoGoNow and that was really the beginning of understanding about content and what the real stories are that matter to people. When you start to figure out that there's a lot of other voices that are selling destination stories outside of the advertising agency and SoGoNow is a liberating experience. One of the coolest things that I've ever been involved in, but it was a good five or six years ahead of its time. I go back and look at Wayback Machine and look at what SoGoNow.com was doing back in the late '90s and thank God that was way ahead of its time and a really pretty cool product. That was around the late '90s and then I got a phone call from a head-hunter saying, we'd like to talk to you about a CMO job down in Florida, which is probably something I'd never even thought about. I didn't really know what a hurricane was and ended up spending five years as the CMO at VISIT FLORIDA where we had the opportunity to do extraordinary things. That was followed by another five years as the president CEO of VISIT FLORIDA. Again, I work the state marketing from the staff role as a CMO and a CEO as an agency kind of running the staff. After running the marketing for Colorado after 9/11 at the city level CVB at the attraction level, and then obviously at the agency level. Really gives me a unique perspective to look and see what tourism marketing has been, where it's come from, where it's going to go and how destination marketers, how marketing partners. There's so many people that are so smart that are helping destinations and resorts and attractions with their marketing efforts, advertising agencies, PR agencies, digital agencies. How they're helping create and add value to the destinations and the communities that they serve. That perspective has really led to an exciting place now where I'm not necessarily just representing at one destination, Florida or a Colorado or a Denver, but allowing to bring that perspective and provide some ideas and the ability to connect and stay ahead of the course of evolution and tourism and destination marketing moving forward. That's really what we started with Connect Travel both through organic growth of new events and new programs and some acquisitions that are really strategically targeted to helping destination marketers be better. A lot of that is founded on a pretty simple premise that the things that were working 20 years ago, the things that were working really well for destination marketers five years ago are not going to be the same things that successful tourism marketing people are going to be doing in the next three to five years. We're at a place in time where the successful programs of a few years ago are no longer going to be relevant in the next three to five years. If I can help all destination marketers think that way and work that way and then learn from each other as they're exploring and coming up with new ideas, then we'll all be better off. Adam Stoker: 19:30 Yeah. Let's talk about that. What are some of the major challenges of today that you're seeing that kind of permeate throughout the industry? What are people dealing with that you feel like, man, we need to share this with everybody so that nobody's lagging behind. Will Seccombe: I think there's issues at the community level that are really important to address that are changing right now. There's issues obviously with technology and what that's going to enable and then obviously the impacts that technology is having on consumer behavior. I guess if I started first, I'd say in the old days a lot of destinations focused on their membership and focused on kind of their community involvement through membership or even if it was a county or a city based that was a non-membership destination organization, a lot of what we had to do was promoting those partners that were engaged and you remember back when the only hotels that would be listed on a destination website were those that were members and writing cheques to the CVB, and that was the case in Denver. That was the case when I got to Florida and the reality is over time we've learned that serving a membership is not necessarily serving the visitor. There was a really interesting transition from, “are we serving our base of the people that are supporting us or are we out there to provide and add real value to the traveler and give them the information that they need to plan a trip?” Ultimately there was a shift towards really traveler focused marketing efforts on understanding what it is to serve them best. That's evolved and I think it's really in the process of evolving even further. I can look back to hard conversations we had five or six years ago and said, if it comes down to 50%, 51%, but at the end of the day, are we here to serve our stakeholders or are we here to serve our visitors? And to ultimately best serve a stakeholder, you were out to serve the visitor and provide them the information that they needed to make their decisions and recognizing at the time, you're not going to out-Google, Google. Somebody's got the opportunity to find every cool restaurant in your community, but if you're only listing the 50 that are writing cheques. You're not going to serve the customer as well. There was a fundamental shift there to really opening up and serving the entire community. I think today that question would be turned on its head and it's not necessarily what's best for the visitor, but we're going kind of 360 degrees and now it's what's in the best interests of the community. How do we best create economic development within our community, create jobs for the community, utilize the spending that visitors are bringing into the community to benefit citizens and create a better quality of life for the community? You have a lot of conversations now around sustainability and over-tourism and how do we get the right visitors at the right time that are going to not just boost our numbers quarter over quarter or year over year so we can report record visitation for a 10th straight year but rather how do we bring in visitors that are going to best support the economy and give us a quality of life that we would not have otherwise. The restaurants, the attractions, the shopping experiences that wouldn't be sustainable just by the population of the community that they reside in but are only available because, and only able to serve the community, because of the visitors that are supporting them financially. Adam Stoker: 23:13 Let's talk about that. I think you bring up a great point, Will, and that's that a lot of these tourism destinations, especially in a small market, these tourism, excuse me, destination marketers, their role is to generate such a large portion of the revenue for the community. That asking that question, what's best for the community, is okay. It's been about the visitor for so long and the visitor experience is paramount to your brand, right? And making sure that you have the best reputation that you can, but I do think it's okay to start asking the question, “okay, how do we generate revenue in such a way that is going to benefit the community?”, especially as you start to get into the over-tourism issues that people are bringing up and that are happening because the economy is good, so travel continues to grow, right? How do we make sure that we as destination marketers are managing that engine of generating tourism and revenue for the destination in such a way that it really helps the economy? That we're doing what's best for the community. I think that's a great point and it's a shift that's happening right now. Will Seccombe: 24:20 It is, and it obviously varies so much for community to community and I think a lot of it starts with just asking the question of the stakeholders in your community. A robust destination marketing organization needs to have visionary public sector leadership. You need to have active, engaged, private sector leadership and then you need to have a real focus on what you can do to create the product and the experiences and the services that are going to drive demand. When you think from a community perspective, there are a lot of destinations that, and I was recently at a conference in Florida put on by VISIT FLORIDA, talking about areas that have over-tourism and there's destinations around the most visited state in the country that would love to have more bodies, right? And then there's others that want to have the right bodies. From one community it might be about getting people to come and spend a day exploring an off-the-beaten path destination. Just getting the bodies there to explore and spend some money. Other destinations are focused on how do we get the right people at the right time? That may be focusing much more on a higher yield visitor where it's not about how many people I get, but how much money I bring into the community and I think that all starts with the conversation that needs to have the stakeholders at stake, the community at stake and then the private sector all having a conversation of what's right and what's best for us. It might be more people at any given time or it might be we need to really focus 100% of our effort on higher yield visitors in our high seasons and a concerted effort to build out the low seasons or the shoulder seasons so that we can generate year round employment, which would be a huge win for the people within the community. Adam Stoker: 26:19 Yeah, great point. Engage with your stakeholders and find out what their needs are and then craft your plan according to that. Then report on what you do, right. Get back to them with how you're working on that and, I think, as a community as a whole, you'll see a big improvement. I want to talk about Connect Travel a little bit more. Will, I was exposed to Connect Travel for the first time when I went to your connect marketplace conference this past February, and then I sent one of my executive team members to eTourism Summit in San Francisco this year and I love your conferences. I think you guys do a lot of unique and interesting things, which is why I alluded earlier to the fact that I think your experience in all aspects of the industry have probably helped you get in this role and provide a great product. Tell me a little bit about the mission of Connect Travel and the different types of things that you guys are doing and then we'll kind of dive into the format of your conferences and that type of thing. Will Seccombe: 27:17 Yeah, absolutely. We're focused on connecting marketers and destination sales folks with the people that can help them grow their business and we do that in two different ways. It's from the product services, the agencies and then the people that are facilitating travel. We're focused on a marketing component and in that marketing component, but we've got the marketing leadership summit, which you were talking about in February, and that will be in Kissimmee next February with President Barack Obama as a keynote. Adam Stoker: How exciting. Yeah, I'm going to be there. I can't wait. Will Seccombe: Really powerful speakers. They're building on what we did last year with president George W. Bush, which was amazing but that's really focused on the future of tourism marketing and how do we bring VPs of advertising and marketing and presidents and CEOs for destinations and resorts and attractions together to think about those trends and technologies that are going to impact tourism marketing in the next three to five years and then we have a really unique way we connect the DMOs with the suppliers that are providing amazing services and it's not just the five or six that are involved with hundreds of destinations around the country, but a lot of smaller players that are really providing programs and opportunities that really create value, and we do that with one-on-one prescheduled appointments which is something that I've found to be incredibly valuable. There's nothing in my mind that works as well as a meeting with intent and sitting down and spending 10 minutes to learn about what somebody else is doing and how they're helping solve problems within the global ecosystem of travel marketing, and that's a really exciting event and we're looking forward to February and again, it's an opportunity that was born out of conversations that we had at VISIT FLORIDA where you had a marketing team that you could sit in the hall at the marketing office and hear the phone ring and it would ring from one person to the next person, the next person, the next person. It's really smart, aggressive marketing agencies and services and media companies that were just trying to break through and get through the door but a destination marketer just doesn't have enough time to answer all those calls, much less set up and have a coffee or a cocktail or a lunch or in office presentation. We kind of eliminated vendor presentations at VISIT FLORIDA and replaced them with a one day a quarter where we do all day long back to back presentations with the entire team. It was amazing how much more you learned in that than you did in a quick sales meeting or you would learn at a trade show floor saying hello to walking by and introducing yourself to people. The model really works to grow and learn more about what's available in the marketplace and how marketers can think about what's coming down the pike and then two learn how they can tap into different partners around the country to help them meet their goals. That marketing leadership summit has been really successful, and you mentioned the eTourism Summit which is going into its 21st year next year, and we're moving it from San Francisco to Seattle and we'll be on the campus of Expedia thanks to our partnership with Expedia Media Group. Adam Stoker: Oh great. Will Seccombe: 30:47 Again, that's really for a lot of the people that are in the trenches every day and how do you make your marketing efforts more successful? And how do you learn from other destinations around the country? What's working best for them? I was talking to a good friend that's a CMO at a major destination and he's like, “listen, we know the world is changing. We know marketing efforts are going to have to change and we're willing to take risks, but I can't take all the risks in a year.” It's really valuable to learn and see what other people are doing and what they're learning and learning from other destination marketers, and that has become a really powerful event and we're really excited to be producing that one. Then finally, on the marketing side we've got a new event that was just in October in San Francisco this year, as well, and that's the Connect THRIVE Summit and that's really focused on community development through LGBTQ travel, sports and entertainment. It's bringing all those elements of destination together alongside a community that really has an opportunity to work together to grow a specific segment of the industry that is really important; and I think kind of underserved. That's our third major element in the marketing space. Then we've got another five or six that are focused on international business development and how to connect destinations with the people that are facilitating and actually selling travel globally. We’ll have over 250 tour operators from 30 countries at our Connect Travel marketplace in February as well. Adam Stoker: That's great. Okay. I've got a hypothesis or kind of a platform about conferences that I wanted to run by you and see how you feel about it, but there's two components to going to a trade show in my mind. One is the inspirational, right? You've got the Barack Obama's and George W. Bush's that come in and they give you this really interesting message that you walk away feeling inspired, right? But then the other component is the tactical, right? Like what can I leave this conference and go back to my DMO and implement tomorrow? How do you guys take care of both of those things? Obviously, I mean, I was there last year when George W. Bush was there, and you do a great job with the inspirational speakers. I think the marketplace really touches on the tactical side of things where you get those two minute meetings with different suppliers. Do you guys think about it that way? Or how do you think to make sure that somebody walks away feeling like this was an incredible conference? Will Seccombe: 33:32 Yeah, I think it really depends, to me, on the audience that you're trying to attract, right? At the marketing leadership summit in February, you've got the senior leadership and you want to inspire people, you want to push thinking ahead. I think it's really important to me for destinations and the leadership of destinations to realize again, that core principle that what has worked for me in the last five years is not going to work for me five years from now and the destinations that are going to be looked upon as vibrant and really progressive and successful five years from now, which by all accounts is going to at some point see a dip, right? I mean, we're navigating really extraordinary times and there's been 10 years of growth and it doesn't matter where you are. You've seen growth and visitor volume and visitor spending all across the country and across the world, but there's going to be a dip and that dip is going to expose the people that continue to do what they've always done because that's what they've always done. We really try to focus there on opening people's minds to what is going to happen and maybe not necessarily what's going to happen, but the possibilities and the evolution in the marketplace and that opens up minds. So, somebody like you that's down there trying to meet new destinations and to get new clients and help other people become better marketers or expose them to new ideas or new ways of thinking, they're going to be much more open to those kinds of conversations. Much more open to new partnerships than they would if they thought they could continue to ride the wave. That's the fundamental belief behind the marketing leadership summit. ETourism summit's a little bit different. That's, again the people, that's the directors of marketing, the VPs of marketing, the heads of content, the digital marketing folks that all know that the world is changing on or that they want to continue to be strategic, smart and impactful with the limited resources that they have but they just want to learn and see from other people what the new exciting things that are coming down the pipe and the new services. They also want to see how other peers have been successful in utilizing that and creating a positive impact for their destination. Adam Stoker: 35:50 That's awesome. Well, I'm glad you guys are looking at it that way because I really did feel like walking away from your conference last year, like it hit all points for me and it's good that you guys are being thoughtful about the different angles that you're helping someone walk away from your conference. Tell me just because this is a curiosity more than anything else, but man, what goes into getting a George W. Bush or a Barack Obama to come speak at your conference? I can't imagine that's an easy thing to do. Will Seccombe: Not an easy thing and you know, I'll tell you what's the harder thing than getting a George W. Bush or a Barack last year, and president Obama coming up in February is what are we going to do in 2021? That just raises the bar. I'm not sure. Adam Stoker: How do you top those two? Will Seccombe: How do you top these two, and we're trying to come up with some ideas as we speak, but obviously there's a value proposition for all of us and the way that it works is we'll have the Connect Travel marketplace, which is our biggest international marketing show alongside the marketing leadership summit and alongside another event for business travel. The way we're able to do that is obviously by having multiple events happening at the same time so we can disperse some of the costs that are necessary, but it's fascinating to watch and just to see a president firsthand and have the conversation and see that a president like George W. Bush. The amount of security that still comes with the person and the position and the respect from all the folks in law enforcement is really remarkable and really powerful to see and to understand and to get to have the opportunity to meet them. I think everybody that sat and listened to president Bush saw the human, not necessarily the politician, and I think if people on the right or the left realized that this pretty extraordinary person that lived an amazing life and it opened up all of our eyes to that world. Adam Stoker: Yeah. Really interesting stuff. I bet there's a lot of meetings and phone calls that people probably don't even realize they're going on and then I imagine it probably falls apart at one point in time and you've got to put it back together and scheduling or whether, I've got to imagine that there's a lot that goes into that. Will Seccombe: 38:15 There's a lot and it's an exciting opportunity. I think anytime you have the opportunity to listen to somebody that has lived lives like those two have both lived and experienced, the kind of things that they've lived is inspirational and eye-opening. Again, our goal is to make people think a little bit different and approach their jobs and their lives with a couple of new perspectives and interestingly that's kind of circling back to our first question, that's what travel does too. It does open your eyes to different ways of looking at things and as Duncan Wardle, who will be keynoting at marketing leadership summit this year, the former head of innovation for Disney says nobody gets those breakthrough really cool, powerful ideas while they're sitting in a conference room, in a meeting room. You're getting that while you’re off exercising or walking or exploring or traveling or seeing something new where your mind opens up and it will be successful if we're able to one, open up some minds that are at our events and two, make those introductions to partners and potential partners that can help them grow their business either from a marketing perspective or on the international side by a new relationship with a new tour operator that can bring a lot of new business to your destination and that's our goal. Adam Stoker: Great. Well, I really appreciate having you on, I'm looking forward to coming out to the conference in February in Kissimmee. Tell me before we let you go, is there anything, I mean our listeners are mostly destinations across the world, is there any advice you can give them that I haven't asked you a question about that would help them continue to grow? Will Seccombe: I think first and foremost, something that I've mentioned several times is that we are not going to, as destination marketers, be successful in the next three to five years doing the same things we've done for the last five, 10, 15, 20. I don't think we've changed as fast as the environment in which we're operating has changed and I think paying attention to the trends that are going to be impactful from voice search to AI and understanding and identifying the people in our industry and people outside of our industry that are doing that stuff well is going to be really important. I think, especially, given the very high likelihood that we're going to have some sort of a dip in the economy or something that will disrupt the 10-year run that we've all been able to enjoy. It's going to be really important. I guess the final piece of all of that is that's off the cool marketing stuff that's going to be happening in the next few years and how we're going to be talking to speakers and getting really relevant personalized information is really cool but ultimately taking it all the way back to why you are doing what we're doing in the first place. That's ultimately to benefit the citizens of our community and create better qualities of life and create jobs and that, I think, is going to center a lot of what we do and how we're going to be powerful contributors to lives of the community and the residents that we live with. Adam Stoker: 41:40 Great advice. Will, it's been good to have you. Will Seccombe: Hey, I really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun and I wish you guys all the best and look forward to seeing you in Kissimmee in February. Adam Stoker: Awesome. Well, let's make sure we get to connect in person. I'd look forward to meeting you. Will Seccombe: Absolutely. I will look forward to that as well. Adam Stoker: Great. Well, this has been another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast everyone, I hope you enjoyed it. Great conversation here with Will Seccombe from Connect Travel. Just another quick reminder. From a review standpoint, reviews really help us get noticed, help us continue to grow the way that we have so far and if you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review. Other than that, we'll talk to you next week.
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