Hell yeah...and well played, Visit Mississippi. This is "Crossroads," penned by Mississippi legend Robert Johnson with performances by Keb' Mo, Kingfish, Charlie Worsham, Cedric Burnside and several more from around the world.

Carnival Cruises has announced it will begin sailing from Mobile year round in 2027. The connection? It was Brenda Scott who tirelessly led the charge to get cruise lines to consider Mobile back in the late '90s.

“Heads in Beds” is the result of our work...not why we do the work. And really, that phrase needs to be stricken from our lexicon, stat.

With deportations in the air, where will tourism businesses go to find the workers they need? Teenagers, previously protected by child labor laws, are Florida's new target.

An Associate Professor of Political Science in the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Florida recently suggested that the Bad Bunny brand may be more important than the work that record-breaking Discover Puerto Rico has done over the past 7 years.

This article from The Conversation gets to the heart of the current boycotting of America...it's the only action people possess to express outrage, regardless of how futile. And, it makes people feel good, if for but a moment.

With all the chaos surrounding us, it's heartening to see that the boneheaded experiment to abandon its DMO in Duluth has officially ended.

Three years ago, we jointly identified the growing imperative for DMO Board Leaders to benefit from the same learning and networking that was available to their CEOs and professional staff...and that did not exist. It does today...and, thank you, my friends, for making it a reality. You are, indeed, the Dream Team.

The hubris of the bill's sponsor (a builder of elegant multi-million homes by trade) however, is laughable: “Tourism is valuable. I get that. But tourism is also alive and well," he said after a hearing in which the measure was properly toasted last month. 

As someone who is on the road roughly half the year, working with our Destination Marketing clients across the Americas, I have the simple solution to the shame people are feeling.

“Defeated and exhausted, I started to trudge out of the lounge around midnight. That's when a Delta employee asked for my boarding pass. ‘Where are you headed?’ she asked. ‘Columbus,’ I said. ‘No, where are you supposed to be going?’ she responded.

There is a Catch-22 here: residents need houses in order to rebuild and restart the economy, but they can’t restart the economy without tourists. And tourists require services, which require workers, who require housing.

Inexperience in marketing is actually a good thing...because the best Boards aren't subject experts. They are influencers. They are liaisons with the community they serve. They are advocates and activists.