The Future of Officing

In destinations as diverse as Kankakee County and Kansas City, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) have made the decision to ditch their physical offices after experiencing a degree of success working virtually during the pandemic. Other DMO CEOs have planted their feet firmly in the "back to the office" camp to preserve staff culture and creativity.

Visit Omaha has elected to do a hybrid approach, leaving its Downtown location in favor of virtual officing...but utilizing some of the $250,000 it would have sunk into lease payments into renting meeting space at destination hotels when it needs to meet face to face. Smartly, they'll keep their sensational Visitors Center open and use it as their administrative hub.

How is your DMO evolving when it comes to the future of its Office and Visitor Center?

Comments

[Jim Epperson]

We own our office and visitor center so we aren't in a hurry to make a move, but we are planning to shake things up. Our VC location isn't viable anymore after a change in interstate exits. We have a willing buyer for both properties. We will look for downtown location(s) for our visitor center(s) and likely some leased space for offices with shared workstations and a place for public records which must be made available for inspection plus secure employee file storage. But do we need a reception desk and public hours anymore? No. What's our T-Comm setup look like? Increased reimbursement for cell phone and now home internet? How much more can we digitize our bills, etc., to eliminate paper flow but still comply with State Board of Accounts requirements? All of these questions and more will be going into an internal white paper to guide board discussion and decisions. Luckily, we don't have a lease expiring so we have time.

[Bill Geist]

Glad to hear that you have the luxury of time...as it will be fascinating to watch how our peers evolve, some killing it and others stumbling into unforeseen challenges. Anecdotally, we're seeing Downtown Visitor Centers outperform highway (entry to town) Centers. We'll be diving into new Visitor Center data in an upcoming episode of DMOU.