Conversion-grade destination site
Itinerary builder, lodging directory, event calendar, blog editorial, and a partner-friendly listing system.
Convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs), destination marketing organizations (DMOs), and tourism boards are the entities responsible for moving heads-in-beds, day-trip traffic, and downtown spending in their service areas — typically funded by lodging tax. Southwind runs always-on tourism programs — destination websites, drive-market paid media, content, PR, STR and Placer.ai dashboards — that fill rooms and produce the lodging-tax-dollar ROI your board demands.
Common Challenges
If any of these sound familiar, you're not alone
- Lodging tax committee wants ROI, not vanity metrics.
- Website looks like a bulletin board, not a trip planner.
- Social is posting events with two days notice.
- Paid media isn't tied to drive-market data.
- You don't have a usable STR dashboard.
How We Help
What a Southwind engagement looks like for tourism & cvbs
Drive-market paid media
Meta, Google, and connected TV targeted at the markets that historically convert into room nights.
STR + Placer dashboard
Lodging performance, foot traffic, visitor origin, and Google Analytics in a single monthly board view.
PR & FAM tours
Press trips, FAM tours, and media pitching to regional and national travel writers.
Results
What you can expect
- Measurable lift in lodging tax collections
- Increased Main Street and attraction foot traffic
- Earned media placements in regional and national outlets
Services
Services that anchor this work
Tourism Marketing
Heads in beds. Boots on Main Street. Stories that travel.
Explore →Website Design
Websites built to win site selectors, members, residents, and visitors.
Explore →Social Media
Social presence that builds trust without burning out your staff.
Explore →Data Dashboards
One screen for foot traffic, lodging tax, leads, and KPIs your board actually asks about.
Explore →Video & Photography
The footage and photography your community deserves.
Explore →In Depth
A closer look
How tourism marketing budgets get justified
Lodging tax committees renew programs that show three things every quarter: lift in lodging tax collections, identifiable drive-market campaigns that produced those room nights, and earned-media coverage that justified the promotion spend. We tie every dollar to a measurable: paid media spend to room-night attribution via STR and Placer.ai, content to organic traffic on trip-planning pages, and PR to ad-value equivalency for placements that hit your drive markets.
Drive markets matter more than statewide reach
Most CVB media buys default to statewide or 'regional' — impressive in the deck, untraceable in the data. We build market-by-market: Meta and Google for the top 3 drive markets within 4 hours, Connected TV for the top 1, weather-triggered creative for storm-belt markets. Every campaign is paired with a landing page tagged for STR and Placer match-back.
What a tourism website needs to compete with TripAdvisor and Google Travel
Itinerary builder, partner-friendly lodging directory, moderated partner events calendar, drive-market editorial, deals or packages module, downloadable visitor guides, and structured data on every attraction page so Google destination panels and AI Overviews pull from your site instead of third-party aggregators. We've shipped destination sites for CVBs from 200 to 4,000 lodging units.
Earned media and FAM tours: building the regional travel press relationship
A good year of CVB PR produces 15 to 30 earned-media placements. The mechanism: refreshed regional travel writer list, quarterly FAM tours with 4 to 6 writers, a seasonal story pitch calendar, and a follow-up workflow that tracks placement, AVE, and message pull-through.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Are you familiar with state lodging tax restrictions?
Yes — particularly in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, where promotion vs facilities allocations vary.
Can you market a county-level CVB?
Most of our DMO clients are county-scale. Our pricing is built for those budgets.
Do you handle press trips?
Yes — itinerary design, host coordination, and media follow-up.
Let's talk
Ready to grow your community or organization?
Schedule a free consultation and we'll map a practical plan for your goals, your team, and your budget.