People-First Tourism

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Stimulate Grassroots Entrepreneurship

Recruit locals that make communities special.

Your destination has local crafts people, change makers, artists, and keepers of stories that make your community unique. Your destination holds a monopoloy on the uniqueness of “place” that can be used to attract visitors. We work with destinations to identify authentic experiences aligned with the destination’s brand promise and market them to discerning visitors.

“Communities… should work to develop localized brand engagement that highlights the dimensions of each municipality.”
- Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, Destination 2028, 2018.

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Market Experiences Online

Present, promote, and transact authentic experiences.

It is difficult for experience providers in a destination to coordinate their online promotion and transaction activites. People-First Tourism provides a centralized marketplace for its destination partners. We handle all the systems, web design and transaction workflow to create online customer access to your experiences. The result is a promotable asset for the destination.

“It is helpful that P1t has its own marketplace because it allows local entrepreneurs to try offering experiences for the first time. The experiences on their marketplace look professional and it makes it easier for our TDA to market them.”
-Don Cason, Executive Director Rutherford County TDA, 2023

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Help Industry Connect Guests with Your Community

Build cross-sector partnerships that promote destination competitiveness.

Formal attractions and hospitality partners struggle to make genuine local experiences conveniently available to their guests. We curate experiences aligned with the destination brand promise and work directly with select industry partners to promote them semi-exclusively to their guests. Industry partners can easily meet their discerning guests’ desire for authentic experiences, and contribute to the destination’s brand promise.

“Greater industry, community and government alignment is driving destination competitiveness and brand.”
- Destinations International, 2021

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Drive Success with Data

Inform your intuition with actionable intelligence.

Traditional tourism metrics focus on volume of tourist visitation and revenue growth. Since destinations pursue what they measure, traditional metrics lead destinations on races to the bottom. Using advanced analytics, we examine local entrepreneurial involvement in the local tourism economy, the concentration vs. reach of tourism expenditures across the destination, and local residents' perceived leisure and utilitarian benefits of tourism activity in their community.

“Technology helps us to better manage our social, cultural and environmental impacts. And if well managed, tourism can act as an agent of positive change for more sustainable lifestyles, destinations, and consumption and production patterns.”
-UNWTO, 2018

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A Word from Our CEO

Creating Healthy Destinations Through Grassroots Entrepreneurship and Hyperlocal Experiences 

“The mission of our company is to enable communities to harness the economic power of tourism in their own terms."

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Meet with us for a deeper dive into how we can contribute to your destinations’ competitiveness and sustainability.

We have a solid history in our work with People-First Tourism. They are innovators encouraging the vitality of our assets while enriching the experience for our visitors."

Wit Tuttell — Executive Director, Visit North Carolina

© People-First Tourism, Inc 2023 All rights reserved.