How to Charm the Pants Off Your Residents

Goodwill might be the most important destination KPI nobody is measuring.

Here’s something funny about tourism people: we are, professionally speaking, charmers.

Think about what we do for a living. We convince somebody in Ohio to get on an airplane because the light hits a mountain nicely. We make grown adults drive four hours for a biscuit. We can turn an alley into an arts district, a puddle into a waterfront experience, and three wineries within a 40-mile radius into wine country.

We know how to make people fall in love with places.

And then we turn around to talk to the people who actually live in those places, and suddenly everybody puts on a blazer and starts talking about economic impact.

“Tourism generated $4.7 billion…”

Cool.

Linda still hates you.

So, Charm as a KPI?

Charm is a funny thing because everybody knows it when they encounter it, but the minute you try to turn it into a strategic initiative, you’ve probably killed it.

It’s not a campaign. It’s not a resident sentiment survey. And it is definitely not putting RESIDENT ENGAGEMENT in a strategic plan and then scheduling a town hall at 3:30 on a Tuesday.

Charm is really just the accumulation of tiny reasons people decide they like you.

You’re interesting. You’re generous. You remember people. You make them feel like they’re in on something. You show up occasionally when you don’t need anything from them.

And every once in a while you do something for absolutely no defensible strategic reason other than:

People will freaking love this.

Charm is why the neighborhood restaurant can screw up your order, and you still go back. It’s why your favorite aunt can ask a wildly inappropriate question at Thanksgiving and somehow remain your favorite aunt.

It’s that mysterious bit of human chemistry that makes us shrug and say:

Yeah, I know. But I like them.

Do you have any idea how valuable that sentence is?

Because what we’re really talking about here is goodwill, and organizations spend enormous amounts of money trying to manufacture something that can really only be earned.

I Think Goodwill Is Infrastructure

Hear me out.

We talk constantly about destination infrastructure: airports, roads, convention centers, trails, wayfinding, broadband, public spaces.

I’d like to nominate one more:

People who don’t immediately assume you’re full of shit.

That is infrastructure, my friends.

Because eventually, something is going to happen.

You’re going to propose something residents don’t immediately understand. Tourism is going to wander into a housing argument. Visitors are going to do something spectacularly stupid. A development project will become THE development project. Somebody will discover the tourism budget and announce on Facebook that obviously the money should have been used to fix the pothole in front of their house.

The city council meeting will get spicy.

Linda will return.

And that is a terrible moment to introduce yourself to the community with:

“According to our most recent economic-impact study…”

You want a little money already sitting in the emotional bank.

Fine. Let’s Measure Charm.

This is tourism, after all. Apparently we’re not allowed to discuss anything until we invent a KPI for it.

So here you go.

How likely is Linda to defend you at Bunco?

Not because Linda has memorized your annual report. Linda went to the resident preview you hosted last spring, had a blast, met three local business owners, learned something she didn’t know about her own town, and now thinks the tourism people are kind of fun.

I would like to see that on a dashboard.

This measures how much nonsense can occur before the Facebook comments become a federal emergency.

Every organization eventually screws something up. Every destination gets something wrong. Every campaign carries at least a small possibility of becoming Screenshots That Will Live Forever.

Goodwill buys you a little grace.

Not unlimited grace. We’re talking community relations, not diplomatic immunity.

But maybe enough for someone to see something weird and think:

Huh. I wonder what’s going on.

Instead of:

I KNEW IT. THESE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UP TO SOMETHING SINCE 2007.

That difference is enormous.

Here’s my favorite:

How many people will say “Actually…” on your behalf without being on payroll?

Because when your organization says tourism is good for the community, that’s marketing.

When somebody’s neighbor says, “Actually, those tourism people helped with…” now we have something entirely different.

That’s a relationship.

And that’s really what charm gets you. It gets you the benefit of the doubt. It gets somebody to open the email. It gets people to show up. It gets you a little forgiveness when you occasionally screw something up and curiosity before suspicion.

Most importantly, it gives you a relationship before you need the relationship.

There’s the whole trick.

So How Do You Charm the Pants Off Them?

This should almost be unfairly easy for tourism because we already know how to do all of this.

We create experiences for a living. We tell stories. We make people feel like they’ve discovered something. We understand hospitality.

So maybe, and I’m just spitballing here, use some of it at home.

1. Give Them the Good Shit

You know all those cool experiences you’re constantly telling visitors about?

Give some to the locals.

Sneak previews, resident passes, behind-the-scenes tours, new attraction openings, restaurant experiences, familiarization days, seasonal kickoffs. Give people reasons to wander around their own destination saying:

“Wait. We have THAT here?”

That sentence is gold.

Familiarity is one of destination marketing’s strangest enemies. People will spend three months planning a vacation somewhere else while somehow never visiting the museum nine minutes from their house.

Help them rediscover their own backyard.

And not because you’re secretly trying to turn them into unpaid destination ambassadors.

Please don’t call them ambassadors.

Just let them have fun.

2. Make Them Insiders

People freaking love knowing stuff. We have built entire media industries around this basic human condition.

So tell residents what’s coming. Show them the campaign before everybody else sees it. Let them meet the chef opening the new restaurant. Tell them the story behind the mural or why that weird building downtown looks like that.

Give them the tiny pieces of destination lore that probably don’t belong in your media plan but absolutely belong at a dinner table.

Because insider information is social currency, and suddenly your resident isn’t repeating your talking points. They’re telling somebody a story.

Much better.

3. Brag About Them

Here’s a radical tourism marketing concept:

Maybe we’re not the interesting ones.

Feature the bartender. The park ranger. The housekeeper who’s worked at the same hotel for 27 years. The STR host who leaves handwritten restaurant recommendations. The chef. The volunteer. The historian.

And obviously the lady running the gift shop who knows absolutely everything happening within a twelve-mile radius and frankly should probably be running your intelligence operation.

Also, find me the weird guy who’s been making fudge downtown since the Carter administration. I want to know everything about him.

These people aren’t supporting characters in the destination story.

They are the destination story.

Put them on the damn billboard.

4. Occasionally Do Something Ridiculous

I am begging tourism organizations to remember that we are allowed to be fun.

Not every resident activation needs an ROI framework capable of surviving congressional testimony.

Have a resident weekend. Hide something around town. Throw a block party. Create a ridiculous local award. Put something enormous somewhere it clearly does not belong. Hand out popsicles. Make weird swag. Invent a hometown holiday.

Do something that produces absolutely no immediate hotel-room nights but causes 400 residents to text somebody:

“OMG LOOK WHAT THEY DID.”

Congratulations. You have achieved charm.

And I really do think we’ve underestimated delight as a strategy.

People talk about things that make them smile. They protect things they feel connected to. And they’re a whole lot more inclined to defend an organization they believe is actually part of their community.

Good luck spreadsheeting your way into that.

5. Go Where the Humans Are

Please don’t make everybody come to a tourism meeting.

I work in tourism and I don’t want to come to a tourism meeting.

Go where people already are: farmers markets, festivals, neighborhood events, schools, libraries, breweries, Little League games, downtown.

And leave the 42-slide economic-impact presentation at the office.

Bring popsicles. Bring trivia. Bring something weird. Put out a giant map and ask residents where they take people when their mother-in-law comes to town.

Ask what they love about the place. Ask what drives them nuts. Ask where they go when they want to hide from tourists. Ask what visitors never discover.

And then comes the truly terrifying community-engagement strategy:

Shut up for a minute.

They’ll tell you things.

6. Say Thank You Like You Mean It

Tourism does ask a lot from residents when you think about it.

We ask people to share their roads, restaurants, parks, beaches, trails and downtowns. Sometimes we’re asking them to share their literal neighborhoods.

Yes, tourism generates jobs and taxes and business activity and economic opportunity, and residents absolutely deserve to understand that.

But relationships get a little weird when one party spends the entire time explaining what the other party is getting out of them.

Sometimes you just say thank you.

Thank the hospitality workers and the businesses and the neighborhoods and the volunteers. Thank all the humans who make the visitor experience possible without ever appearing on your organizational chart.

And maybe don’t say it with another TOURISM MATTERS graphic.

Say it like humans.

Now, Let’s Give Some Flowers

Tourism spends plenty of time analyzing what everybody is doing wrong. Lord knows I do. So, flowers for some destinations actually charming the locals:

💐 Visit St. Pete-Clearwater : They turned their 727 area code into 727 Day, now a whole weekend with 150+ local deals, events and perks, explicitly framed as a thank-you to residents for helping host visitors. THAT’S the assignment.

💐 Tourism Kelowna : Love for Kelowna Day invites residents to play tourist, support local businesses and celebrate the place together. More than 1,400 people showed up at the Visitor Centre in 2025. Nobody was forced to view an economic-impact PowerPoint.

💐 Visit Central Florida : Their wonderfully named CATS tourism ambassador program gets locals behind the scenes at attractions around Polk County. Participants actually talk about discovering places they never knew existed in their own backyard.

💐 New Smyrna Beach (DMO tag not available) : They built residents their own damn website, complete with local events, tourism education, ways to get involved and staycation deals. Residents aren't an audience they visit when there's a problem. They're an audience they serve.

More of this, please.

Maybe once in a while, instead of pointing across tourism and yelling WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING, we should point and yell:

OH MY GOD. THAT’S ADORABLE. STEAL IT.

Charm Before Charts

Obviously the numbers still matter.

Residents should understand how tourism contributes to jobs, taxes, local businesses, public amenities, and the overall economy. We should be able to explain the value of the visitor economy clearly, and if we can’t, that’s its own problem.

But information isn’t affection.

And I wonder if we’ve sometimes been starting this conversation at the wrong end.

Before somebody cares about your economic-impact number, maybe they need to believe tourism belongs to them, too.

That feeling can come from discovering something about their hometown they never knew. Seeing their neighbor celebrated. Getting invited somewhere. Knowing something outsiders don’t. Getting a free popsicle at some ridiculous thing downtown.

It can be as simple as having one of those little moments when you look around your own hometown and think:

Oh yeah. I really like living here.

And, if we’re doing this particularly well:

I’m kind of proud people want to visit.

That’s a pretty damn good place to start.

Because you don’t build community trust during the controversy. That’s when you find out how much you already have.

So build some while absolutely nothing is wrong.

Be generous. Be interesting. Show up. Make people laugh. Give them something to brag about.

You already know how to make people fall in love with your destination.

I'm Jenn Barbee, and for God’s sake, flirt with the people who live there.