Tourism Is Running on 1896 Software

Tourism didn’t start with DMOs or marketing plans.

It started with beds (or hay if you wanna get ancient).

• Romans had roadside inns.

• Medieval Europe had coaching houses.

• Early American towns had taverns where you could drink downstairs and pass out upstairs.

Beds first.

Fast forward a few hundred years to 1896, when a group of Detroit business leaders, including hoteliers, decided they should probably organize the whole “getting visitors to town” thing.

They didn’t call it a DMO.

Of course not.

The official name was the Detroit Convention and Businessmen’s League, which sounds less like tourism marketing and more like a mustache club that meets above a hardware store.

But the idea was simple.

If people are coming to town… maybe someone should help bring more of them.

Preferably the kind who stay in hotels.

And just like that, the tourism system started forming around its center of gravity.

Hotels.

Railroads brought travelers. Hotels housed them. Cities promoted themselves to fill the rooms.

From there, the system kept layering up.

More organizations popped up with wonderfully dramatic names like Convention Leagues, Tourist Bureaus, and my personal favorite:

Tourist and Publicity Bureau. Which is definitely a department dedicated to politely exaggerating how charming your town is.

But over time, the structure hardened.

• Hotel taxes funded DMOs.

• Convention centers anchored economic development.

• Hotel associations organized politically.

• Policies formed.

• Funding streams formed.

• Relationships formed.

• State Tourism Offices

• Regional Tourism Offices

• Tourism Offices that are actually Economic Development Councils, but we pretend they're not

• Tourism Offices that are actually Chambers

• Chambers that are actually Tourism Offices

By the late 20th century the tourism machine wasn’t loose anymore.

It was institutional.

The rules of the game had been written and evolved, notably, in the same pools of commerce.

Then about fifteen minutes ago in tourism time, short-term rentals showed up.

Not through hotel associations. Not through tourism boards.

Through technology. Through platforms.

Through homeowners realizing the guest room might cover the mortgage.

And suddenly a brand-new lodging sector appeared inside a tourism system that had already spent a century organizing itself around something else.

Which explains a lot.

Hotels had centuries to organize.

DMOs had more than a hundred years to evolve alongside them.

Short-term rentals basically appeared en masse sometime between the iPhone and TikTok.

And now everyone is trying to operate inside the OG tourism ecosystem.

That kind of structural collision always looks messy when disruption shows up.

• Record Labels had music on lock until Napster showed up.

• Taxi systems ran the streets until Uber appeared.

• Hollywood had theater windows until streaming ignored them.

Tourism is living through its version of that moment. With a workforce shortage. With a housing shortage. With a softening of International demand. With gas historically high.

Mostly, tourism acknowledges each other in public, but when the bell rings - it's back to your corners.

• Hoteliers talked to hoteliers.

• DMOs talked to DMOs.

• Hosts mostly concerned with speed-of-business, regulators and direct booking.

But what if - stay with me - we don't just let the 'chips fall where they may' this time? What if it weren't 'every tourism faction for itself'? What if humans convened to design a system that works with the disruptors, invites them, even, to depend on each other for this next round of relevancy in the ongoing battle for a traveler?

Hosts.

Destination leaders.

Policy voices.

Community voices.

People who normally debate tourism… actually working on it together.

That’s the thinking behind Hosts & Home Teams Lab.

Because if the tourism system has evolved this much since the days of the Convention and Businessmen’s League and the Tourist and Publicity Bureau, the next version probably isn’t going to be figured out by one group alone.

It’s going to take the whole room.

Preferably over a martini.

And that conversation starts July 24.

I'm Jenn Barbee, and the ones who accept the challenge of alignment will already be two steps ahead.