We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andy Williams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Andy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I serve as President & CEO of Visit Roswell, a destination marketing organization responsible for driving tourism into the city to bolster the local economy and positively impact business. A community 20 minutes north of Atlanta, Roswell largely relies on leisure tourists coming into town to experience our nature-based amenities, dine in our majority chef-driven restaurants, visit our attractions and attend our countless special events that take place throughout the year.
Most destination marketing organizations are funded by a portion of the lodging tax, which is an additional tax assessed on hotel room nights. Visit Roswell is solely funded by this source, so when what seemed like the entire country shut down during the COVID pandemic, all of our funding essentially dried up overnight. It was the most taxing event that’s likely ever occurred within the tourism industry and it drastically affected DMOs throughout the country. As a result, organizations like ours had to slash budgets, lay off fantastic employees, reduce advertising and, in some cases, re-think office space and operational models. Visit Roswell wasn’t safe from these outcomes, as we closed down our brick-and-mortar office location and visitor center and moved into a shared co-working space.
However, during this trying time, a great success story – one that was certainly a risk – came to be. Visit Roswell raised sponsorship dollars to purchase a Mercedes Sprinter with the goal to fully customize the vehicle to become our new mobile visitor center. While mobile visitor centers aren’t anything new, we took a giant leap of faith in fully moving to a 100% mobile model. With a tremendous amount of community support, the mobile visitor center was funded in its entirety, which allowed us to build it out exactly as we envisioned. Details of the build-out included an internal rack system for brochure and collateral storage, inverter generator, lighting system, PA system and graphic wrap. Once the mobile visitor center, named “The Channel” as a result of our being home to the Chattahoochee River, was complete, we hired a team of part-time information specialists we dubbed “The Street Team” to fully mobilize throughout the community, engaging with both visitors and residents within our parks, at our events, on the grounds of our local businesses and at our attractions. The model has been extremely successful, and we’ve helped other DMOs and organizations like ours throughout the country create their mobile visitor centers from the ground up. Because this model is extremely unconventional, as most locations still rely on physical visitor centers, this was a huge risk that had a very successful outcome, and it continues to flourish today.
Andy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I learned about the tourism industry when I was flipping through a course catalogue in college. I stumbled upon “tourism and commercial recreation” and quickly realized a career in the travel industry would expose me to everything from sales, to marketing, to event planning/production and beyond. There is a part of me that loves stability and routine, but I also have an appreciation for no two days being the same. The tourism industry affords me that opportunity each day.
Out of school, I began my journey in tourism at a small town east of Atlanta named Madison. It’s an amazing community that was very easy to promote. It was in Madison where I really learned how to succeed and fail independently. I had a fantastic boss who allowed me to figure things out on my own without a lot of hand-holding. It really gave me the foundation to begin advancing throughout the industry.
After about five and a half years in Madison, I moved on to work for another destination marketing organization in Dunwoody, a much larger city on the northern outskirts of Atlanta. This move thrust me into the sales side of destination marketing, where I was responsible for booking group-focused business to fill hotel meeting space and guest rooms. Dunwoody at the time was a newly-incorporated community, so our team had the opportunity to build the entire organization from the ground up, which was an amazing process that not many get to experience.
From Dunwoody, I moved into another side of the industry: destination management. I was hired as director of sales for Destination South Meetings & Events, a DMC Network Company, where our team worked with corporate and association meeting planners to assist in building their dream events. This exposed me to many, many facets of the Atlanta hospitality scene, and I really got to learn more moving parts of the industry than I could even count. We produced events from 100 attendees to 16,000. It was fast-paced and required an immense amount of thoroughness, organization, communication and follow-up. But, it really helped me understand the psychology of meeting planners and what goes through their minds when preparing for an event.
After my time at Destination South, I was fortunate enough to be selected for my current role with Visit Roswell. Similar to my responsibilities in Madison and Dunwoody, Visit Roswell markets to other communities from beyond 50 miles to influence travel decisions that result in their residents’ visitation to our city. This is accomplished through a number of strategic activities that include print advertising, digital advertising, geo-framing, direct selling, recruiting influencers and travel writers to help tell our story, and more. We even host a podcast called Roswell Brew Talks, where we enjoy coffee with our guests, which include local business owners, event organizers, attraction directors and other key community partners. It gives those individuals the opportunity to share their stories with the world. Our ultimate goal is to entice visitors to stay overnight in our hotels, spend money at our businesses, get out on the river and trails, experience our cultural and heritage-based assets and come back for more.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Early on, I plugged in. It was funny, actually. When I graduated from college with my degree, I just assumed I knew a ton of information relevant to my industry and probably more than most around me. About two days on the job, I quickly realized that the people around me were extremely experienced, educated and had been through a number of scenarios from which I could learn. In that moment, I determined it was in my best interest to keep my mouth shut, my ears open, and soak in as much as I could. A part of that was also getting out of my comfort zone and getting involved on various boards of directors and committees. I think a lot of times we feel like we shouldn’t pursue avenues of services like these because we don’t feel like we have the knowledge or capability to do so, but volunteering and being engaged with boards and outside organizations does two things: It gives you access to a sizeable group of professionals with whom you can network and expand. It also feeds you education that helps you get better and grow. My being involved in a variety of boards has undoubtedly made me a better person in my industry and has positioned me soundly. I know that I’m not the smartest person the room, but I do try to stay two steps ahead. It’s never a bad idea to think through a variety of scenarios and have a plan. “If this happens this way, then what is our response?” “If it happens that way, how does that change what we would normally do?” I spend an enormous amount of time being thorough in understanding how our organization will respond and move forward based on a number of possible outcomes. That proactiveness has helped us remain strong and, in many cases, ahead of the game. Industry peers appreciate this approach as well, as it pushes the respective organization to venture into uncomfortable territory. And, as we know, that’s where the fun happens.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Culture, culture, culture is the number one priority, at all times, no matter what. Our team members stay at our organization because they know they’re valued, empowered and appreciated. They know they have a voice. They know they can challenge without being afraid of being reprimanded. They know they can always come to me for an opinion or suggestion, but they’re also given autonomy in running their respective departments without having that feeling of being micromanaged.
But, all that aside, I think the number one principle that’s understood organization-wide here at Visit Roswell is that we’re family first, at all costs, no matter what. There’s nothing greater in this world than family. Jobs come and go and tasks will be there the next day. Family is the priority. With a sound culture rooted in a family-centric core belief system, our team operates at a high level and all of us enjoy what we do on a daily basis. It’s easy to put in the work when you feel taken care of and you believe in what you’re doing,
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.visitroswellga.com
- Instagram: @VisitRoswellGA
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/visitroswellgeorgia
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewwilliams14
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@VisitRoswellGA
Image Credits
Visit Roswell