Hello. Welcome back to Peak into our Week.
I'm Alexea Veneracion, Director of Communications at Visit Colorado Springs.
And I'm here with Lindsey Pevey, our Partner Relations Manager. Hi.
So Lindsey was on back in like 2023.
So it's been a hot minute.
Been a minute so, welcome back to the pod.
Thanks.
Today we are going to talk a little bit about Visit Colorado Springs.
We were thinking we’re like, we interview all of our great partners,
we talk about businesses to go to community events, but like, do
the people know really what Visit Colorado Springs does?
Yeah.
We missed a vital element of that in this podcast launch
we've been running for three years now, so we're going to just take a step back
and tell people a little bit more about who we are and what we do.
Awesome. Let's do it. Yeah.
Before we do it, though, we're sipping on something from one of our partners.
We've got some drinks here. Cheers.
I've got a nice tomato.
I've got a nice little iced cortado. Yep.
Half milk, half half coffee, even ratio.
These are from The Exchange, which is located right here, in downtown
Colorado Springs, by our Visit Colorado Springs Visitor Center.
So if you ever stopped by to get
pamphlets, visitor guides and all that, you should stop by The Exchange.
Get yourself a little caffeine boost.
You'll probably find someone from Visit COS there as well.
More than likely, we're there almost every day,
so definitely check them out.
But yeah, let's let's get into it.
I wanted to start just by sharing.
Like anecdotally, we work at Visit Colorado Springs, of course,
but I had no idea, like what a destination
marketing organization like ours actually really did until I started.
Did you feel the same? No, I felt the exact same way.
I had a little bit of of perspective prior to Visit COS
just because I was working in the sales world.
Yeah. At the Broadmoor.
But other than that, like, I knew about the organization,
but it wasn't very clear exactly what we did.
Yeah, I feel like the general vibe is like, oh, you're
the visitor center, so you just invite people to come to that
destination, which, yes, that is a big part of what we do.
But it's like just scratching the surface.
So just sharing a little bit more about who we are and our mission.
Like we really want people to come here and create memories
and get out and check out things they maybe have never heard of before.
And we're not just trying to, like,
get more and more visitors to Colorado Springs.
We want people to like, stay longer, explore all there is to do,
and not just like frequent the same, like tourist spots,
like we want them to feel a little bit like local too, while they're here.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And I think I used, the Visit Colorado Springs website
mostly whenever I was moving here
and was a local, and I didn't even realize that's what I was on either.
I was just looking at all of the just to go in it like comes out.
Exactly.
So it was fun to make that connection once I actually started
with Visit COS I was like, I felt the same way.
It's I moved here ten years ago now, but when I first got here,
I was doing like a lot of googling and yeah, like our resources
that Visit COS popped up a lot like the blog posts and things.
And I still use them as a local and someone who works at Visit
Colorado Springs, like I still use the resources.
Absolutely. Not just for visitors.
But we also get into, like, things that people don't
necessarily realize, like destination stewardship,
some destination marketing organizations even call themselves DMMOs
for destination marketing and management organization.
So like the destination management part gets a lot into stewardship,
which is like sustainability
and being good stewards of the land, encouraging and educating visitors
and locals about how to like, keep parks and trails and open spaces.
Great.
So we do a lot of work with that.
Like, you know, you've brought on partners
for us in those spaces, like the Palmer Land Conservancy.
Pikes Peak Outdoor Recreation Alliance is a great partner of ours,
and we work so closely with Parks and Rec and all these different
organizations to be good stewards and make sure visitors are too.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And that's something that I, I've learned a lot about, destination
stewardship from being, Visit Colorado Springs.
It was something that wasn't necessarily in my world, like,
I kind of knew about it, but but actually really understanding the ins
and outs of those programs and exactly what they mean have been really helpful.
Not even in just hiking, just in your daily life and thinking
about the different principles, like leaving no trace, even though,
yes, that's specific to trails, quote unquote.
It can very much be used as you're walking down the street.
Yeah. It's like that.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's so important for downtown
areas to like, we want our downtown to be clean and taken care of.
And so those principles
really carry through, just like what we want to see in our destination overall.
Absolutely.
So I think that's a huge part of what we do that maybe people have heard,
but just don't necessarily connect the dots of like a visitor
center or marketing organization working on those initiatives.
Right, absolutely.
And then another huge element of what we do is giving support
to our small, locally owned family businesses in Colorado Springs.
Those are like the heart and soul of our partner base,
and we want people to learn more about them.
And we get to like, learn so much, which is so cool for us.
And then share their stories like, yeah, they've got the coolest stories.
Absolutely. I tell people all of the time.
One of my favorite parts of this job is quite literally what you just said.
Just getting to know some of these people who had a dream,
had some ambition and made it happen, and just hearing their stories and,
seeing different ideas and where they came from.
And that's by far been my favorite part of this job, is getting to know those,
small business owners and entrepreneurs and just people like that
who, are really making a difference in our community, even in small waves.
But they're the heart and soul of our community.
Yeah.
And when we bring visitors here and we're sharing about these businesses
and the owners stories with them, like it really makes
them want to go out and like, go off the beaten path and.
Yeah, and build this itinerary that's a little more creative
and like less like your typical things that you would think of
when you go to Colorado Springs or the mountains, like there's
so much more, which we're going to get into
in the coming months, but we're working on a big project right now
called the Pikes Peak Areas Project, where we're going to have like this
huge resource on Visit COS.com where you can go,
you can filter by like the different areas on the map and really see,
like what is there to see and do, to eat and drink to?
Where is there to stay that's maybe more unique.
And we'll have it really segmented by area across the whole region
so that people can get off the beaten path.
Yeah, I'm excited for that personally as well.
Yeah, I'm excited to learn about new neighborhoods
and different things
within those neighborhoods and the history and and all of that.
I think it's going to be a really cool resource.
I know it's something that I look for whenever I'm traveling is
I want to very much be more, in the realm
of where locals are going and understand the different parts of the city.
So yeah, you guys have done a great job putting all of that together.
It's been a lot of fun to watch you.
Yeah, it'll be out hopefully by June, but we'll definitely be sharing
with our podcast listeners and on all of our platforms.
So you will see it when it's out.
Other things I wanted to touch on are just like the other parts
of a destination marketing organization
that exist and are so vital to what is happening
that, like, people don't like the general public doesn't necessarily know
as much about unless you've worked in like hotels and such, which you did.
And you used to be on our sales team before you were on our partnership team.
So like maybe you can share a little bit about like group servicing and meetings
and like how that's so important to what we do.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, like I said previously, whenever I was in sales in hotels,
we would work with Visit Colorado Springs with the groups.
I was an assistant then, so I wasn't necessarily in tight connection with them.
But I was seeing correspondence and kind of putting some dots together.
And then I started at Visit COS like you said, in the sales department
and really understood that what they're doing is going out
and selling the destination, which is interesting.
Whenever you don't have a necessary you don't necessarily
have a product right, to be selling as tangible.
Right.
Instead of a hotel where you have rooms and, and the rates
and all of these things, our sales team is going out
and selling an idea more than anything.
One of the of the things that I truly loved
whenever I was in the sales department is whenever we would go to trade shows,
they go to about 30 trade shows a year, give or take.
It's a lot.
And they have a, small but mighty team as well.
But one of the things that I thought was really cool
whenever I started going to those trade shows at first, is
anybody that I would talk to for the most part, you have appointments
and things like that.
Most people, even if they hadn't taken their conference,
they would sit down and say, I love Colorado Springs.
And a lot of people had been here with their families.
And so then like, great, think about having a meeting
for your group here, right?
Yeah.
So that was always a lot of fun is making those connections.
And we do help we work with, some of the hotels specifically as well.
We'll go to these trade shows with us.
So it's a little bit different than you would think a normal sales
job is but it was a lot of fun to do.
Great sales team there.
And then we have our group servicing, like you were mentioning.
So those are things that we can offer to our conferences,
things like our lip balm, that's famous apparently.
And, our visitor guides and dining and shopping list starts
with exactly what they might need for exactly coming to town.
And that can be anything from conferences to a wedding
to a family reunion to just like a group of people
that you're going to have come stay at your house and you want.
Yeah, some guides for them
like that is available for everybody, not just our big conferences.
Yeah.
And it's, like free service to the public.
Like, if you're getting married here and you want to reach out to our group
servicing team, like, they'll connect you with who you need to be connected
with, and you don't have to pay us to help with that.
Like, it's all part of what we do.
And I think a lot of people don't
realize that, like, you can use us for those things too.
Or if you're planning like a high school reunion or a family
reunion here, like reach out to visit COS
will help you find like the right venue you need, the right catering you need.
Like all of our connections.
We will
yeah help you and they do a really good job as far as
listening to what each group needs as well,
rather than just giving a big list of a bunch of things. Yeah.
What vibe do you want exactly, exactly.
They get to know you pretty personally, to make good suggestions for you
and recommendations.
And then,
we have our contacts at the venues and catering companies and things like that.
So we have we have those connections for you.
So just. Yeah.
Use us. Yeah.
Or if you have a planner, send them our way. Exactly.
They'll be able to help them too.
Exactly. Yeah.
I think that part is so important.
And then going back to like meetings and conferences and conventions,
like bringing those to town
especially like in the off seasons, is just so important.
Like it helps keep our economy boosted.
Everyone knows Space Symposium as the big one that's happening right?
Right now as we speak in April.
And it it does so much to help with our local economy.
It brings in lots of people.
And then those people go out and they have some downtime
where they want to like, check something out in town.
Anyone who goes to conferences,
if you're like me, like I like to do some kind of exploration
when I'm at a conference, especially if it's a city I've never been before.
I'm like, yeah, I'm not just going to stay in a conference room all day.
I want to get out and see it.
Exactly. You're traveling all that way.
You might as well check it out while you're there.
And we've got a huge selling point for that in Colorado Springs.
Like, you can get out and go on a hike
in the afternoon after your sessions are over. Absolutely.
So I would want to hold an event here.
But yeah, I might be biased. I know, same here.
A few last things that people
maybe would be interested in that we're going to be coming out with soon.
We've got a new AI powered
chat feature that's going to be launching on our website in the coming months.
For this. It's cool.
We're in the testing phase, and I'm sure everyone's
familiar with playing around with like ChatGPT.
This will be very niche and specific, like to our website
and what there is to see and do in Colorado Springs,
but you'll be able to like go on it, ask it a question,
and it will scan and crawl our website and other resources.
And it could build itineraries for you.
Like it'll save people a lot of time with their trip planning.
Absolutely.
Hopefully teach them some things and you won't have to dig on your own
through our website, which is a pretty vast website with a lot of content
so I'm really excited for that on a personal level too.
My, like you being from out of state, I have a lot of family that comes to visit
me, and we can very much be creatures of habit, almost like to the t
go to the same places at the same time every time they're here.
Yeah.
And so I'm excited to use it
to branch out myself as well and find some stuff to do.
I feel like
you could even prompt it with like, hey, this is usually what my family
likes to do.
What are things similar?
But like a different experience and it will give you those things.
Absolutely.
So again we're testing it right now
making sure it's in good shape before anyone else uses it.
But it'll be a great fun for sure. Yeah.
And then another thing coming that people really are
hyped about every year is our crafts and crafts drink passport
that launches in May and it goes all the way through the end of the year.
And the theme this year is going to be so great
and fun as it is every year, but look out for that.
More to come.
Yeah, just look for some hints around, but you'll hear about
it soon one way or another.
I don't know anything else
that we missed about, like what we do that people might not know about.
Yeah, I mean, I think I think a lot of it we covered,
I think from a business perspective is putting together that.
Yes, we help market you to visitors and locals alike.
However, a lot of our partnership as well
that I think is really important is the business to business partnership.
Yeah.
That's kind of been a bit of my war path in this position.
We do a lot of really fun events and mixers, and I'm always encouraging people.
While, yes, it's great to get to know our staff,
everybody needs to be getting to know each other
because you never know when you're going to be needing someone for AV,
you need an artist to coming teach a class for a group or something
along those lines. That could really be anything.
So I think people yeah, I think that's something that,
people don't always put together until they're in or organization.
And then we love to connect you with people as well.
If you, you know, need somebody for a specific service.
I'm sure we have a couple of them, at least.
And can that connect you with those people?
So that's something that I think is really important in our world as well.
No, that's a good point.
If you're a business owner listening or you work for a local business here,
tell them about Visit Colorado Springs and explore partnerships with us.
Yeah, we love to bring on more businesses.
And then on the just like locals residents side of things.
We had done a survey of our residents and their views on tourism
back in the fall, and now we've launched what we're calling the Locals Corner
on our website, and it has some key takeaways
that we got from the survey,
some resources and data points about tourism and then some locals
only deals and discounts that people can take advantage of.
So if you are a resident of Colorado and you want to
check out that locals corner, oh yeah, I highly encourage it.
It's new and we want you to use it and reach out to us if you ever have feedback.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think that's going to be a really fun resource as well.
Cool. Yeah, I think that's a wrap. Really.
So thanks to The Exchange, thanks for our drinks and thank you for listening.
If you have questions, hit us up.
Media@VisitCOS.com.
Thank you. Bye.