All In: Spotlight Sessions and Best Practices
New for 2025, we’re kicking off VA1 with a series of focused sessions designed to give you practical tools and fresh insights before the Summit officially begins. These conversations bring together industry experts to highlight best practices, emerging trends, and strategies you can take back to your organization. Join us to stay ahead of the curve and be ready to drive meaningful change in your community.
Cinematic Content on a Community Budget: Maximizing Your Tourism Storytelling
Hosted by COLLECTORstudios
This session will explore how destinations with modest budgets can still create powerful, cinematic content that competes with larger markets. Through a real-time panel conversation with past tourism clients and behind-the-scenes content examples, we’ll walk through practical strategies for planning, storytelling, and building community trust — all designed to help your tourism content punch above its weight. Attendees will leave with a downloadable best practices PDF and visual inspiration from case studies across Virginia
Breaking Barriers, Boosting Tourism: The Untapped Potential of Accessible Travel
Hosted by Wheel the World
Accessible travel is one of the most underestimated opportunities in tourism today. With over 1.2 billion people worldwide living with disabilities, this is the largest minority on earth—one that every single one of us will belong to at some point in our lives. Add to that the aging baby boomer population driving demand for accessible experiences, and the potential for destinations is undeniable. In this session, we’ll uncover the real ROI of investing in accessibility, share success stories from destinations leading the way, and provide practical steps to get started. Beyond being a smart business move, making travel accessible is about breaking barriers, fostering inclusion, and future-proofing your tourism economy. Don’t miss this chance to learn how your destination can tap into this massive, growing market!
Co-Op Marketing for DMOs: Maximize Your Reach, Magnify Your Budget
Hosted by Sojern
Join Sojern and discover the true power of co-op marketing. This session is designed for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) looking to maximize their impact by collaborating with local stakeholders. You’ll learn how to leverage shared resources to stretch your marketing budget, achieve a unified brand message, and amplify your reach. We’ll cover the proven benefits of participating in and hosting co-op programs—from fostering stronger community partnerships to driving tangible results like increased visitation and bookings.
Unlocking Visitor Spend Insights for Virginia Destinations
Hosted by Arrivalist
Dive into the power of visitor spend data and learn how to turn it into actionable insights for Virginia destinations. In this session, you’ll discover how to break down spending patterns by origin market, destination, and merchant category, compare tourist versus resident spending behavior, and analyze the economic impact of events. You’ll also learn how to identify top-performing feeder markets, seasonal trends, and unlock the true value of your visitors’ dollars – moving beyond simple visitation counts. Leave with strategies to replace guesswork with data-driven insights that optimize marketing, funding, and planning decisions while clearly demonstrating impact to stakeholders.