It’s staggering to see how far we have come since the early days of the pandemic when we held our last City Nation Place Americas conference. Last week, we welcomed over 300 leaders of place branding, destination marketing, and economic development organisations across North America for two days of inspirational and thought-provoking discussions on how places can adapt and evolve to meet the new realities we’re facing.

It was a challenge boiling the conference down to just a few key takeaways, but these are the four themes that resonated most for us throughout the conference:

Collaboration is the key to strengthening our places.

City Nation Place was founded on a belief that for a place brand strategy to be effective, destination marketing and economic development organisations need to be collaborating together. And it was great to see the strength of this conviction resonating throughout the conference. In particular, the last year has served to reinforce the importance of tourism as an economic driver for cities. “It took our industry virtually disappearing to become visible,” proclaimed Royce Chwin, President & CEO of Tourism Vancouver, a sentiment that was echoed by Visit Seattle’s President & CEO, Tom Norwalk, as he highlighted the opportunity to reset with a more collaborative focus.

However, places are also looking at building collaborative relationships with partners outside their destinations. Dave Herrell, President & CEO at Visit Quad Cities declared that “you’ve got to break down the walls of parochialism” as he detailed efforts to combine messaging behind a regional brand that would enable them to create greater impact.

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