Destination marketers spend enormous energy convincing visitors to come. They spend far less energy convincing their own communities that tourism is worth having. That imbalance is catching up with the industry.

Across the country, DMOs are encountering a problem that no amount of paid media can solve: residents who view tourism as a nuisance rather than an economic engine. City council members who see the DMO budget as expendable. Local business owners who feel disconnected from the visitor economy even though they directly benefit from it. The root cause is almost always the same — a failure to invest in community buy-in as a deliberate, ongoing strategy.

Tourism Backlash Is Not New. Ignoring It Is a Choice.

Anti-tourism sentiment has been building in destinations worldwide for years. Overtourism protests in European cities get the headlines, but the quieter version of the same dynamic plays out in mid-size American destinations every budget season. A DMO requests its annual allocation. A council member asks why taxpayer money should fund tourism marketing. The DMO scrambles to justify its existence with economic impact numbers that feel abstract to residents who just see crowded parking lots and rising rents.

The mistake most DMOs make is treating community relations as a defensive exercise — something they do when funding is threatened. The most effective destination organizations treat it as a core strategic function, equal in importance to visitor marketing. This is one of the themes surfaced in Destinations International’s 2026 Summit Destination Reputation Study, which highlighted the growing importance of social and political license for destination organizations.

What Community Buy-In Actually Looks Like

Real community buy-in is not a once-a-year town hall or an annual report full of economic impact statistics. It is a sustained effort to make residents feel like partners in the visitor economy rather than bystanders to it.

That starts with communication. DMOs need to tell the story of tourism’s economic impact in terms that resonate with everyday residents — not aggregate spending numbers, but specific outcomes. How many local jobs are supported. Which neighborhood businesses see the most visitor traffic. What percentage of the city’s road maintenance budget is funded by hotel tax revenue. When residents understand that tourism pays for things they care about, the conversation shifts.

It also means involving community members in destination strategy. Some DMOs have created resident advisory panels that provide input on marketing direction, event calendars, and visitor management plans. Others have launched “resident ambassador” programs that give locals a sense of ownership over the destination experience. These are not token gestures — they are structural investments in social license.

The Workforce Connection

One of the most overlooked dimensions of community buy-in is workforce perception. If the primary association residents have with tourism jobs is low wages and seasonal instability, they are unlikely to view the industry favorably — regardless of how many billions in economic impact the DMO reports.

DMOs that are serious about community buy-in need to engage with workforce quality, not just workforce quantity. That means partnering with hospitality employers on wage transparency, career pathway programs, and benefits improvements. It means advocating publicly for the professionalization of tourism careers. When residents see tourism as a source of good jobs — not just any jobs — community sentiment follows.

The Political Reality

Every DMO operates in a political environment. Funding decisions are made by elected officials who respond to constituent sentiment. If the only voices elected officials hear about tourism are complaints — noise, traffic, short-term rental conflicts — the DMO is fighting an uphill battle every budget cycle. Recent announcements like Destination DC’s 2026 strategy rollout illustrate how destination organizations are explicitly framing their work around countering negative public narratives.

Community buy-in is, at its core, a political strategy. It builds a constituency of residents who understand and support what the DMO does. When that constituency exists, funding conversations become easier. When it does not, the DMO is perpetually one bad council meeting away from a budget cut.

Start Before You Need To

The worst time to start building community buy-in is when your funding is already under threat. By then, the narrative is set and you are playing defense. The best DMOs invest in community relationships during the good years, building the reservoir of goodwill that sustains them through the tough ones.

If your organization does not have a dedicated community engagement strategy — with its own budget line, its own KPIs, and its own staff ownership — that is the gap to fill this year. The destinations that thrive over the next decade will not just be the ones that attract the most visitors. They will be the ones whose communities actually want them there.

Photo by Gene Dizon on Unsplash.