Cassandra Gilbertson gave the industry its sharpest roadmap yet.

Last summer, Destinations International and MMGY NextFactor released the 2025 DestinationNEXT Futures Study. It is the clearest articulation we have ever had of where destination organizations are headed; and it lays out eight strategic themes every DMO is now expected to navigate:

Securing Investment Through Advocacy and Impact

Building a Future-Ready Workforce

Scaling Capacity for Expanding Expectations

Advancing Regeneration and Resilience

Reimagining Marketing in the Age of AI and Authenticity

Navigating Economic and Geopolitical Uncertainty

Driving Intentional Event Strategies

Shaping Places for People and Prosperity

It is a sharp, forward-looking framework. The conversations across the industry since its release have rightly focused on what each theme means and what it asks of DMO leaders.

But there is a quieter truth running underneath all eight. None of them are achievable in an organization that is not operationally sound.

The Prerequisite Hiding in Plain Sight
You cannot secure investment through advocacy if your governance is unclear and your board cannot speak with one voice. You cannot build a future-ready workforce if your job architecture, compensation philosophy, and performance management systems are informal. You cannot scale capacity for expanding expectations if your team is buried in process and approvals. You cannot drive intentional event strategies if your sales operation is reactive and your CRM is unreliable. You cannot navigate economic and geopolitical uncertainty if your reserve policy, financial dashboards, and scenario planning do not exist.

Every theme in the Futures Study sits on top of the same hidden prerequisite: a well-run organization.

This is what often gets lost in the strategic conversation. The industry is asking DMOs to be conveners, stewards, master planners, advocates, regenerators, and trusted partners. That is the right ask. But most DMOs were not built for that scope. They were built for marketing and sales — and even those functions are frequently operating without the systems, KPIs, and discipline a modern DMO requires.

Add in constant pressure from hoteliers and local elected leaders who think they know better, and DMOs are under a microscope like never before.

Strategy moves at the pace of the operating model underneath it. Always has. Always will.

What the Strongest DMOs Are Doing
The DMOs that will lead the next chapter of this industry have figured that out. They are proactively assessing themselves against the same standards that define a modern destination organization, and they are doing it on their own timeline, before someone else decides for them.

When the DMO is well-run internally, partners and elected leaders give it room to lead externally…which is where the fun really is, right?

At Oetting Alchemy, that is the work behind our Organizational Readiness Scorecard™. It is a focused, independent diagnostic that evaluates how a DMO is actually operating across ten categories that matter most:

Governance & Legal Compliance

Finance & Risk

People & Culture

Operational Excellence

Strategy & Planning

Advocacy, External Relations & Alignment

Marketing & Communications

Sales, Events & Services

Stewardship & Community Impact

Destination Development & Visitor Experience

Each category gets a clean Red / Yellow / Green rating, scored against Destinations International’s 2025 DMAP standards, the DestinationNEXT Futures Study, and what the top-performing DMOs in the country are doing right now. The output is a written assessment, a clear scorecard, and a prioritized set of recommendations the organization can actually act on.

If you map our ten categories against the eight Futures Study themes, the connection becomes obvious. Each theme in the Study requires multiple categories in the Scorecard to be functioning well. Advancing regeneration and resilience touches Stewardship & Community Impact, Strategy & Planning, and Advocacy. Building a future-ready workforce touches People & Culture, Operational Excellence, and Strategy. Securing investment through advocacy touches Governance, Finance & Risk, and Advocacy. The Scorecard does not compete with the Futures Study. It is the operational diagnostic that tells a DMO whether it is actually built to execute on what the Futures Study calls for.

Three Windows Where the Scorecard Earns Its Keep
The Scorecard can be deployed any time a DMO wants an honest baseline. Three moments make it especially valuable.

Before a new CEO arrives. During a national search, most boards focus the search on finding the right person. The organization the new leader is about to inherit gets far less attention than it deserves. When the new CEO walks in, they spend their first six to twelve months diagnosing things the board could have surfaced before they ever signed an offer letter. The Scorecard hands them clarity instead of a nine-month learning curve.

Before a strategic plan kicks off. Most strategic plans fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because the underlying operating model cannot support it. The plan calls for KPIs the org does not track, partner alignment the org has not built, or a culture the org has not yet earned. The Scorecard surfaces those gaps first so operations and strategy actually pull in the same direction.

Any time a DMO wants an honest read on where it stands. The Scorecard is, in essence, a DMAP-aligned readiness check delivered without the formality and can be used as a first step in achieving DMAP Accreditation.

The Team Doing the Work
The Scorecard is not built from theory. It is built from the inside of high-performing DMOs that have actually done this work. During my time as CEO at Visit Corpus Christi, our organization earned the highest DMAP with Distinction score on record. The COO who led that submission and ran our operations day to day was Meredith Darden — and Meredith is now Director of Operational Excellence at Oetting Alchemy and a core part of every Scorecard engagement we deliver. The frameworks, the standards, and the operational lens behind this work are not academic. They are the same disciplines that produced an accreditation outcome no other DMO has matched.

The Posture That Matters
The Futures Study told us where the industry is going. It did not tell us whether our organizations are actually built to get there.

That answer comes from looking inward, honestly and structurally, and being willing to name what is working and what is not.

Structure without culture is oppressive. Culture without structure is chaos. The work is getting them in balance so the organization is actually ready for the future the industry has already started running toward.

If your DMO is heading into a CEO search, a strategic planning cycle, or simply wants an honest read on where it stands, the Scorecard is built for this moment.

Brett Oetting is Founder and CEO of Oetting Alchemy, a national consultancy specializing in strategy, leadership, governance, and organizational alignment for destination organizations. He serves on the board of Destinations International and chairs the DI CDME board.

Learn more about the Organizational Readiness Scorecard™ at oettingalchemy.com.