Salt Lake City Gets International Ready

Visit Salt Lake – host of IITA’s Summit 2025 – also played host recently to IITA’s Inbound Insider Steps to Success program for the city’s tourism stakeholders.  The Steps to Success program educates travel professionals on why international travel is important and trains them on how to work with the travel trade to maximize ROI.

IITA’s Steps to Success program, powered by Alon Tourism Solutions, has been delivered in 20+ states and destinations to broaden the knowledge base of international inbound business. With the domestic market softening and the global international travel business growing across the board, the U.S. needs to be ready to capture that international business and prepared to service international visitors.

VSL’s  Associate Vice President of Tourism Development Anton Eckert worked diligently to get the right people in the room, focusing on hotel revenue managers and general managers as well as marketing and sales teams from various travel suppliers. We caught up with Eckert to hear more about the program’s impact on her destination.

IITA: Why was it important for you to bring IITA’s Steps to Success program to Salt Lake for your tourism stakeholders?

AE: Given the turnover in our industry, ongoing education is essential. We needed our stakeholders to understand how working with the travel trade, especially inbound tour operators, could diversify their client base. A pre-event survey helped us tailor the session, and we provided everyone with Alon’s glossary of terms to ensure we were all on the same starting line, because you know how our industry just loves acronyms. STS helped lay the crucial foundation we needed. We saw a big increase in interest afterward, helping to prepare our stakeholders for the IITA Summit in February.

IITA: You took a targeted approach to who you invited to the session. What was your strategy? 

AE: We took a top-down approach, focusing on senior decision-makers like GMs and revenue managers who could see how the travel trade fit into their overall company goals. The payoff was significant, especially with revenue managers—typically the hardest to engage—because we spoke their language: money and the bottom line. Their engagement led to great questions for Jennifer and our panelists. I wanted quality over quantity, and by securing buy-in from the top, we expect the decisions to trickle down to the sales teams, making our jobs easier in the long run. 

IITA: How did you get them to attend?

AE: It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. With everyone short on time, we had to make it well worth their while. Along with the pre-event survey and tailored messaging, we sent weekly reminders, made phone calls, and even in-person visits, probably to the annoyance of some. Offering free food didn’t hurt either. In the end, I was happy with both the turnout and the high level of engagement from our stakeholders.

 
Thanks again to Visit Salt Lake – host of the IITA Summit 2025 – for bringing together the city’s hotel, attraction, and tour suppliers to help them understand the value of the international travel trade and why working with inbound operators makes good business sense. Trainer Jennifer Ackerson delivered the IITA’s Steps to Success travel trade training to 45 revenue managers, GMs and sales directors to prepare the accommodations and attraction sectors to maximize the opportunity presented by IITA Summit 2025 being held in Salt Lake City, Feb 9-12.