Strategy as an Always-On Process: Lessons from Arlington
Stop the handoff.
Build forward together.
Arlington chose purpose, ecosystem thinking, and experimentation, turning a downturn into a living strategy that makes tourism a cultural and economic engine.
What began as a recovery challenge evolved into a long-term vision for community success with tourism at the heart of Arlington’s identity. In 2022, Arlington's visitor economy was still down by over 40% from the pre-pandemic levels. The DMO transformed its recovery plan into a long-term growth blueprint, resulting in threefold gains and establishing tourism as a cornerstone of the county’s economic and cultural identity.
Their story offers lessons for any organization seeking resilience in a world of constant change. Here are five lessons every destination can take from Arlington's journey:
1. Start with Purpose.
A downturn creates urgency, and everything can feel overwhelming. But Arlington resisted being reactive.. Instead, its leaders wanted to take a long-view approach. With the group and meeting business drastically down, the urban destination redefined its purpose: to connect tourism not only to visitor numbers, but also to the community's broader cultural identity.
2. Think in Ecosystems.
Our project integrated a multi-pronged approach combining analytics with internal data and voices from across the travel ecosystem, including community partners, travel organizations, and meeting planners who target and historically overlook Arlington. Incorporating trendcasting and community data helped identify long-term change agents beyond situational awareness.
3. Experiment to Learn, Not Just to Prove.
Yes, we crunched a lot of numbers. Actually, that was the easy part. Using early large language models like GPT-2 and GPT-3 (foundational models), we explored every possible data point. Even in its infancy, AI helped us understand destination core values, community priorities, and competition in new ways. It allowed us to test our hypotheses about the future state. Curiosity helped us recognize patterns hiding in plain sight.
4. Treat Strategy as a Living System.
Strategy is iterative, not one-and-done. In Arlington, we developed an adaptive framework to prioritize internal organizational needs, align sales, leisure, and brand initiatives, and reflect on external community priorities. Three years later, their work continues, one initiative at a time. Progress replaced perfection.
5. Make Success Shared.
As a cultural and tech hub, Arlington leaders recognize that resilience is intertwined with economic prosperity and the community's collective success as a future-forward, smart destination. Since then, tourism has been fully integrated into Arlington's broader economic and cultural strategies.
The Leadership Lesson
Strategy isn't a deliverable. It's a living process to be nurtured. Arlington's success story shows what's possible when destinations treat strategy as a shared journey: one that breathes, evolves, experiments, and builds a purpose around collective success.
Arlington's journey reminds us that resilience is about architecting and building forward.
"Our strategic planning journey has been a huge evolution. Esra's strategic insights work planted the seed as a foundation helping everything to sit together after that."
— Emily Cassell, Director of Arlington Convention and Visitors Service
