More Different Perspectives

Resident Sentiment: The Power of Perspective

September 3, 2025

For years, DMOs have known that resident sentiment matters. It shapes how visitors are welcomed, how tourism is discussed locally, and how successfully a destination can grow without friction. But too often, resident sentiment has been treated as a score to report—rather than a compass to guide strategy.
At Clarity of Place, we’ve seen across dozens of projects that when communities feel heard, destinations thrive. The question isn’t whether to measure resident sentiment, but how to reframe it so it becomes actionable, credible, and embedded in decision-making.
David Holder underscored this point during his recent panel at ESTO alongside three visionary destination leaders: Vanessa Cabrera of Visit Tucson, Beth Erickson of Visit Loudoun, and Eliza Voss of Aspen Chamber Resort Association. Together, they highlighted how true alignment goes far beyond survey scores or topline numbers. It’s about listening to residents, embedding their perspectives in decision-making, and showing that tourism success prioritizes real community impact.
(Ideas That Travel: Reframing Resident Sentiment panel featuring Vanessa Cabrera, Beth Erickson, and Eliza Voss ESTO 2025)
If you missed the session, this blog expands on the same core idea: moving beyond numbers to build genuine community alignment. That’s where we help destinations find clarity.
Why Reframing Matters
Resident sentiment is more than research. Done well, it:
Creates alignment with community priorities. Creating alignment with community priorities begins with listening. Residents surface what matters most — no matter whether it involves preserving a small downtown’s character, attracting overnight visitors who drive economic value, or managing visitor behaviors to ease cultural and environmental strain. As Eliza Voss noted at ESTO, Aspen applied resident input on visitor volume to adjust its marketing approach to seasonal shifts. When destinations center local perspectives in this way, they shape smarter strategies and build the trust needed for long-term support.
Strengthens the value of tourism. Resident perspectives help reposition tourism as a driver of quality of life, not just visitor growth. By showing how visitor dollars contribute to infrastructure, workforce, and local amenities, DMOs can reframe tourism as a shared community benefit. Visit Loudoun, for example, has used tourism’s value to address community concerns around land use, business vitality, and managing the pressures of rapid growth in a picturesque countryside.
Reveals opportunities for destination direction. Resident feedback isn’t only reactive — it points the way forward. Communities often surface insights that refine a destination’s long-term strategy, from diversifying funding to shaping new events and product development. In Tucson, resident sentiment helped reconnect longer-range strategies with community priorities, allowing Visit Tucson to leverage local goodwill in its vision of becoming a world-class destination.
Go Beyond the Survey
One survey won’t build alignment. The real shift comes from using sentiment as a bridge—asking residents how they experience tourism and showing how their perspectives shape strategy. When destinations close that loop, listening delivers trust, and trust fuels support for funding, product development, and what comes next.
When framed with intention resident sentiment can:
Shape messaging: Aligning campaigns with community values and organizational expectations, allowing marketing to reflect the destination’s authentic story.
Strengthen support: Demonstrate how tourism dollars contribute to community well-being, not just visitor counts.
Guide strategy: Use local perspectives to prioritize what really matters—whether that’s downtown vibrancy, workforce, or sustainability.
From Data to Alignment
When communities see their perspectives shaping decisions, the narrative shifts from “tourism is for outsiders” to “tourism supports us.” That’s where resilience is built.
At Clarity of Place, we believe reframing resident sentiment isn’t about seeking approval but creating durable partnerships with the people who define a place. Together with our colleagues at Longwoods International, whose Resident Sentiment Research sets the industry standard, we help destinations turn local perspectives into actionable strategies that balance resident priorities with business needs.
If your destination is asking how to reposition tourism’s value or use sentiment to chart a stronger future, let’s start that conversation.
Resident sentiment shouldn’t just be measured—it should be leveraged.

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Aerial view of buildings in Irving, TX

5 Ways that Data Can Inform Your Advocacy Strategy

Did you know that data can help your destination align with your community’s needs—and inform your advocacy strategy? Clarity of Place has assisted several destinations in doing just that. Our proprietary PlaceBalance tool enables you to analyze and apply a variety of existing data points and turn them into insights that benefit your community.

At the Destinations International Advocacy Summit held in October 2024, Clarity of Place Principal David Holder joined Visit Hendricks County Executive Director/CEO Jaime Bohler Smith to present a session that outlined these possibilities.

See five ways that organizations have benefitted from this approach, shared in Using PlaceBalance to Unlock the Power of Data to Fuel your Advocacy Strategy.

1) Track Resident Leisure Pursuits and Destination Image Appeal

A destination near Indianapolis, Visit Hendricks County sought to understand connections between its residents’ quality of life and the destination’s image appeal to visitors.

The Clarity of Place team entered several data points into PlaceBalance: resident insights on leisure time activities and quality of place amenities and a Destination Relevancy Survey that provided destination stakeholders’ perspectives on tourism.

By learning what community members love about Hendricks County, the destination identified community values: time-honored, safe, natural, spontaneous, and kind. These values will guide the destination’s brand promise.

Visit Hendricks County also learned the value of its marketing and the true appeal of the destination. Data revealed that people who have been exposed to Visit Hendricks County marketing and/or have visited the area are twice as likely to perceive Hendricks County as a great place to live, work, or start a business than do people who have not received advertising messages or visited the area.

2) Balance Resident, Business, and Visitor Needs

The Visit Hendricks County team is using its many research findings to inform the future. The pillars they crafted to guide the organization will enhance residents’ and visitors’ experience in the months and years to come:
— Leading through Organizational Excellence: Building a more effective and stronger destination organization to lead, partner, and advocate for the future of Hendricks County as a destination.
— Leading through Connectivity of Industry and Community: Building a stronger, more connected tourism industry across Hendricks County, creating a better quality of life.
— Leading through Awareness and Marketing: Building a brand promise ensuring Hendricks County is the choice for visitors and residents.
— Leading through Destination Development: Building a more appealing and competitive destination through programming, investments, and other quality-of-place attributes.

Because of its versatility, PlaceBalance can help destinations to answer a wide variety of questions and devise new strategic directions.

3) Forecast the Impact of Lodging Changes on Hotel Tax Revenue

Located within the Dallas-Ft. Worth MSA, Visit Irving is seeking to understand how changes in lodging supply in Irving and surrounding communities could impact future Hotel Occupancy Tax collections. Clarity of Place is creating potential scenarios for future collections based on changes of the type of hotel properties in Irving, and the effects on the average daily rate for properties in Irving, if new hotels come online in the area or existing hotels are reflagged.

PlaceBalance data inputs included past lodging performance data, lodging supply portfolio, and the projected change in Hotel Occupancy Tax collection.

As a result, Visit Irving gained data and scenarios to share with other municipal departments to illustrate…the impact of changes in the supply and type of hotel inventory in the city and surrounding area These changes could affect options for future development decisions, property transitions, and better leveraging hospitality supply to fit the community’s needs.

4) Calculate Tourism Dependency within a Municipal Budget

On the Oregon coast, the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce searched for common ground between resident and business needs. PlaceBalance data points that informed the next steps included visitor-to-resident ratios, perspectives of residents and destination stakeholders gathered through community engagement, data around tourism dependency calculations, past lodging performance data, and geolocation trends of visitor volume.

In Cannon Beach, the Transient Room Tax supports 71.2% of the City’s general fund budget. Community engagement found that residents have a strong pride of place and willingness to share their area’s natural beauty with others. However, tourism strains include parking, daytrippers’ actions, and additional concerns like trash and congestion. These problem areas provide an opportunity for residents and businesses to band together and address a true community need.

As next steps based on the data, the Cannon Beach Chamber is leading efforts to form a shared desire for destination stewardship across the business community, residents, and the public sector. Intentional communications are needed to build collaborative solutions. Examples include convening ongoing conversations between businesses and city leaders, aggressively pursuing a program to reduce trash and waste on the beach and within public areas, and pursuing a parking management process to accommodate business needs and better manage visitor behavior.

5) Monitor Industry Performance to Focus on True Business Needs

Situated on the outskirts of Dallas, Visit Rockwall wanted to redirect its strategies and programs to focus on optimizing the business economy.

Using its PlaceBalance tool, Clarity of Place reviewed travel spending receipts and lodging performance data, as well as destination stakeholders’ perspectives, to conduct comparative and competitive analyses. As a result, Visit Rockwall now implements strategies to specifically address Sunday through Thursday overnight business needs.

How PlaceBalance Can Help Your DMO

To learn more about how PlaceBalance can turn your data into local insights, please contact us. The Clarity of Place team would be happy to discuss your needs and how data analysis can advance your tourism advocacy efforts and your organization’s community alignment.