For Travel Nevada, ESTO is more than a conference — it’s a community where destination leaders come together to share ideas, tackle challenges and build relationships that strengthen the industry. Travel Nevada CEO Rafael Villanueva and his team share how ESTO’s collaborative spirit, peer connections and recognition help them stay competitive and continue advancing destination marketing.
What’s the one thing you can learn at ESTO that you simply can’t get anywhere else?
Tracie Barnthouse, Travel Nevada chief communication officer
ESTO is where destination marketing/management organizations gather to hear trends and insights that relate directly to day-to-day operations. From a state agency perspective, it’s incredibly valuable to have face-to-face time with my counterparts in similar positions across the country as we all face similar opportunities and challenges. While we keep in touch via email throughout the year, having that in-person time is extremely beneficial as we collaborate on shared interests.
Tell me about a relationship you built at ESTO that changed how you do your job.
Through ESTO (and WESTO, which is a collective of western state tourism agencies), I’ve connected with many colleagues in a similar role as me and often tap into that network to gain insights, ask advice, and collaborate on shared interests. The relationships I’ve built with those fellow communicators are thanks to the networking offered at ESTO.
How is the ESTO community different from other professional networks you’re part of?
Rafael Villanueva, Travel Nevada CEO
What sets the ESTO community apart is that it doesn’t feel transactional. I’m part of plenty of professional networks where the exchange is fairly narrow — you show up, you get information, you leave. ESTO is different because the people in the room are genuinely invested in each other’s success, even though we’re all representing destinations that technically compete for the same travelers and the same dollars.
That openness is what makes the learning real. People will tell you what actually worked — and what blew up — in a way you don’t often get elsewhere. I’ve walked away from sessions with tactics I could bring straight back to Travel Nevada, not just theory.
What role does ESTO play in helping you stay competitive in a rapidly changing industry?
Nicole Orsua, Travel Nevada chief industry development officer
ESTO provides another touchpoint for me to connect with my counterparts who work the international markets where we can come together to share barriers, learn from each other’s best practices, and build relationships that help in the development and execution of our state’s international market strategy.
What would you say to a destination marketer who is on the fence about attending for the first time?
Keelie Cox, Travel Nevada CMO
Last year was my first ESTO, and it quickly became clear it’s the go-to conference for destination marketers — and one I knew I’d want to return to. ESTO focuses on the challenges and strategies that truly matter to destinations and states. It’s the best place to connect with peers, see how others are approaching trends like destination management, AI, and marketing, and walk away with both a high-level perspective and practical ideas you can use right away. And you can’t beat the award ceremony — seeing the creative ways destinations promote themselves is always a highlight.
What does it mean for you and your organization to have peers in the industry recognize this work through an ESTO award?
Rafael Villanueva, Travel Nevada CEO
Winning an ESTO award means something different than other forms of recognition, because the people judging it actually understand the work. They know what it takes to get a campaign or a program through the layers of approval that come with being a state agency — the procurement rules, the political sensitivities, the legislative oversight, the budget cycles that don’t always align with the pace the industry moves at. They know the difference between work that just looks good and work that had to survive real constraints to get done at all.
That matters enormously to the team and to me at Travel Nevada. So much of what we do involves navigating competing stakeholder interests, tight resources, and scrutiny that a private-sector marketer simply doesn’t face in the same way. When peers who’ve lived that same reality look at our work and say, “That’s meaningful, and we know what it took to pull off,” that’s a different kind of validation than a general industry award. It’s not just “good creative.” It’s “good work, done the hard way, and we recognize the difficulty.”
For the team, it’s also a way of making the invisible visible. A lot of what goes into a program like this — the coordination, the compromises, the persistence — never shows up in the final product. An ESTO award is one of the few places where that behind-the-scenes effort gets acknowledged by people equipped to actually see it. That means a lot, especially for the people who put in the day-to-day work and don’t always get that kind of recognition internally.
_________________________
ESTO 2026 is August 23–26 in Philadelphia. Get registered now.
To stay up to date on ESTO and the latest travel industry news and trends, sign up for U.S. Travel SmartBrief and get the top stories delivered directly to your inbox.