Bill Baker – On Relevance, Strategy & the Human Touch

Bill Baker’ s career in travel and tourism started with a domestic airline in Sydney, Australia over 40 years ago. After this first step in the tourism industry, Bill moved to Australia’s Hunter Valley, where his career in destination marketing really began. In those days, Hunter Valley had just ten wineries, one restaurant, and no lodging. Today it’s one of the most famous wine tourism destinations in the world, with over 200 wineries. Later, Bill joined the Australian Tourist Commission and moved to New York. There, his team launched the very successful “Slip a Shrimp on the Barbie” campaign. Then, he moved to Los Angeles, Frankfurt, and London. During his journey around the world, he continued to develop and refine new approaches to marketing destinations.

Bill Baker established Total Destination Marketing in 1994, based out of Australia. He began adapting what he had learned to benefit the marketing of cities and regions. He moved to the state of Oregon in 2000, where his focus sharpened on the marketing of small cities. His book, Destination Branding for Small Cities , has been a best seller in its category for over a decade. Last year, Bill worked in five countries and was the keynote speaker at the Inaugural  International Place Branding Association conference in London. Bill’s destination marketing expertise is known around the world. In this episode, we speak with him to hear his take on place branding and food tourism.  Learn more about Bill Baker here.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Discussed in this episode: Destination Branding for Small Cities