Day in the life of
Tourism Marketing Specialist – Michelle Greenwell
My name is Michelle Greenwell. I am the Tourism Specialist with the Moberly Area Chamber of Commerce out of Moberly, Missouri.
Typical work day: I am a three person office and the other half of my office is split up between Chamber duties. A lot of times we all flex between Chamber and Tourism, but since I am mostly tourism I try to stay in that lane as much as possible.
The majority of my day to day tasks include managing our grant program for marketing our destination. I am the person creating the budget, working with a designer to design the ads and I’m responsible for the execution. Additionally, all of our applications and grant reports take up the majority of my time.
Additionally, I am working with our tourism partners to see if they need anything or not in regards to marketing assistance, business resources, and events, building these positive relationships can be helpful to being successful.
Cons
The biggest disadvantage of a small office is that I am doing the work for a CVB as one person. This is difficult in the fact that I am the sales manager, public relations, budget creator, and more. Additionally, our community has only two hotels so this is a huge disadvantage to us as well. We could become bigger and get the staff we need, but this development of 2-3 more hotels that we need has been delayed because of COVID, despite our hotels being full throughout the course of the pandemic.
Pros
The biggest advantage is that because we are so small we really can do what we want and have control over everything, whereas with a big corporation you might not be making those decisions. I also love having the ability to make a difference, to be boots on the ground running to create change in our community. That is my favorite aspect of the job. My boss and coworker are also awesome so that can make all the difference in if you like your job or not.
I am a 25 year old that graduated from college four years ago with a degree in Public Relations. I never had the intention of being in this industry, but I absolutely love it. It has been my only job post-college.
