Recorded live from the Etourism Conference in Louisville, this one's a fun reminder that the biggest travel trend of 2026 might be walking around on four legs. Coryn Briggs, Senior Director of Marketing at Traverse City Tourism, breaks down TripAdvisor's "VIP Travel" trend — which turns out to mean Very Important Pets, not very important people — and explains why dog and cat owners are increasingly building entire vacations around their animals.

From there, Coryn gets into the stuff every DMO marketer is wrestling with: the agritourism boom (a natural fit for the self-proclaimed Cherry Capital of the World, with 50+ wineries to match), the real AI challenge of picking the right tools instead of just chasing every shiny new one, and the perennial grind of filling shoulder seasons in a four-distinct-seasons destination. She closes on Traverse City's north star — core memories — and the multigenerational families who keep coming back because of them.

In This Episode:

• 00:06 - Introduction to Aqua Talks
• 01:15 - Introduction to Aqua Talks and Corinne Briggs
• 03:40 - Trends in Travel: The Rise of Pet-Friendly Vacations
• 04:48 - Emerging Trends in Travel and Agritourism
• 07:42 - Emerging Trends in Tourism
• 08:38 - Promoting Traverse City Tourism

Key Takeaways:

• VIP = Very Important Pets. TripAdvisor's 2026 trend report flagged pet-centered travel as a fast-riser — strong with dog owners, now expanding to cat owners planning trips around their animals.
• Agritourism is having a moment, and it's on-brand for working farm destinations. Skillcations, farm stands, U-pick orchards — Coryn sees real runway here, especially tied to America's 250th and the Americana nostalgia angle.
• The AI challenge isn't keeping up — it's choosing. Just because a tool exists doesn't mean it fits your org. The work is evaluating which tools actually serve your team's efficiency or your consumer messaging.
• Shoulder seasons are the year-round battle. Summer (June–mid-September) and fall color carry the calendar; the November–mid-May stretch takes deliberate initiatives to drive visitation.
• Lead with core memories. Traverse City's positioning centers on multigenerational return visits — kids who vacationed there now bringing their own families back.
• 2026 anniversaries are marketing gold. The National Cherry Festival hits its 100th year, dovetailing nicely with the country's 250th.

Welcome to Aqua Talks, where marketing meets bold, game changing ideas.

Join your hosts, Larry Aldrich and Maddie Dudley as they explore the art and science of cutting through the noise, capturing attention and fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Whether you're a destination marketer, government contractor, or simply passionate about the transformative power of marketing, Aqua Talks offers engaging discussions, fresh insights and actionable strategies designed to inspire and inform.

Today we're coming to you from Louisville, Kentucky live at the Etourism Conference. We're going to be talking to some great DMOs today and some vendors, so stay tuned. We're back at Etourism.

Today we're with Corinne Briggs at Traverse City dmo. How are you doing today, Corinne?

I'm doing great, Larry.

Thank you for being with us and having me explain what Aqua Talks is earlier this morning. And it was a, it was an interesting question because we've been doing it for over a year. And a very simple question. What is Aqua Talks?

And I hope I explained that quite well.

Yes, you did. You got your elevator pitched down.

I'm trying. We have to keep trying to refine it, but we're getting better. So please tell a little bit about yourself and, and what you do and where you do it.

In pure Michigan.

Yeah. So, yeah, in pure Michigan. We just had our pure Michigan Governor's conference last week up in Traverse City at Grand Traverse Resort and Spa.

So here I am on my second week in a row of conferencing, learning all about all the great things in DMO world. But yeah, my name is Corinne Briggs. I'm Senior Director of Marketing at Traverse City Tourism. I've been with the Tourism Bureau almost 12 years.

So this July will mark my 12th year. I started as an administrative assistant, but I had, prior to that I had a lot of background in destination marketing. Marketing.

I actually started with traditional PR type background back in the 90s. So, you know, as we all know, things have evolved a lot.

But my role as Senior Director of Marketing is what most of you would expect, just especially running a marketing agency and speaking to other professionals in the DMO space. Every day is a different set of agenda, items and challenges. But we are a pretty robust team at Traverse City Tourism.

Robust in the fact that we get a lot done. We don't have a lot of people. Marketing is five people, myself and four other people. But we accomplish a lot.

That's great. As far as trends go, are there certain trends you want to bring up or what's trending in your dmo?

Sure. Yeah. So I love following trends. I Love when the end of the year reports come out, see what you know, like MMGY puts out reports.

All the agencies like to tell us what's going on, what happened in the last year, and what they're forecasting. And one of the ones I appreciate the most is the Trip Advisor Trendcast reports.

And we were lucky to have someone from TripAdvisor do a keynote presentation last week at the Governor's Conference in our hometown. So it was great for me because I love reading the TripAdvisor reports.

And so most of us would think, okay, that's vip, you know, luxury, very important people. But it's actually very important pets.

Very important pets.

Very important pets, yes.

Trending higher with dog owners, but they did note that they are starting to see a lot of people trying to plan their vacations around traveling with their cats as well. Okay, I'm not a cat owner, but I am a dog owner.

What kind of dog you have?

I have a. He's a terrier healer mix. Okay. Yeah.

I have a black lab, so. And I traveled with him here.

Yeah. So he's like your vip, right?

Yes, he is.

Yeah.

My co pilot.

Yes. And we travel with our dog quite a bit when we take road trips.

We've never flown with him, but he's a lot of fun and he does have his own little Instagram page. So I get the whole VIP travel trend. I think that that's exciting. Exciting. And I think, you know, it's.

It's a trend that's surfacing now, but it's been on the horizon for a while. Another one that we've seen, I think, over the last one or two years is agritourism.

So, you know, whether it's agritourism or skillcations, you know, people coming to your destination to work on a farm or pick fruit or. And then take that and culinary dish out of it. For us, agritourism is a part of. It's a part of our roots and our culture.

Traverse City is the proclaimed Cherry Capital of the World.

Cherry cherries, okay.

Yep. Sweet and tart cherries. So we have lots of cherries.

We also have over 50 wineries, two established American vital cultural areas, and then a whole other gambit of fruits that are grown and other agricultural commodities. Products from our region. So that's another exciting trend that I'm looking forward to see how it plays out.

That's interesting. So with, with some of that, do you see any, what challenges do you see?

I know there's, you have messaging now with AI and things are changing at a much faster pace now since AI was incorporated or actually really started blowing up. We'll just say that, but it doesn't have to be AI. What are some of the challenges that you're coming across in Traverse City? Dmo.

Yeah. So AI obviously is a big one. I think for all of us in this industry and in general, just for us, that one is keeping up with it.

And we were hearing so much about it at all the conferences this year. And it's not just keeping up with it, but for me it's more like which tools are the right tools for your destination organization to be using?

Just because they're out there, it doesn't mean that they're going to work for you.

So, you know, really evaluating which tools are going to be best suited for your needs, whether it's for making helping your staff be more efficient with a personal assistant type AI tool or if it's more to help, you know, consumer message. The other challenge outside of AI, because we still have those challenges for us would be driving visitation during the shoulder seasons.

So late fall, winter and spring. We consider ourselves a year round destination and we do have four very distinct seasons in Michigan. Sometimes they can happen in one day.

Yeah, I've seen that joke against me with Michigan.

I've actually seen it.

Yeah. So for us that's another challenge.

Summer is our biggest season, usually runs June through mid September and we do have a pretty good fall because of fall color tours. But we, you know, we do a lot of different initiatives from November to mid May to try that drive that visitation.

What are, what are you looking forward to? What, what are some of the things that you see coming up soon?

Yeah, so piggybacking on some of those trends, definitely the agritourism trend, I think that in general just leads to a lot of ways that you could spin off of that.

You know, celebrating the country's 250th anniversary this year creates a lot of memorabilia, a lot of Americana type immigration emotions and core memories promoting that. So for us as a destination that has real fruit, you know, farm stands, like old school roadside farm stands, cherry picking orchards.

So I'm looking forward to see how that plays out for our destination. And in tandem with that, our biggest festival, the National Cherry Festival will be celebrating their 100th year.

That's the, that's very exciting for our community. Okay.

And for those of us out there that will be listening and watching, is there anything you want to say to promote Traverse City tourism? The dmo, the tourism as in, hey, let's go visit Traverse City.

Yeah. So I guess, you know, in the last panel, the last question they had asked them was if you have to describe your destination and several words.

Yeah, I'm going to kind of reframe it and answer it that way because we are talking a lot about creating those memories. And if you have time to make a memory, you should do that. I think that was the key yesterday afternoon. And so for me, I would say it's core memories.

Yes.

We are a destination where we have multi generational families come back year after year and we've seen kids, you know, from anywhere, from kids that started their vacation lives there and they're now returning with their families and their grandparents. It is all because of those core memories that they're making.

Okay, so we definitely will have Corinne Briggs and her links on aquatautch.com and other than aquatox.com where would you like for us to find you?

Traverse City.com we also have a really strong social media presence, so we have Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn if you're more on the kind of business to business side and seeing what we're doing in that space as well.

Thank you for joining us. It was great speaking with you and we look forward to enjoying the rest of this conference.

Yeah, me too.

Thank you.

Thanks.

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