Building a Destination from Scratch: Wendy Haase-Roberts on Leadership, Community, and the Future of Santa Ana

In this episode of Business Class, Stephen Ekstrom from Learn Tourism sits down with Wendy Haase-Roberts, President & CEO of Travel Santa Ana, to discuss the unique challenge of creating a destination organization from virtually nothing more than a name and a vision.

Wendy shares how Travel Santa Ana has become a connector for businesses, attractions, artists, and community organizations throughout the city. She discusses lessons learned from launching a new DMO, building a strong destination brand, managing with a small yet highly effective team, and fostering authentic community pride through initiatives like the Santa Ana Enthusiast Program.

The conversation also explores leadership, resilience, learning from difficult career experiences, data-driven decision making, and why some of the best tourism leaders are shaped by the examples of leaders they never want to become.

Whether you're leading a destination organization, managing a small team, or passionate about building stronger communities through tourism, this episode offers practical insights and inspiration.

Key Topics:

•  Building a destination marketing organization from scratch 
•  Creating community pride and local engagement 
•  Tourism ambassador and enthusiast programs 
•  Leading high-performing small teams 
•  Lessons in resilience and leadership 
•  Data, destination branding, and community storytelling 
•  The future of Travel Santa Ana 

Business Class is brought to you by Learn Tourism, the nonprofit academy - harnessing the power of science, business psychology and adult education to advance the tourism industry and build sustainable economies. Learn how to engage your community, win over stakeholders and get more visitors at learntourism.org. 

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