Destination Pulse

Las Vegas rebuilds the chair its AI bet emptied

The chair Las Vegas emptied is full again. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority moved Michael O’Brien from its vice president of digital and content marketing chair into a senior VP of AI and enterprise performance seat — the first AI-titled senior seat in Destination Pulse’s records — and this week it rebuilt the exact seat that move emptied: Lindsey Riggs is the new vice president of digital and content marketing, an Oct 26 start she announced on LinkedIn.

Her LVCVA bio says she joined from Fontainebleau Las Vegas, where she served as vice president of brand marketing, and the trail runs deep on the resort side: director of digital marketing at The Cosmopolitan from 2018 to 2023 after senior social-media and internal-communications roles there, with Experian internal comms before the resorts (LinkedIn). Fifteen-plus years in the business, nearly all of it inside the Las Vegas resort world.

O’Brien was still speaking as the authority’s vice president of digital and content marketing as recently as August (Casino.org); now the AI banner and the digital-and-content chair both have someone at the desk. The conversion didn’t erase the old job — it split it in two, and Vegas staffed both halves: a bet on AI that came with more content marketing, not less.

Columbus’s chief chair opens after a 40-year run

Experience Columbus chief destination experience officer Kari Kauffman announced her retirement in late September: the bureau toasted her on LinkedIn on Sept 30, and TourismIQ’s People on the Move carried the news Oct 1 — the end of a 40-plus-year career with the organization. Her LinkedIn tenure counter reads 40 years, 7 months with a single employer (LinkedIn), and the bureau’s farewell credits her with spearheading its tourism and destination services work and opening multiple visitor centers.

No successor announced. The bureau’s staff page lists 48 people, none of them holding the chief destination experience officer title — a C-suite chair open, and four decades of institutional memory to replace. After 40 years under one roof, the org chart itself is the decision: refill the chief chair or redraw around it.

Greensboro’s nine-month sprint to the C-suite

Coordinator to C-suite in about nine months: Corrina Joyner joined Visit Greensboro as sales support and experience coordinator in January (LinkedIn), and the bureau’s team page now lists her as Chief Marketing Officer — matching her own LinkedIn headline. Before the bureau, a communications stint at HAECO. No press release announced the move; the velocity is the story, and it sits inside CEO Anthony Cordo’s rebuild — he took over as president & CEO in July 2025 and is rebranding Greensboro as a place “where people belong” with an events-driven economy (Triad Business Journal).

Alexandria hands the membership engine to a 950-partner operator

Visit Alexandria announced on Oct 27 that Barry Draper is the organization’s new vice president of membership and visitor experience (release), with Alexandria Brief picking up the hire locally. Draper comes from Explore St. Louis, where he directed partnership services across a network of 950-plus partner organizations — record-setting programming and revenue growth, a Civic Pride Explorer Series launch and pandemic-era industry workforce protocols in the background. Before that: executive director of the St. Louis Civic Pride Foundation, partnership and engagement lead at the DuPage Convention & Visitors Bureau, and hotel sales in Central Illinois and Chicagoland — nearly two decades in destination marketing, now pointed at the bridge between Alexandria’s small businesses and a tourism economy the release puts above $1 billion a year.

Also on the move

  • Michael Vadney is the answer to Tempe Tourism Office’s COO search: the bureau’s contact page lists him as Chief Operating Officer, closing out a posting that routed applications to president & CEO Michael Martin (career.com).
  • David Roberts joins Visit Omaha as Director of Marketing, with Maeve Dineen as Sales & Marketing Coordinator - Marketing, both listed on the team page — a marketing bench being rebuilt while the bureau’s 2026 visitors guide (PDF) still lists Erin O’Brien as interim VP of marketing and communications.
  • Kimberly Hart’s seat at Experience Scottsdale has a new shape: the contact page lists her as Business Development & Destination Experience Manager — a title restructure, not a new chair.
  • Allyson Becker is listed as Visitor Services Manager on Discover Albany’s staff directory.
  • Braxton Turner is on Visit Denver’s convention-sales roster as Coordinator, Convention Sales, per the contact page.
  • Kayla Bland is listed as Accounting Specialist on Experience Columbia SC’s team page.
  • Isabel Lehner is on board at Destination Madison as Destination Marketing Intern, per the team page.

Every join and title change on the books this week is on the change feed.

6 chairs moved, 2 refilled, 1 open.