Skift Take

Many tourism board CEOs command high compensation. Here's Skift's first major look at the pay packages of U.S. destination marketing executives.

Dawit Habtemariam

Many American tourism marketers are well-paid. Visit California CEO Caroline Beteta recently collected more than $1.5 million in compensation. Brand USA CEO Chris Thompson recently took home over $700,000.

These were some of the findings when Skift reviewed the the pay for U.S. tourism marketers at city, state, and national levels. Here's how we approached it:

We used the 2022 fiscal year because those records were the most comprehensively up-to-date. We focused on the top 20 cities, based on those with the highest inbound visitation from overseas. Many are non-profits, and we were able to review their Form 990s filed with the IRS. In some cases, we got pay data from government agencies. At the state level, we were interested in heavily touristed states with large, non-profit destination marketing organizations (DMOs), such as California, Hawaii, and Florida. We left out states like New York that didn't have them. At the national level, we added Brand USA, America's destination marketing organization, and Destinations International, the association for destination marketers.

Update May 10: We've added two additional data points for each destination below: Total revenue and employee headcount. Tourism boards look at many factors when determining executive compensation, and the budgets and size of the organizations are important considerations.

Pay for High-Profile U.S. Tourism Marketers in Fiscal Year 2022 Tourism Promotion OrganizationCEO/ Executive/President NameStatus in 2024Total Compensation, FY 2022Revenue, FY 2022Headcount, 2022Vis