Roger Brooks

Early career

Roger Brooks was born in Seattle and grew up in San Juan Island, Washington, and graduated from Friday Harbor high school. Out of high school he became a department manager for Sears, in addition to acting as a music planner for weddings and other private events. In his mid-twenties he then began managing tour logistics for musical groups including Chicago, The Moody Blues, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and The Bee Gees (including their Saturday Night Fever tour) for the tour promoter Concerts West. Following his employment with Concerts West, he worked in resort development at the newly developed Whistler, British Columbia resort town as well as other mountain towns in North America. His job was to sell the idea of the resort to investors, specifically tapping investors from Asia to acquire the funds needed to develop the resort. He also helped bring in Intrawest as a partner, which developed Whistler into one of the premiere resorts in North America.

Roger Brooks International

In 1981 Brooks founded the tourism company Destination Development International (DDI) with Bill Chandler. The company's name was changed to Roger Brooks International in May 2013. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, where Brooks lives and serves as the CEO. Brooks serves as a tourism expert for municipalities and other organizations globally. In helping municipalities, he typically meets with the community members themselves in order to build tourism economies from the bottom up and to explain brand development. In addition to helping communities in their branding efforts, he also performs first-hand research by experiencing life in the communities as a tourist would for several days, and works with residents as well as community leaders in order to prepare new branding ideas. Because of his conducting of these "Community Assessment" programs, he has been referred to as the tourism "mystery shopper". Roger was nominated and elected as At-Large Director for the US Travel Association in 2013. He has also been interviewed by the media outlets regarding the tourism industry, such as Time Magazine.

Presentations and publications

Brooks has worked with more than 1,000 communities globally, doing community branding, development, and marketing. Brooks has stated that the main goal of tourism is not the amount of people that arrive in a community, but the amount of money they will spend when they visit. In order to market smaller communities, he relies on the Internet and other inexpensive advertising venues rather than broadcast advertising, and provides help with web development as well as tourism economy planning. His presentations to communities and nations alike center on his Ingredients of an Outstanding Destination, and in 2003 Brooks published the book Your Town: A Destination - The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism. Part of the strategy Brooks uses for communities is that a place's tourism infrastructure and interest level should be developed enough to keep a tourist in the community 3 hours for every 1 hour of travel if a community is going to be successful at enhancing their tourism economy. Depending on a community's available resources, Brooks often recommends the use of local, personal skills and goods to attract tourists instead of developing synthetic tourist architecture to attract people. Brooks has also stated that a community's downtown district is one of the most important drivers in their ability to attract tourists and encourage them to stay for longer periods of time. He is known for promoting private enterprise as a driver for community rebranding as a partner with community government.

Past projects

In 2010 Brooks made further news in California, when he recommended the town of Oxnard, California changed its name to "Oxnard Shores" to better reflect its seaside location. Brooks' work with the city of St. Albert, Alberta led to the community branding itself as a "botanic arts" city, based on the existing identity of the town as home to a regional farmers market and Hole's Greenhouses. This led to the creation of a $100 million garden center that is also used as a conference center. Brooks' advice also led to Jefferson, Texas becoming a significant center for antiquing in the southwestern United States, a town of 2,500 that now has over 125 antique dealers. Brooks also advises countries on the national level. He has appeared in the national press as a tourism expert, including for Fox News and NBC. In 2009 he became national news when he recommended that Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch be turned into a new Graceland-like tourist attraction, stating that Neverland could attract more tourists than the home of Elvis. In 2013-14, he attracted $300 million in investments to rebrand and improve Ocean Shores, Washington. He also advised on improvements for the waterfront of North Vancouver and Squamish, British Columbia. In 2014 he also prepared reports for the improvement of tourism planning for Deadwood, South Dakota - the namesake for the HBO television series Deadwood.