“None of us is as smart as all of us.”
Author and business pro Ken Blanchard gets it — collaboration makes us better. And most destination organizations know that, too, especially when they bring together a strong team of agency partners.
But the common (sometimes unspoken) truth is this: Working with multiple agencies isn’t always smooth. It’s smart, yeah. But it’s also layered and full of opportunity.
That’s where intention makes all the difference.
Why Interagency Partnerships Are Powerful (and Hard)
Creating a good multi-agency experience doesn’t mean it’s good all the time. Getting to good usually means working through some complexity. And it makes sense: different agencies, different folks and different strokes!
Common Challenges of Interagency Partnerships:
- Specific focuses/services create fragmented focus
- Information gets interpreted differently
- “Turf war” mentality can creep in
- Collaboration can feel performative, not productive
- Efforts get duplicated
- Schedules conflict
- Data differs
The thing to remember is this — these are normal and fixable problems!
What Interagency Success Looks Like
Despite the challenges, there’s a payoff. When handled well, interagency partnerships can become a DMO’s greatest advantage. The beauty of working through the challenges is that it brings out mutual respect and mutual success — for everyone.
Successful Outcomes of Interagency Partnerships:
- A unified vision and goals are reached
- Access to diverse expertise and skill sets
- Stronger relationships across partner teams
- Deconstructed comfort zones
- Compounded creativity
- Elevated work output
Tactical Ideas to Get the Most Out of Your Interagency Partnerships
If your DMO is working with a strong team of agencies, or planning to, these ideas might help.
Adopt the no B.S. approach — an underrated tactic for an often-undetectable problem.
Your DMO or CVB needs to be able to support multiple agency initiatives, simultaneously and effectively, to carry out a unified vision and set of goals. And B.S. (or anything that lacks substance) hinders this ability.
Watch for These Common Pitfalls:
- Unclear ownership: Define who’s leading what. Collaboration needs clear leadership and focused decision-making.
- Vague briefs or decks: Over-polished, under-thought decks don’t deliver clarity. Tell your agencies exactly what you want them to do.
- Misalignment masked as agreement: Have hard conversations. Summarize next steps in writing. Confirm shared understanding. Don’t assume alignment — document it.
- Timidity: If your agencies don’t ask questions or push the thinking in healthy, growth-minded ways, you’ve hired hype people — not partners.
Treat everyone as partners. Act like one team, even when there are many logos.
You can get the best out of teams when everyone is treated as true partners. In an interagency environment, taking the time to do this is critical.
And this shift doesn’t happen automatically. It has to be modeled and reinforced from the top down. When a DMO sets clear expectations, aligns everyone and treats each agency’s contribution as essential, the dynamics change for the better.
In this kind of partnership model, everyone wins: the DMO gains more cohesive output, agencies produce stronger work and the destination benefits.
Be the source of truth.
Your DMO needs to be the central source of truth for goals, positioning, audience priorities, roles, responsibilities, timelines, all of it. Without a single, clearly defined source of guidance, each team starts working off its own interpretation. That leads to a lot of the common challenges listed above.
As the DMO, you have the clearest view of the big picture — the stakeholders, your mission and long-term goals. That positions you to help align your agency partners around a shared direction. It’s about providing the foundation that makes good collaboration possible.
How We Support Interagency Partnerships
These ideas aren’t theoretical. We’ve lived them. From our partnerships with Savannah to Phoenix to Atlanta, our agency has worked within collaborative ecosystems to support big-picture thinking and shared success.
Case in point:
Atlanta CVB Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Wilson has assembled a team of agencies with broad capabilities. Our role in that partnership? To bring value through meetings & conventions intelligence, audience insights and strategic recommendations, making sure our work supports the whole — not just a slice of it.
Want to Talk Partnerships?
If you’re navigating interagency collaboration or thinking about how to set one up for success, we’d be glad to share what we’ve seen work.
… And …
Since we began with borrowed wisdom, let’s have the thoughtful voice of Simon Sinek see this one out. ↓
“If we were good at everything, we would have no need for each other.”
