Who Owns Stewardship? Building a Stewardship Team With the Staff You Already Have

Ask a room of destination professionals whether stewardship matters, and every hand goes up. Ask who owns it at their organization, and the room gets quiet.

That quiet is the problem. Most DMOs agree that caring for residents, culture and place is part of the job now. Fewer can say whose job it is. So stewardship ends up with one passionate person, or with a committee that meets twice a year, or with nobody at all.

The good news: building a stewardship team rarely starts with a new hire. It starts with a name next to each responsibility.

Stewardship isn't one job. It's ten.

When we map stewardship work across DMOs, it breaks into ten responsibilities every destination organization carries, whatever its size:

1. Strategy and policy: stewardship goals in the strategic plan, budget and board agenda
2. Resident engagement: listening sessions, sentiment surveys and closing the loop
3. Responsible messaging: how you invite visitors to behave, and what you choose not to promote
4. Visitor dispersal: shoulder seasons, lesser-known neighborhoods, small businesses
5. Meetings and events: what you ask of the groups you bring in
6. Partner standards: encouraging and recognizing partners who adopt better practices
7. Frontline and community education: preparing staff, volunteers and residents to be great hosts
8. Culture and heritage: bringing Indigenous and local voices in, and protecting what makes the place itself
9. Measurement and reporting: a few stewardship indicators reported next to the usual numbers
10. Resilience and crisis: plans for overtourism, weather and emergencies

Size changes who carries each one. It doesn't change whether they exist.

One responsibility, three DMOs

Take visitor dispersal: helping visitors find the shoulder season, the neighborhood they've never heard of, the family-owned business two blocks off the main street. Here's how ownership shifts as a DMO grows.

The small DMO (1–8 staff)

Marketing leads, because dispersal lives in campaigns and content. The executive director supports by bringing the idea to the board and to partners. Visitor services and volunteers support by recommending the less-crowded option at the counter, one conversation at a time. Nobody needs a new title. They need a shared understanding that this is part of the work.

The mid-size DMO (9–30 staff)

Marketing still leads the campaigns. A named stewardship lead, often an existing community relations or destination development role with stewardship added to its title, supports with the "why" and the resident perspective. Sales points groups toward off-peak dates. Research tracks whether the message is working. The monthly stewardship working group is where these people compare notes.

The large DMO (30+ staff)

Here a small destination stewardship team can lead dispersal as a strategy, with marketing, sales, partnerships and visitor experience each supporting. The risk at this size is the opposite of the small DMO: everyone assumes "the stewardship people have it." That's why the stewardship team leads only a couple of responsibilities, and every other department keeps its own.

The pattern: name an owner before you add headcount

Across all three sizes, the move is the same. Give every responsibility one clear lead. Name who supports. Decide who simply needs to stay in the loop. Most of the people you need are already on payroll, on your board, or volunteering at your visitor center.

Then build the learning around those roles. A role on an org chart only matters if the person in it feels ready. The frontline team recommending a quieter trail, the sales manager asking a conference to give back, the board member asking about resident sentiment: each of them needs the confidence and the language to do it well.

Already using Destination Wayfinder?

Destinations International's Destination Wayfinder helps destinations assess and plan their stewardship work. It's a strong way to figure out what to work on. A role map handles the next question: who does it. We've noted the closest Wayfinder module next to each of the ten responsibilities, so you can turn Wayfinder actions into named owners. (That mapping is our own reading, not an official DI crosswalk.)

Get the org chart

We built The DMO Stewardship Org Chart to make this practical. It's a free, fillable PDF with:

• Org charts for small, mid-size and large DMOs, with space to type in your team's names
• An editable lead, support and informed matrix for all ten responsibilities
• A quick self-assessment: where does stewardship live in your DMO today?
• A 20-minute discussion guide for your next staff meeting

Download The DMO Stewardship Org Chart

Bring it to your next staff meeting. Ask who owns stewardship. This time, see if the room gets a little louder.