One DMO tried HubSpot, Mailchimp, and a standalone member portal. None of them solved the real problem.

Ontario's Highlands Tourism Organization (OHTO) covers one of Ontario's largest and most diverse tourism regions. Their mandate is enormous: destination management and marketing, product development, visitor marketing, investment attraction, research, and workforce development. Their team? Two full-time staff and a network of contractors.

For years, OHTO cobbled together a patchwork of tools to manage their nearly 1,000 member businesses. 

"We went through a number of options," says Kasey Rogerson, Director of Industry Development at OHTO. "We used Mailchimp, HubSpot, and another organization for a separate member portal that people could use, but it didn't have the email marketing side or the CRM side. We were doing a patchwork of apps and platforms to meet our needs."

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Why HubSpot doesn’t work for DMOs

HubSpot was the most ambitious attempt. On paper, it had everything. In practice, it had far too much.

"It was way too many services and products than what we needed," says Kasey. "The cost to get the small amount of services and product we needed — it just was too much."

This is a pattern familiar to DMOs across North America. Enterprise CRMs like HubSpot and Simpleview pack in features designed for sales teams and large marketing departments. DMOs pay premium prices for platforms where they use a fraction of the capability, and inevitably, one person becomes the de facto "CRM person" while the rest of the team disengages entirely.

OHTO needed the opposite: something any team member could pick up and use without specialized training.

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What a CRM built for tourism actually looks like

OHTO was one of the earliest adopters of Whereabouts, so early, in fact, that their feedback helped shape the product itself.

"I saw the vision and I was a believer in the vision, and I'm so glad it was able to come to fruition because it's needed," says Kasey. "One of my biggest pet peeves was always trying to find a CRM that would work for a destination marketing organization. None truly fit our needs."

What stood out immediately was the simplicity. Where other platforms required extensive onboarding and training programs, Whereabouts was intuitive from the start.

"It is very user friendly. It is very intuitive to find the apps and what you're trying to do," Kasey says. 

"The training modules and tutorials your team has been able to produce have been very helpful. Onboarding has been very easy for me to bring more people into the fold. So it's not just me managing the CRM."

That last point matters. When a two-person team can get contractors and marketing partners up to speed quickly, the entire organization moves faster.

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How to turn your member directory into a live SEO content engine

OHTO migrated their full database of roughly 1,000 businesses into Whereabouts. But the real breakthrough came when they connected Whereabouts to their consumer-facing website, ComeWander.

The integration meant every member business now has a live profile page on ComeWander, pulling directly from the Whereabouts directory. When an operator updates their hours, photos, or description, those changes appear on the consumer site automatically.

"That integration has been the biggest game changer," says Kasey. "We are able to actually have a live profile page for each individual member on ComeWander so they can benefit from that website's SEO as well as continue to feed visitors the information they're seeking, getting that quick path to purchase."

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The result? Members started claiming their listings and actively managing their own information. 

"We put the ownership back on the business to manage the information about their business. It's really helped round out that content storytelling piece that we were trying to achieve on our website."

For smaller operators, those who might only have a Facebook page and no formal website, the Whereabouts-powered profile on ComeWander offers something they couldn't build on their own: a credible landing page on a trusted regional tourism site.

"If they see a landing page on the big regional marketing website and it's kind of been vetted, it does give a bit more credibility to the business," Kasey explains. "Especially for our new businesses who are really starting out and don't have strong SEO. This can help elevate them and even the playing field."

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Beyond surveys: measuring member engagement without asking for feedback

One of OHTO's ongoing challenges was measuring stakeholder engagement. Feedback surveys had low response rates, making it difficult to know whether their programming was landing.

Whereabouts' Broadcast feature changed that equation. OHTO now sends targeted updates, training materials, and campaign information directly to specific member segments and tracks who engages.

"Just having that ability to push out the information and see that engagement level has helped us optimize."

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"One of the challenges was we don't have strong uptake in feedback surveys. So the best way we can monitor that is by seeing who actually engages with it. That's been a huge game changer," says Kasey.

OHTO has gone further, building out courses and training modules using Articulate and distributing them through Whereabouts. They can see where members drop off, which content resonates, and adjust accordingly, all without sending another survey.

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What's Next for OHTO: events, curated galleries, and deeper member integration

OHTO is now exploring Whereabouts' events calendar feature, something that was previously outside their scope entirely.

"We would do listicles or pepper in events into the stories that we tell because our region is so vast and large," says Kasey. "How do we curate all of the great community events happening and keep it fresh? That was not something within our scope, but now it is."

They're also looking at curated widget galleries, pulling themed collections of operators directly from Whereabouts into editorial content on ComeWander, so that every story they tell links seamlessly to the businesses featured in it.

For Kasey, it comes down to a philosophy that mirrors what any lean team should be doing: "Really trying hard not to do new things, but really maximize on the things we're currently doing."

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The bottom line: the right DMO platform does everything you need and nothing you don’t

OHTO's story is a familiar one for DMOs: small team, big mandate, and a graveyard of software that promised everything but delivered fragmentation. Whereabouts gave them a single platform built for the way destination organizations actually work, not a sales tool dressed up as a tourism solution.

"Now it's very exciting to have just one app, being Whereabouts, that does meet everything that we need," says Kasey. "We believe in innovation and collaboration, and look what it achieved just by doing that."

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Ontario's Highlands Tourism Organization manages destination marketing and development for one of Ontario's largest tourism regions. Learn more at ComeWander.ca.