top of page

Our Partners

Brought together by Founding member Ralf Garrison, the Insights Collective original charge was to formulate a professional response to the challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Driven by a shared passion for travel and a commitment to the well-being of the tourism sector, our team of independent, professional subject matter experts draws on our diverse backgrounds and perspectives to foster innovation and collaboration that will benefit not only the industry, but also the communities and environments that it touches. Our mission is to give back to an industry that has given us so much, and to help shape a brighter future for travel and tourism.

Cr_02_edited.jpg

President
Carl Ribaudo

Carl is a strategic thinker, thought leader, and innovator in the tourism industry.  As the president and chief strategist of SMG Consulting, Carl has developed and implemented a wide range of services designed to improve the competitiveness of destinations. Most recently, he has developed new approaches for destination tourism strategy that tap into a destination's creativity as a unique competitive asset. He also develops effective change strategies that link a DMO's capabilities to the ever-changing market environment. Carl is a trusted advisor to CEOs and senior executives throughout the industry.

​

Carl has written extensively on business and strategy issues for the tourism industry.  A frequent guest speaker and panelist at industry conferences, Carl serves on two different State Tourism Committees, including Visit California's Research and ROI Committee and the Travel Nevada's Tourism Marketing Committee. Carl is also a partner in the Travel Analytics Group research firm, and he is a strategist in the Insights Collective, a national tourism think tank.

​

Learn More

London Headshot.jpg

Managing Director
Brian London

Brian London is the Founder of Destination Marketing Today, a media content hub sharing the best destination marketing strategies from around the world. Distributed content includes CEO Interviews, Thought Leadership Commentaries, and access to intelligence briefings that ensure subscribers are always the smartest people in any room. 

​

Learn More

Susan Rubin-Stewart

Secretary/Treasurer
Susan Rubin-Stewart
Contact Center Consultant

Susan Rubin-Stewart’s 25+ years of experience in the makes her a recognized leader. She has a proven track record

 

The contact center is the ideal place in the tourism infrastructure business to truly understand how the pieces come together. It’s the place where supply and demand are put together, organized, packaged, bundled, and distributed. 

 

In addition to her contact center work, she works with The Advisory Group and other industry leaders to understand the data that is important to good business decisions, assisting business owners and leaders to identify, track, assemble, and analyze information in a data-driven decision-making model.  Included are the destination and resort side of the model and the relationship between the public sector and the ski company.

​

Learn More

ralf-sabbatical - standard.jpg

Ralf Garrison

Ralf Garrison is a destination travel industry veteran, generally recognized as a thought-leader, innovator and a serial entrepreneur resulting from the various businesses that he has founded over the years.

​

Most recently, as the Covid virus became a pandemic with related economic consequences, Garrison helped establish Insights Collective, a pandemic economic Think Tank. as a platform to help the destination resort travel industry decision makers as they track the forces at play that will make up a new reality and separate the winners from the losers.

​

Known both for his research-analytics and storytelling, Garrison is most likely to be found at the confluence of research data, analytics and narrating the resulting stories.   His presentation style has been described as “a natural storyteller, witty, sometimes irreverent, but rarely boring”.

​

Garrison sometimes works independently and when in collaboration with other colleagues,  works from,  The Advisory Group Inc platform, (www.adv-grp.com ).

​

Learn More

Chris Cares.jpg

Chris Cares

Chris possesses a diverse background in public and private planning.  A founding partner of RRC Associates, he specializes in practical applications of research techniques including survey and qualitative research, modeling and applied analysis to solve problems in tourism and recreation, city planning, administration, and business applications.  Parks needs assessments are particular areas of specialization. Chris has overseen numerous community/citizen surveys in towns and counties throughout the United States which provide input to resorts, parks, recreation, trails, open space, and planning needs assessments.  The results of these studies typically become incorporated into master plans and other strategic or policy-oriented documents and are used to guide decision-making in a variety of settings. 

​

Learn More

Barb Taylor Carpender.jpg

Barb Taylor Carpender, CMM, CHSC

Barb Taylor Carpender, CMM, CHSC is the founder of Taylored Alliances.  Her primary focus centers around collaborating with client organizations to further their B2B engagement through the management and facilitation of customer advisory boards; focus groups; and, strategic-focused board retreats.  She also is a founding member and Managing Director of Global Advisory Network, ​​a network of like-minded industry facilitators and leaders.  BT is a recognized leader in the hospitality and meetings industries and among other credits has become the recipient of industry-wide tributes including:

  • The 2005 Leadership Award for the Meetings Industry Council of Colorado

  • 2006 MPI International Supplier of the Year

  • Inducted into the Colorado Meetings + Events Hall of Fame with their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013

  • Conferred in 2015 with the Industry Legacy Award in Honor of Sandy Gerety from MPI Rocky Mt Chapter

​

Learn More

Tom Foley.png

Tom Foley

Tom Foley is the Senior Vice President of Business Process and Analytics at Inntopia and was previously a co-founder and the Director of Operations for DestiMetrics Resort Intelligence. Tom brings a contextual view to destination travel analytics, believing that sharp focus and understanding of localized data is derived from a broad perspective that starts at macro-economics and drills down from there.

​

Learn More

Jesse True.jpg

Jesse True

Jesse True is an outdoor industry executive with 20+ years in the industry who enables innovative advances in resort and hospitality settings. He is a ski resort subject matter expert with experience at world-class organizations like Copper Mountain, Vail Resorts, and most lately "The Legend" Arapahoe Basin.   Jesse’s strategies deepen relationships while positively transforming processes, improving revenue, and inspiring people in a variety of areas, including international sales, marketing, public relations, digital connections, terrain park advances, golf destinations, special events, and strategic partnerships.

​

Learn More

bottom of page