The Future of Tourism: How Visit Beloit uses language to tell its deeper destination story

Destination marketing organization (DMOs) professionals are no strangers to authentic marketing. They encourage visitors to get off the beaten path by promoting local businesses and telling stories about the people, food, culture, and history that make a place unique.

Authentic placemaking, however, encourages us to ask the question, “Is my destination simply telling stories about a place, or are we helping the people who make that place distinctive tell their own stories?”

In Beloit, Wisconsin, that question has taken on an interesting form.

Visit Beloit is a relatively small DMO competing for attention in a crowded tourism landscape. It may not have large-budget marketing resources, but it does have quite a rich, culturally diverse identity that stands out among competitors.

This diversity encouraged Visit Beloit to produce a fully translated Spanish-language visitor guide several years ago. Now, the DMO has taken another step toward accessible communications by producing its 2026 visitor guide in Hoocąk — translated and recorded by Ho-Chunk Nation member Henning Garvin.

On the surface, this could easily be viewed as a translation project, but it’s much more than that. Language carries history, memory, relationships, and ways of understanding the world. For decades, Ho-Chunk elders and language advocates have worked to preserve and revitalize a language that has become critically endangered. Their work has included recording fluent speakers, teaching new generations, and developing extensive language resources.

Visit Beloit’s partnership with Ho-Chunk — and ultimately, its translation efforts — reflect the DMO’s responsibility for recognizing language as part of the identity of the destination. By presenting Spanish and Hoocąk alongside English, the destination is making a statement about “who" is the story of the place.

I’ve invited Celestino Ruffini, president and CEO of Visit Beloit, and Henning Garvin, Ho-Chunk Nation member and language expert, to join me on this episode of the Future of Tourism podcast. We’ll review the important lessons language can teach DMOs about identity, authenticity, and their responsibility as storytellers of place. The conversation challenges destination leaders to look beyond surface-level storytelling and consider how they can help the stories already present in their communities to thrive.

Let’s dive in.

Tune in for big ideas

1. Authentic placemaking starts with listening: DMOs often think of themselves as storytellers, but sometimes their most important role is to stop talking and listen. By hearing the people who make up a community and understanding the histories and cultures already rooted there, destinations can move beyond surface-level representation toward a more meaningful sense of place.
2. Language carries more than words: Direct translation can only capture part of a language’s meaning. Preserving and sharing a language helps preserve a worldview and a community’s connection to its history, people, and land.
3. Cultural preservation can be more powerful than cultural marketing: Visit Beloit saw an opportunity to contribute to language preservation. With fewer than 50 native Ho-Chunk speakers remaining, publishing the language in written and audio formats helps document it while demonstrating that it belongs not only in history books, but in everyday, modern life.
4. Meaningful partnerships require walking side by side: Visit Beloit sought input, permission, and support from the Ho-Chunk Nation throughout the process, recognizing that the language and its stories were not the DMO’s to claim. That approach offered a lesson in strong community partnerships and moving forward together.
5. Small destinations can make bold moves: Beloit itself has a population of roughly 37,000, but its size has not once stopped the destination from taking on an ambitious project. Ruffini encourages destination leaders to take risks, lean into community partners, and go deeper than surface-level cultural storytelling.