Before the Front Desk
A reflection tool for destinations navigating arrival, orientation, and trust
Most visitor friction doesn’t start at check-in.
It starts earlier.
When someone exits the highway.
When they’re circling for parking.
When signage assumes they already know how things work here.
Nothing is technically wrong yet.
Nothing feels settled either.
That’s often where a guest decides whether a place feels easy… or like work.
Why we made this
After publishing Destination Sunday: Trust Is Being Decided Before Arrival, the response was consistent.
Not “What should we do?”
But:
“Oh. That explains why our operators are frustrated at arrival.”
So instead of another article, campaign idea, or checklist, we created something quieter.
A one-page reflection tool destinations, chambers, and tourism partners can use together to see where confusion actually begins — without blame, directives, or control.
What this is (and isn’t)
This is:
A shared lens
A conversation starter
A way to walk the arrival experience as a first-time visitor
This is not:
A report
A list of best practices
A tech recommendation
A campaign
It’s designed to be used in a room with real people — a board meeting, a stakeholder workshop, a cross-department session.
Twenty to thirty minutes. One page. Honest discussion.
The core question it asks
Where are visitors being asked to figure things out on their own, and who absorbs that confusion downstream?
Because when orientation breaks down, confusion doesn’t disappear.
It shows up later:
At front desks
In visitor centers
In operator inboxes
In reviews that don’t match the quality of the stay
Most teams find this simple exercise changes how they talk about arrival long before they change anything operational.
Where AI fits (quietly)
The tool includes one prompt. That’s it.
Not to automate decisions.
Just to act as a mirror.
Act as a first-time visitor arriving in our destination with no local knowledge, late in the day. Walk through the arrival experience step by step. Where are you unsure what’s normal, where to go, or who to ask for help?
Used once. Discussed together.
That’s often enough to surface what teams are too close to notice.
Download the reflection tool
Print it. Bring it to the table. Argue with it. Ignore parts of it.
The goal isn’t to fix everything.
It’s to reduce guesswork — so operators aren’t absorbing confusion alone.
If this is useful, feel free to share it internally or forward it to a partner.
If you want the deeper context
This resource grew directly out of this piece:
→ Destination Sunday: Trust Is Being Decided Before Arrival
The article names the pattern.
The tool gives you a way to look at it together.
That’s the loop.