The Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing formally launched Vermont's first Destination Management Plan on April 29, a five-to-ten-year roadmap for a tourism sector that counted 16 million visitors and $4.2 billion in direct spending in 2024.

Commissioner Heather Pelham unveiled the document in a keynote at the Vermont Tourism Summit in Killington, scheduled against U.S. Travel's National Travel and Tourism Week running May 3-9, 2026.

The plan is a "collective tool" built over more than a year through surveys, in-depth interviews, and statewide listening sessions, then refined with industry partners. Pelham tied its urgency to a hard economic dependence: "Tourism represents nine percent of the state's GDP—three times the national average—but it's increasingly clear that we can no longer take tourism for granted."

What does the plan cover?

The plan organizes Vermont's tourism push around four imperatives, each backed by a set of objectives:

• Leverage destination marketing to grow economic prosperity through visitation
• Strengthen the sector's resilience
• Strengthen, grow, and diversify infrastructure and offerings
• Enhance the visitor experience

The full document sits on the Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) site, where regional, community, and industry partners can adopt or adapt the framework for their own markets.

Why does it matter for sellers of travel to Vermont?

The document is prescriptive in ways that touch distribution and product calendars. Off-peak demand — long a structural problem for Vermont's fall-color-and-ski economics — is a stated target.

Kelsey VonDerLinn, Director of Sales & Guest Services at the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain, framed it as alignment language for operators who need to plan inventory and marketing against a shared state-level curve. "As a museum and event venue, ECHO is excited to see a unified goal of expanding the off-peak visitation seasons," VonDerLinn said. "There is great potential to enhance our year-round experiences, ensuring Vermont can be a desired destination, every season of the year."

That signals a more orchestrated wholesale and retail marketing push: the state is positioning shoulder-season as a sell-through window operators, attractions, and lodging partners can merchandise against. Accessibility — a quieter but rising distribution point — also surfaces. Kim Jackson, Director of Communications & Marketing at Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, said her organization "heard clearly that access and inclusion matter to Vermont's future," adding that the plan recognized accessibility as integral to a healthy tourism sector statewide.

For OTAs, tour operators, and receptive agents, the implication is a single, exportable narrative across cycling, skiing, agritourism, and museums, rather than siloed seasonal campaigns from individual DMOs.

Who built it, and who runs it next?

The plan was a participatory draft: VDTM took it through public engagement first, then industry feedback. Jeff Lawson, Director of Hello Burlington, called it "a clear, shared framework to connect with the rest of the world in a way that benefits their residents and visitors alike."

Implementation now sits with Pelham's office under ACCD, with the plan pitched as a tool regional and community partners plug into rather than a top-down mandate.

Whether the four imperatives translate into measurable shifts in visitor dispersion or shoulder-season occupancy depends on how aggressively operators adopt the off-peak and accessibility frames in their own distribution and packaging — the conversion metric that will decide if this document moves from paper to market share.