RIVERTON--Everyone at the Fall Hospitality and Tourism Summit in Riverton, Wyoming who got their hands on a microphone had a little story they wanted to tell on Diane Shober.
The Fall Summit brings together tourism people from across the state of Wyoming for an event that’s much smaller than the annual event in Cheyenne, but still powerful.
There’s a “just folks” atmosphere for the event, fueled in part by the tight spacing. Everyone sits elbow to elbow — the proverbial sardine in a can — to talk about the tourism that was that year, and the tourism that will be hoped for next year.
But in this case, it was Shober’s last official show, and everyone wanted to add their story to her legendary 20 years of service as Wyoming’s Office of Tourism Director. Even Shober herself got in on the act, telling stories on both herself and her colleagues.
“I am only as strong as the coffee that I drink and the hairspray that I use,” Shober said, laughing a little as she displayed a photo collage of herself and the big hair she once wore when she was much younger.
“Many years ago, I was in Sheridan, and they used to have a salon at what was the Holiday Inn. I’m not sure what that hotel is now. But I went in and I said, ‘I need some hairspray. I need something that’s really strong.’ And she handed me this light hairspray and said, ‘This will stop a bird in flight.’”
Looking at the photos, she laughed and added, “So. yeah, this is stopping a bird in flight,” she said. “This is still going strong with that.”
But Shober also had a funny story to tell on her colleague, Chris Brown, Wyoming Hospitality Travel Coalition’s executive director.
“In this industry, I think one of the greatest gifts that you get is the personal relationships with each other,” she said. “And you can become really close friends and car time is one of the best ways to spend it. Chris and I, during that endeavor — and he knows what’s coming — we visited dozens of communities together.”
They had hundreds of meetings in various communities, and Shober has thousands of stories to tell. But she likes one story in particular.
“Chris ran over me!” Shober said. “And that is, I might have posed for an after shot, but you can see that I have tire tracks on my shoe! Yes indeed. And we’re still really, really good friends.”
Shober told Cowboy State Daily after her presentation that she had hopped out of the car to adjust something, but Brown hadn’t realized it. He started rolling forward, not knowing she wasn’t still in the car.
He found out pretty quickly, however, when Shober cried out, “Stop, stop!”
But it was too late for her suede shoes.
“He hit like just this part of the shoe,” Shober said, gesturing to the toe area. “And he didn’t go all the way over, but it was to the point where I couldn’t pull it out. And he was mortified, and I was fine. I loved that there was — because they were suede shoes, the tire track was perfectly imprinted there, which is what we took pictures of.”
Shober has milked that story for all it’s worth, she said with a mischievous smile.
“We were road warriors and we’re just friends, well-respected colleagues,” she added. “But we share a passion for this work, and I have mad respect for who he is as a man, as a father, as a husband, and as someone who leads in industry.’
No Chump Change
There were lots of “Diane facts” sprinkled throughout the various presentations at the Fall Summit.
Kari Eakins, director of Wyoming Office of Tourism’s Strategy and Business Operation, used one to bolster her presentation on how Wyoming will keep its tourism momentum going after Shober retires in December.
“Diane talked earlier about us,” she said. “She said it was a Diane fact that we have one of the most tenured and experienced teams in the state of Wyoming. There are some really great numbers behind that Diane fact actually. As you can see here, our retention rate for all of our staff, including our seasonal employees is about 93%. And two-thirds of the people who work at the Wyoming Office of Tourism are full-time.”
Shober, during her presentation, had lots more “Diane facts,” although she insisted these weren’t her numbers at all. They came from independent, outside sources.
One of those data points is the 37% growth of Wyoming’s leisure and hospitality sector.
“That’s phenomenal, because GDP doesn’t move quickly, so small jumps are big leaps,” Shober said. “And so when you have something as high as 37%, that is powerful. The leisure and hospitality share of GDP has grown by 4%. That is even more substantial. These are important things when you think about the very foundational components of what sustains an economy and for this industry to be at that foundational level is impressive.”
Direct travel spending, meanwhile, has grown 2.4 times from 2004 to 2024, Shober said.
“That equates to 240% over 20 years,” she said. “That’s a substantial growth in the spending of our visitors. The tax revenue that is associated with that has grown by 320%, and this is predominantly non-resident tax revenue.”
All of that money are new dollars, Shober said, being pumped into local and state governments. That money helps to provide services like police, fire, schools, libraries and hospitals.
“(Tourism) is the largest private sector employer in the state of Wyoming,” Shober said. “Direct employment has grown by 19%. But look at the earnings, what people make. It’s (grown) 2.6 times. That’s 260% When people say this that this industry is full of dead-end jobs and low-wage jobs, BS on that right there. These are facts. These are not my numbers. These are legitimate numbers that are coming from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Wyoming Department of Economic Analysis. This is the truth.”
Incremental trips to Wyoming have also grown six times over Shober’s tenure, she said.
“That’s 600% growth in trips, which would not have happened it there weren’t a marketing campaign, advertising Wyoming, making sure that people are aware of Wyoming as this fabulous vacation destination,” she said. “Taxes generated off those incremental trips grew 7.7 times. That’s 770% over 20 years. What other industries are growing tax revenues at this rate? No one. So, when we say we’re one of the leading contributors of sales and. use taxes, this is why. These are the numbers. These are not Diane Shober’s numbers. These are numbers generated by outside sources.”
Hey Hollywood
Celebrity cutouts of Shober decorated the halls at the Fall Summit, sometimes startling those who passed by, until they realized it was just another of the cardboard cutouts staring intently, and not Shober herself.
The cutouts gave the summit a little bit of a Hollywood party feel. But, in reality, Shober is no stranger to bringing a little bit of a Hollywood spotlight onto Wyoming.
Like the time she and her team managed to insert Wyoming into promotional materials for the Disney Pixar movie, “The Good Dinosaur.”
It was quite an achievement, because Disney doesn’t normally partner with outside entities for any of its corporate marketing. Shober said it came about thanks to an element of just the right place, right time, right story.
“We already had a platform for a ‘Why Am I Here’ story around paleontologists at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center,” Shober said.
In it, dinosaur enthusiast Andrew Rossi talked about how he came to Wyoming because it is the land of dinosaurs, a “geologic Disneyland” of sorts. In the segment that was filmed for the Disney Pixar partnership, Rossi also talked about how special it was for him to see a dinosaur like an Apatosaurus starring in a Disney movie, because it’s “very much a Wyoming dinosaur” and one that’s “littered across this entire state.”
Rossi’s segment about Wyoming’s dinosaur story was included in all 4 million copies of the DVD release of “The Good Dinosaur.” It was a huge advertising coup for the state, highlighting all of its many dinosaur adventures.
“We were also able to leverage that with Sinclair all across Wyoming at their stations,” Shober said. “To talk about the dinosaurs and where you can go on dinosaur digs and this whole, really digging into our paleo history.”
More recently, Shober tapped into an explorer theme with a Ford Bronco partnership that included five, adventure-packed episodes filmed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Jimmy Chin.
The series featured three teams of Bronco ambassadors vying for points by taking on some of the state’s best adventures — climbing sheer cliff walls, fishing wilderness streams for trophy trout, mountain biking off-road trails, horse-back riding and more.
The campaign reached nearly 1 million households across the United States and helped push a 9-fold increase in traveler interest to Wyoming, according to trade industry journal Phocuswire.
Turning The Page
Wyoming’s advertising campaign this year drove a 13% return on investment for the state, Shober said, for a total of $64.9 million additional tax dollars directly attributable to the spend.
“For every dollar we spent in buying media, that returned $12.86 back to public coffers in the state of Wyoming and city and county governments,” she said.
Awareness for the state, meanwhile, is at 45%, a benchmark that now compares well to other states.
But, Shober added, Wyoming’s remarkable tourism success hasn’t been built by campaigns or even the destination itself.
“It’s these remarkable people right here,” she said, referring to her staff. “And I’m forever indebted to the team at the Wyoming Office of Tourism, whose dedication, creativity, and execution have transformed strategic plans into meaningful outcomes. They are the soul of Wyoming’s story. Brilliant, kind, and steadfast, carrying out the mission and vision with professionalism in every single thing that they do.”
Wyoming’s next chapter in its tourism story won’t be about reinventing things, she added.
“It’s about turning the page with confidence,” Shober said, calling for her successor, Domenic Bravo, to stand up.
Bravo has been president and CEO of Visit Cheyenne for the last five years. He was named as the state’s new tourism director just before the Fall Summit.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled for you,” Shober said. “And I know you know this, but we are leaving you in really, really good hands. The progress over two decades, we’ve transformed how Wyoming presents itself to the world.”
Bravo told Cowboy State Daily he’d learned he was going to be Wyoming’s next tourism director while attending the World Economic Forum in San Francisco, where he was part of a subgroup on tourism.
His return trip to Wyoming from that conference to the Fall Summit was punctuated with paperwork that he had to stop and sign along the way.
“When I would get a signal, the offer letter would come in,” he said. “And then here’s the press release.”
Bravo will start his new position in November. He said he hasn’t had time to fully absorb the news himself yet, but that his focus starting out will be just to maintain the great momentum Shober began, and to continue building on that.
Bravo is also no stranger to changing things up when the situation demands it, though. He came on board at Visit Cheyenne in 2020, right before the COVID-19 Pandemic. That forced everyone to think outside the box, he said, and led him to create several new events which are still around, including the popular rodeo event, Hell on Wheels.
“We’re going to do some fun stuff from the hospitality and tourism space,” he said. “And really take Wyoming to the next level.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
