| Mary Klugherz |
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GDS Principal A passion for travel and adventure led Mary into the tourism industry more than 20 years ago. Her broad expertise in destination branding, planning, development, marketing, and market research, along with her many years working for destinations in the U.S., Canada, Central America, and Europe, have provided her an extraordinary understanding of community development and the tourism industry. Following completion of her university degree in the U.S., Mary's professional career began in Europe, where she worked in Switzerland, Scotland, and Germany in various tourism and travel industry-related positions. She landed back in the U.S. as Director of Marketing and Sales for a major tour operator that offered one and two week adventure tours in Alaska and provided shore excursions for cruise ships. A few years later she moved on to serve as Director of Marketing for the Alaska Division of Tourism, overseeing the North American tourism marketing programs for the State of Alaska for several years. Under Mary's leadership the Travel Industry Association of America awarded Alaska's tourism marketing program the Best Marketing Program of the 50 States. For the past 20 years Mary has applied her tourism planning and marketing expertise in a variety of consulting assignments for states, communities, regions, provinces, aboriginal groups, and private sector interests. Many of these assignments focused on using tourism to diversify local economies. Some of her favorite projects include the successful development of an entirely new cruise product for British Columbia and its large and small port communities along the BC coast, an update of the "Destination:Alaska!" statewide tourism master plan, and a recently completed tourism infrastructure development plan for a large region in Alaska encompassing several small communities. Mary has lived in both large and small cities in five different countries. She recently spent two years living in France as part of a "sabbatical." While there she was tapped for a project with an NGO to develop a tourism training program for residents in small rural areas of Central Asia. Mary has provided an assortment of workshops and training sessions covering topics such as tourism development, marketing tourism, tourism research, and small business development. She has also served as an adjunct professor for the University of Alaska, teaching Tourism Marketing and Market Research in the Business School's Visitor Industry Program and has been invited as a guest speaker at conferences in the U.S. and Europe. The Alaska Tourism Industry Association has recognized Mary with a Special Award for her outstanding contribution to the Alaska visitor industry. |