Women Leading the Way
Carrie Hughes Is Excited for Boise’s Future
By Jordan Bradley
When Carrie Hughes, CDME, Executive Director of Visit Boise, was heading off to college and considering her career path, she did what most future-minded students did: she took a career-matching test.
“I was actually steered towards tourism and hospitality, which is really crazy,” Hughes told USAE. “I know everyone else kind of just happens into the industry.”
Hughes grew up in Seneca Falls, New York, and earned her bachelor’s degree in tourism/travel management and business at Commonwealth University-Mansfield in Mansfield, Pennsylvania. While in college, her parents moved to Lake Placid, and she spent her summers waitressing at a local resort. After she graduated, a sales position came open at the same resort and Hughes jumped into the role.
But when the resort went through a season of layoffs about a year later, a 22-year-old Hughes took her severance, her skis and her bike, and headed off to Colorado.
“I didn’t really have a plan other than I knew I could work hard, and I could do what I needed to do,” Hughes said.
While working in hotel sales in Denver, Hughes said she “kept hearing” about friends from New York and Pennsylvania moving to Idaho, specifically Ketchum and Sun Valley. She was enticed enough that she took a job in sales with the then-director of the Ketchum/Sun Valley CVB, eventually working her way up to the role of marketing director.
“And then life changes,” she said. “I ended up moving to Boise. I, actually, was not sure what I was going to do in Boise, I just knew I wanted a different experience, a different market. I kept doing these informational interviews with contacts and people I knew through being in Idaho. Everyone kept directing me to the Chamber of Commerce.”
So Hughes landed a leadership role overseeing the chamber’s leadership and young professionals program. The role positioned her well to eventually step into the executive directorship at the Boise Convention and Visitors Bureau (which became Visit Boise three years ago), and really allowed her to get “to know the people and the like-minded go-getters, people that wanted to make a difference and that loved the community.”
During her three years with the chamber, “I fell in love with Boise,” Hughes said. When her current role came available, it felt like the right move.
By the time she joined in 2015, the CVB had gone through “a lot of changes,” Hughes recalled.
“It was much smaller,” she said. “We’d lost some funding, so I was excited to grow the organization. It kind of felt like a startup.”
Though Hughes didn’t directly succeed the late Bobbie Patterson, Hughes still felt the former executive director’s “huge presence” in the CVB, she told USAE.
“She had a very feisty personality,” Hughes said. “She wasn’t afraid to speak up. During the time when she led and she was here at the organization, it was probably a time when there weren’t a lot of women leaders, outspoken women leaders. And she really believed in the organization and fought for it. There was never a ‘no’ answer.”
Patterson was responsible for bringing the National Governors Conference to Boise, Hughes recalled, and was the first woman to chair Destinations International.
“She definitely never shied away from anything, and I definitely felt that,” Hughes said.
As she was getting settled into the organization and shifting from her background in leisure travel in Sun Valley’s smaller marker into Boise’s sports-and-incentive-driven market, Hughes said she leaned on the expertise of two team members who had been with Patterson at the CVB, and Patterson herself was just a phone call away with advice, or a person to contact.
“She was very supportive of me from the beginning,” Hughes said.
In 2015, Patterson was inducted into Destination International’s Hall of Fame. During her acceptance speech, Hughes recalled, Patterson made sure to call on attendees to support Hughes as she stepped into the executive director seat at the Boise CVB.
“She said something about me: ‘Oh, by the way, we’ve got my replacement out here in the audience. Please embrace her and help her along,’” Hughes recalled. “So she was definitely a female leader that helped other females succeed.”
For women stepping into a leadership role, Hughes can’t recommend networking and finding a mentor enough, she told USAE. She also emphasized the importance of asking questions.
“In the beginning [of my time at the Boise CVB,] we didn’t have the budget to attend some of these national conferences and get to that peer-to-peer learning,” Hughes said. “But if you pick up the phone, anyone will answer and help you. I don’t think there’s another industry like it, actually. To be competitors yet share great advice. I would have loved to form some of those friendships earlier on. And, really, there’s no dumb question. Everyone’s probably been there or done that and needed that advice at some point.”
During her time with the Boise CVB, Hughes has seen a lot: the pandemic, of course, but also a successful shift in storytelling around Boise’s identity, bringing into focus the culinary and cultural offerings of the city alongside its outdoorsy reputation.
“When I started, it was like [we’re] bringing out the map. ‘Where’s Boise?’” Hughes said. “Now, it’s so exciting to see the shift that’s happened due to that storytelling in a real, authentic way. ‘It’s on my list. I’ve heard about Boise. I want to come.’ And hopefully we can give them more and more reasons to come.”
Idaho’s capital city is currently seeing a surge in high-quality (and James Beard Award-winning or -finalist) restaurants.
“Culinary in general has really evolved here,” Hughes said. “I’d say a lot of it is because it’s such a fabulous place to be. People who grew up here and went off and trained in other markets like New York City or Seattle or Portland then can come back here, raise their family and be the chef specializing in the thing.”
Alongside a burgeoning restaurant industry, Hughes has watched the city’s downtown hotel market grow significantly, increasing from around 500 guest rooms when she stared in 2015 to approximately 2,000 today. Hughes was sure to call out the forthcoming of the largest hotel in the city, the dual-branded AC and Element hotels, which is expected to open “within the next few weeks” adding almost 300 guest rooms to the city’s hotel market, Hughes said.
Today, Hughes and the small-but-mighty team at Visit Boise are preparing their next strategic plan, which Hughes expects to be completed later this year.
“I’ve always believed that really thoughtful investment in meetings and conferences and events can create a meaningful, long-term impact for Boise,” Hughes said. “So we’ve worked really closely with our partners—like Boise Center—and then we’ve focused on building that side of the business in a way that delivers really strong returns and helps position the destination for future opportunities, including projects like a future expansion.”
The Greater Boise Auditorium District has recently obtained purchase agreements for six acres of property near the Boise River and just a handful of blocks from the district as it exists today.Though the district hasn’t yet identified the projects for the parcels, “that to us is very exciting for the future and what that can be,” Hughes said.
As the city grows in visibility, popularity and literal size, Hughes and the Visit Boise team are mindful of balance.
“There’s definitely been the growth of people moving here, but it’s also about the visitation,” Hughes said. “I think you have to have both. You have to have the balance of everything to be able to support those types of restaurants that you want [and] the quality of life you want to enjoy here. We really want to maintain the Boise nice and welcoming nature.”