Applegarth Intelligence

Understanding destinations as they are.

We produce stewardship intelligence for destinations navigating social, cultural, and economic change.

Our Work Start a conversation
130+ Speaking Engagements
1,500 Surveys · Foundational Research
2019 Research Initiated · Ongoing
7 International Engagements
Destinations are not static brands or economic units. They are living systems — shaped by the people who live in them, the visitors who move through them, and the industries and ideas that enter over time.
— Applegarth Intelligence

What stewardship intelligence means

The social layer is where destination coherence is won or lost.

Most destination intelligence focuses on economic performance, visitor volume, and marketing reach. These matter. But they don't capture what determines a destination's long-term health — the alignment between narrative and lived reality, between identity and change, between community and visitor economy.

Stewardship intelligence attends to the social layer: how destinations maintain legitimacy, representation, and meaning as industries evolve, economies shift, and communities change. It is interpretive, longitudinal, and honest. It powers everything from internal understanding to stakeholder alignment to marketing strategy and board-level communication.

01

Social Legitimacy

Whether a destination's narrative is still aligned with what residents and visitors actually experience — and where the gaps are quietly widening.

02

Community Vitality

Belonging, representation, and participation treated as foundational conditions — not afterthoughts — of a destination that lasts.

03

Place Identity

How identity evolves as industries enter, economies shift, and visitor behaviors reshape the lived texture of a place over time.

04

Narrative Coherence

The shared language that allows stakeholders to communicate, navigate complexity, and maintain direction — even through significant change.

05

Longitudinal Intelligence

Destinations evolve continuously. Intelligence that doesn't move with them has a short shelf life. Ours compounds over time.

The Framework

How we orient the work.

Every full stewardship engagement is grounded in a structured framework — beginning with where the destination already is, and building intelligence from there.

The Frame

Creating the Lay of the Land

Built from the destination's own guideposts — brand guidelines, strategic plans, marketing priorities, and the current landscape of the organization.

The Compass

Navigating Stewardship Priorities

Guides where intelligence and attention are directed — and why. Identifies the areas of a destination's landscape that require deeper understanding.

Specialty Lens

Domain Intelligence

When a destination is navigating a specific industry or cultural domain, a specialist lens shapes the intelligence upstream.

Cannabis Hemp LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage Food & Beverage Wine Tourism AI in Tourism

The Baseline

A Full Picture of Current Conditions

Six integrated intelligence modules — Place, People, Economy, Experience, Story, Horizon — that together produce a clear, honest read of where a destination stands.

The Guide

What the Destination Does Next

Translates intelligence into direction — a practical, quarter-by-quarter orientation for how the destination applies what it now understands.

Governing Principles

Awareness. Integrity. Effectiveness.

These principles orient how intelligence is gathered, interpreted, and communicated across every engagement. Not metrics — the disposition that makes stewardship real rather than performative.

The full stewardship system — Frame, Compass, Baseline, Guide, and Report — is the signature of Applegarth Intelligence. A limited number of full stewardship engagements are undertaken each year to ensure the depth of attention each destination deserves.

What We Produce

Three artifact types. One compounding intelligence system.

Our deliverables are durable forms of shared meaning — stabilizing reference points that help destinations understand themselves, develop shared language, and maintain interpretive coherence as conditions evolve.

Artifact 01

The Report

The full stewardship intelligence artifact. Synthesizes the Frame, Compass, Baseline, and Guide into a polished, boardroom-ready PDF — powering internal understanding, stakeholder alignment, strategic planning, and marketing from a single grounded source. Compounds as conditions evolve.

Artifact 02

The Brief

A focused intelligence snapshot. Begins with a single orientation conversation — no documents required. Expert-led and purpose-built to give a destination organization a clear, informed read on current conditions within a specific domain.

Artifact 03

The Story

Narrative intelligence licensed to destination publishers, tourism organizations, brands, and media. Applegarth Intelligence has powered film, cultural exhibits, travel journalism, and destination brand campaigns — authored and attributed to the house.

Engagements

Proof of practice.

Applegarth Intelligence has worked at the intersection of destination systems and emerging experience economies, building the intelligence infrastructure, interpretive frameworks, and stakeholder alignment that allow destinations to move with confidence.

Foundational Research · 2019 – Ongoing

Cannabis Travel Audience Study

Co-authored with MMGY Travel Intelligence, Cannabis Tourism: Opportunities, Issues & Strategies produced the first comprehensive national portrait of the active leisure cannabis travel audience in the United States. Based on 1,500 completed surveys, the research captures behaviors, motivations, and how interested travelers research, plan, and book. The empirical foundation destinations have drawn on ever since.

View the research at MMGY Travel Intelligence →
1,500 Completed surveys
1st National study of its kind
2019 Research initiated
∞ Ongoing & compounding

Clients also include

Adventure Grows Visit Berkeley California Travel Association Destinations International Green Dream Tours Minnesota Tourism Association Visit Modesto Visit Oakland Oakland Cannabis Trail Palm Springs California Visit Santa Rosa Sonoma County Tourism Sunstone Undoo West Hollywood Travel + Tourism Board

What clients and collaborators say

The work speaks through those who've been in the room.

"Brian's work reflects a deep understanding of stewardship responsibility across destinations and emerging domains."
Andreas WeissenbornSVP Advocacy & Destination Advancement · Destinations International
"Brian is one of the most knowledgeable and articulate sources of insight on emerging trends in cannabis-related travel. Destinations interested in defining and navigating market development opportunities in this space will benefit significantly from his expertise."
Peter YesawichFounder · MMGY Global
"MMGY Travel Intelligence has collaborated with Brian Applegarth for several years. His knowledge of rapidly-evolving policies and trends ensures that our data are up-to-date and actionable for destinations."
Chris DavidsonEVP · MMGY Travel Intelligence
"Brian is the preeminent voice on cannabis tourism. His reputation, deep knowledge, and strategic approach to developing a strong business case were all critical for our organization to move more meaningfully into cannabis tourism marketing."
Todd O'LearyVP Marketing · Sonoma County Tourism
"He delivers information with a clear point of view, backed by solid data. He makes the modern day cannabis travel trend easy to understand for our team and stakeholders."
Peter GamezCEO · Visit Oakland
"We launched the nation's first destination cannabis program with Brian's assistance. Our stakeholders had confidence in our approach because we had a well-spoken, fact-based pro involved."
Todd AaronsonCEO · Visit Modesto

A Current Moment

What cannabis reveals about the intelligence gap.

A 2020 North American destination organization survey — conducted with MMGY Travel Intelligence — revealed a consistent pattern: many destination organizations understood that cannabis and hemp had arrived as topics, but few felt fully prepared to lead on them.

What the survey ultimately revealed was not simply a cannabis issue. It was an intelligence issue. Many destinations lacked the baseline understanding, shared language, stakeholder alignment, and interpretive frameworks necessary to engage a new and sensitive industry with confidence, clarity, and long-term perspective.

That gap is not limited to cannabis. It reflects a broader challenge facing destinations as they navigate emerging industries, evolving social landscapes, shifting visitor economies, and increasingly complex stakeholder environments.

Most destination organizations could not clearly describe the cannabis traveler — who they are, what they spend, or why they travel.
Government officials represented the greatest source of internal resistance — making stakeholder alignment the primary challenge, not consumer demand.
More than half believed cannabis and hemp could be vital economic drivers. Most didn't know where to begin.
DMOs needed to educate their own stakeholders before they could engage the public — internal legibility had to come first.
The tools to track, measure, and understand cannabis tourism impact were largely absent. The baseline simply didn't exist.

Cannabis is one illustration of a challenge that repeats across destination systems — whenever something new, sensitive, or evolving enters the picture. Wine tourism reshaped regional identity. Pet-friendly travel redefined hospitality expectations. AI is beginning to reshape the visitor experience in ways destinations are only starting to map.

Federal movement

As the United States moves toward federal medical cannabis legalization, the conditions for destination organizations continue to shift. Intelligence built now compounds in value as the landscape evolves.

Point of View

What we believe about destinations.

These convictions were not developed in a classroom. They emerged from years of frontline work at the intersection of emerging industries and destination systems.

Destinations are living systems of meaning — not static brands or economic units.
Visitor economies continuously reshape those systems, whether destinations are paying attention or not.
Legitimacy depends on alignment between what a destination says about itself and what people actually experience there.
Shared language is infrastructure. Without it, stakeholder alignment is fragile and leadership becomes reactive.
Community vitality is inseparable from destination stewardship. A destination that serves its visitors but not its residents is not built to last.
A single report is a snapshot. A stewardship intelligence system is a mirror — one that stays current as conditions change.
Brand is not a marketing construct. It emerges from the ongoing relationship between place, people, identity, and lived experience.

About

Authority built from the frontier.

Brian Applegarth

Brian Applegarth

Founder · Applegarth Intelligence

The work of Applegarth Intelligence emerged from frontline engagement at the intersection of emerging industries and destination systems. Working inside the cannabis and hemp travel category from its earliest days — building destination products, conducting foundational research, leading industry task forces, and creating some of the first purpose-built cannabis destination programs in the United States — produced a direct, working understanding of how destinations metabolize change.

That same intelligence framework now applies across destination systems — wherever something new, sensitive, or evolving is entering the picture and organizations need to get grounded before they can lead.

Applegarth Intelligence serves destination marketing organizations, convention and visitor bureaus, chambers of commerce, state and regional tourism boards, cultural institutions, and the wider visitor economy ecosystem.

130+ Speaking Engagements — View Full List →    BrianApplegarth.com — The full body of work →

Book — Publishing 2025

Learning Under Pressure: Stewarding Places Through Change — a foundational text on destination stewardship through periods of economic, social, and cultural disruption.

Founder — The Cannabis Trail

A nine-county cultural attraction in Northern California — one of the first cannabis destination products of its kind in the United States. Visit California Poppy Award winner. US ESTO finalist.

Task Force Lead

Led Cannabis and Hemp Task Forces for Destinations International & California Travel Association — producing the foundational body of work that gave destination organizations nationally the tools to lead.

MMGY Global Research

Co-authored the first national survey research on the cannabis travel audience in the United States — with Peter Yesawich — across three traveler segments.

Who We Serve

The destination ecosystem.

Applegarth Intelligence works across the full destination and visitor economy — wherever stewardship intelligence can help an organization understand its conditions more clearly, align its stakeholders, and lead with greater confidence.

Primary

  • Destination Marketing Organizations
  • Convention & Visitor Bureaus
  • State & Regional Tourism Boards
  • Chambers of Commerce

Extended

  • Economic Development Organizations
  • Museums & Cultural Institutions
  • Documentary & Media Projects
  • Research & Data Organizations

Specialty

  • Cannabis & Hemp Brands
  • Cultural Heritage Destinations
  • Emerging Experience Economy Operators
  • Event Producers

Inquire

Begin with a conversation.

Every engagement starts with a conversation — not a proposal. We want to understand your destination, what is changing, and what clarity would mean for your organization before recommending an intelligence investment path forward.

If something new is entering your destination system — or if a long-standing identity is ready for a fresh read — we want to hear from you.

What to expect

A first conversation is twenty minutes. No deck, no pitch. We listen to where your destination is and what clarity would mean for your organization. From there, we'll tell you whether and how we can help.

A limited number of full stewardship engagements are undertaken each year.

Email

ba@brianapplegarth.com

Based In

Coachella Valley, California · Available globally

Engagement Types

The Report · The Brief · The Story

Info Sessions

Applegarth Intelligence hosts regular Destination Stewardship Intelligence info sessions. Contact to learn about upcoming dates.