Chay Rees Runnels

Chay Rees Runnels, Ph.D., is an assistant professor and hospitality administration program coordinator at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. Her research interests include convention and meeting planning, destination marketing organizations and customer service.

Articles by Chay Rees Runnels

• Family fun: Boosting your destination with American Girl

  Wednesday, January 22, 2014

  You may have more visitors than you think — if you count the 18-inch coiffed and impeccably dressed companions of the tween-and-under demographic. American Girl dolls, first introduced in 1986, are now helping to drive tourism to destinations across the country.

• Christmas light tours attract visitors during holiday season

  Tuesday, December 03, 2013

  You may remember the iconic scene in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," when Clark Griswold goes to throw the switch on his house after spending hours decorating it. Suddenly, the whole neighborhood goes dark. While the Griswold home was fictional, Christmas light displays may be both a draw and a nuisance for destinations during the holiday season. While traffic and congestion in highly-decorated neighborhoods may cause trouble for some communities, other destination marketing organizations are embracing lighting displays as a way to attract visitors.

• Travel companies using microsites to reach customers

  Tuesday, October 22, 2013

  Companies are turning to the use of microsites as they seek to reach specific demographics or highlight certain aspects of their product or offering. Microsites are generally one- to two-page sites that may be branded a little differently than the parent site and act as discrete “sites within a site.”