Visit Tucson welcomes new interim President and CEO

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TUCSON, Arizona (KGUN) – Visit Tucson’s President and CEO Brent DeRaad recently announced his resignation. DeRaad served in this position for nine years and now Felipe Garcia is temporarily filling his position. Garcia has been with Visit Tucson for 17 years and has served as Executive Vice President for the past nine years. Last week the organization announced him as interim president and CEO.

“It’s not that I’m learning something that I have no idea about, just doing a lot of operational parts,” said Garcia.

Garcia was born in Monterey, Mexico and has played an important role in building relationships beyond the borders of Arizona. He led the movement to bring two visitor centers to Mexico and currently hosts a live Mexican television segment in Tucson every Thursday.

“I love this organization because we are very disruptive in the industry,” said Garcia. “We are always looking for opportunities and how we can implement them. We talk to other tourism industries around the country and they look at Tucson like, ‘Really, are you doing this?’ “

Garcia says he already has plans for Visit Tucson.

“For many months or years I have a notepad in the back of my mind where I write ideas that we might well be going this way,” said Garcia.

He says the Tucson gem shows will get bigger and better next year as American borders reopen to international travel. Garcia also wants to build on Tucson’s Agave Heritage Festivals so that they attract the same tourism as the gemstone shows.

“We have been running the Agave Heritage Festival very successfully for many years, so we are now building other events on it so we can have maybe 10 days of activities, events in May that bring individuals here, these masses of people to our” community ” said Garcia.

He hopes to improve food tourism too.

“Using food and hospitality as a catalyst to attract tourism, to draw attention to our community, is something I think we need to work on,” said Garcia.

Garcia says he’s working on a big project to attract international visitors. He didn’t want to give details, but said he expected something in March or April next year.

“We’re going to do something that works and be one of those who appear in publications like, ‘Wow, Tucson did this unique but successful thing,'” said Garcia.

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