concierge / travel professional spotlight

Vicki Doyle
Vice President, Partner Development/Visitor Services
Metropolitan Tucson CVB

Without a bucket of paint or a brush, Vicki Doyle paints the town pink (and all the other vibrant colors of the Sonoran desert) for Tucson visitors and the more than 800 individual members and business partners of the Metropolitan Tucson Convention and Visitors Bureau (MTCVB.) This willowy public relations dynamo’s secret weapon is that she likes to like people! Her 19-year career in the promotion of Tucson has included positions in private, government and non-profit organizations.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana (along with her idol Jane Pauley), Doyle arrived in Tucson as a journalism graduate of Northern Illinois University in 1986 to fill the position of Assistant Information Director for the Tucson Airport Authority. Following her role as Public Information Specialist for the City of Tucson Community Relations Office, she joined the MTCVB in 1995 as its Vice President of Membership and Visitor Services. Elaborating, she says, “My very first job contact here eight years ago was with the MTCVB—and I knew I would work here one way or another!”

Between cutting ribbons and chatting with conventioneers, Doyle can also be found in her office at 100 S. Church Avenue juggling membership recruitment, retention and community education responsibilities as well as visitors services -- including the new Tucson Visitor Center in La Placita Village. On her desk is Martin Lindstrom’s “Brand Sense”, a book she’s burning through about how marketers should use all of the senses in selling their services. “Tourism generates over $2 billion dollars in economic impact, locally. After several challenging years, there’s good news to report: Tucson International Airport recently celebrated the 4-million passenger mark. We also experienced a substantial increase in attendance at the Tucson Visitor Center and to our visitTucson.org web site,” Doyle says.

Longtime associate and friend Viki Matthews, Tucson Airport Authority Public Relations Administrator, recalls Doyle’s valuable media savvy. “In the late ‘80’s, pilots’ flight manuals cautioned against landing when outside temperatures were over 110 degrees. With Phoenix temperatures at 117 degrees, flights were diverted to Tucson, and Vicki summoned captivated reporters out onto the tarmac in her high heels and business suit to get photos that the rest of us on a hot summer day would have just let them shoot from a terminal window!”

In time away from the Bureau last June, Vicki, husband Dave and their six-year-old daughter Tara attended Vicki’s brother’s Irish wedding at the Knappogue Castle gardens where Tara reigned as the flower girl on the “only day of that week it didn’t rain!” When Doyle is pressed for Bureau stories of interesting requests, this big time Sonoran Desert fan remembered a recent one about a Tucson visitor who insisted “Busy Bee” was the location of the Queen Mine Tour! “We had to convince the woman that her true destination was Bisbee!