Tourism Council Annual Meeting with Guest Speaker at The Spring House Hotel

51 Spring St, New Shoreham, RI 02807

From Tuesday, October 6 2026 at 11:00 PM until Wednesday, October 7 2026 at 12:00 AM

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET

As always there will be hors d'oeuvres and we will be giving away a one-of-a-kind piece of glass art from Eben Horton and the Glass Station Studio to one attendee.

There will be a short presentation on the Tourism Council initiatives and programming followed by a not-to-be-missed guest speaker presentation by Charlie Ballard.

"Other places: what nine islands and one country did about their off-season."

Charlie Ballard is from Block Island and has spent fifteen years measuring how places get visitors. Most recently he was Executive Director of Performance Insights at the Saudi Tourism Authority in Riyadh, building the team that told the country's tourism board what was working. Before that he ran destination analytics at Tripadvisor and marketing science at Meta. He's written a couple of pieces for the Block Island Times this summer and moves to Singapore in October.