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A passionate travel and tourism advocate he serves as President of Visit Overland Park. Prior to his joining the organization he served in senior roles with several advertising agencies including Kansas City based Barkley, leading the travel and tourism practice as well as serving as Managing Director for the global travel and tourism practice at MBuy. He also served as Chief Marketing Officer for Choose Chicago where he helped lead the consolidation of tourism efforts for the city of Chicago into one entity from three and permanently increased the annual budget by $18 million dollars via additional state and city resources. At Choose Chicago, he led the marketing effort to increase tourism for Chicago resulting in 2012 visitation to Chicago totaling 46.37 million visitors, a 6.2% increase from 2011. The growth was fueled by a significant increase of 10.2 percent in overnight leisure visitation (which exceeded the national growth rate by three percentage points). International visitation to Chicago rose 14.2% in 2012 more than twice the national average. Additionally, he led the redesign and digital consolidation of Chicago’s visitor focused web presence to the ChooseChicago.com website. This new multilingual site saw a 250% growth in visitation to over five million annual visitors. Prior to joining Choose Chicago, Wilkinson served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Visit Indy, responsible for directing the marketing and communications efforts for the official destination marketing organization for greater Indianapolis. Mr. Wilkinson has more than 20 years of experience in the airline industry, having served in key senior marketing and communications positions for national and regional airline companies. From 2001 through 2008 he served as Vice President of Marketing, Communications and Government Affairs for Republic Airways, second largest regional airline in the world. Warren lives in Leawood, Kansas with his wife and kids but on the weekends can be seen at Overland Park’s Scheel’s soccer complex watching his son play soccer or Lacrosse or at Oak Park Mall with his wife enjoying watching their daughter perform at Culture House.
