Shot for the bureau, licensed for the partners
A destination sells through dozens of businesses: the hotels, restaurants, outfitters, shops and attractions a visitors bureau represents. The bureau gets a library it can use across its own site, social channels and campaigns, and the license names which partners can use which pieces, so a featured hotel or brewery can post its own reel without a separate negotiation.
In October 2026 we shot tourism aerials across Delaware County, Ohio, for the county’s tourism bureau: a kayaker and the marina on Alum Creek Lake, fall color along the water, a small-town center from above and a lit A-frame cabin rental at dusk, all framed vertical for social. See the Destination Delaware County project. In Michigan, our parks and downtown work includes social content for Kensington Metropark and Lake St. Clair Metropark and aerials of the Birmingham shopping district.
What destination organizations commission
Most bureaus buy in some combination of five things. An aerial b-roll library covers lakes, trails, downtowns and lodging, logged by location and season so the marketing team can find a shot in a year. Seasonal social content follows the calendar the destination actually runs on. Itinerary reels walk a viewer through a weekend. Partner features give a member business a short piece of its own. Campaign video carries the paid media flight. We price and license each one separately, so a bureau can start with a library and add the rest when the budget allows.
Usage rights a public agency can defend
Bureaus spend lodging tax, grant and membership money, and the people who approve that spending ask what the bureau gets for it. Ohio law, for example, directs a share of county lodging tax revenue to the convention and visitors bureau operating in the county under Ohio Revised Code 5739.09. Our agreements answer that question in writing: which edits and stills are licensed, for which channels, for how long, for which partners, and whether paid media is included. Raw camera files are not part of a standard license. When a bureau needs them for its own editors, we price them as a separate line item rather than folding them into the shoot.
Procurement, RFPs and state programs
We respond to formal requests for proposals in the format the bureau sets, with cost proposals, references, insurance certificates and work samples where asked. Our guide to how tourism bureaus scope and buy video covers RFP structure, scoring and rights language in more detail.
State tourism offices add money and reach. TourismOhio’s 2026 Joint Marketing Program covered media placement fees and 25% of advertising or content creation costs, up to $4,000 per partner per state fiscal year while funds lasted, according to the Ohio Local History Alliance’s listing for TourismOhio’s May 2026 program webinar. Check current terms with TourismOhio before budgeting around it. In Michigan, Pure Michigan said in March 2025 that 27 travel partners were contributing more than $2.5 million to its warm-weather campaign. Content for those programs has to meet the state’s specs and the partner’s usage terms at the same time, and we plan deliverables for both.
Captions and accessibility
Every edit with speech or meaningful sound ships with a caption file. The W3C’s WCAG success criterion 1.2.2 asks for captions on prerecorded video and says they should identify speakers and meaningful sound effects as well as dialogue. The Justice Department’s ADA Title II web rule adopts WCAG 2.1 Level AA for state and local government web content, with compliance dates of April 26, 2027 for governments serving 50,000 or more people and April 26, 2028 for smaller ones.
Michigan, Ohio and the region
Our office is in Detroit, and we work with a network of crew and creator contacts across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Windsor. Before an Ohio or Michigan shoot we check the airspace, the state park and metro park rules and any city permit. Our Ohio drone laws guide and Detroit drone rules guide set out what applies. For central Ohio work, see drone photography in Columbus. Send us the scope or the RFP.