How Detroit Tourism Finally Caught Up to the Hype | Live From IPW 2026

Welcome to a special IPW 2026 series of View From Afar. In this episode, recorded live from the conference floor, Visit Detroit⁠⁠ president and CEO ⁠⁠Claude Molinari⁠⁠ sits down with Afar editorial director Billie Cohen for one of our most energizing travel industry interviews yet: a look at how Detroit tourism finally caught up to the reality of a city that has quietly transformed.

Claude has led Visit Detroit since 2021, after a decade running Huntington Place, the city's convention center. He is the person who brought the NFL Draft to town in 2024, and he makes the case that Detroit is not staging a comeback so much as becoming something entirely new.

In this episode, Claude and Billie discuss:

Why Detroit tourism is riding a genuine shift rather than another comeback story, from five new skyscrapers to three straight years of population growth

The number-one Riverwalk in the country, a $30 million renovation, and the stretch from Belle Isle to the Ambassador Bridge

How Michigan Central Station went from abandoned to the epicenter of autonomous vehicles, and why Detroit is the only UNESCO City of Design in the United States

The architecture worth the trip, from the Guardian Building to a fedora from Henry the Hatter

How Detroit is handling a roughly 30 percent drop in Canadian visitation while still growing overall

The Juventus jersey partnership that put Visit Detroit in front of 500 million soccer fans and drove website traffic up 400 percent from Europe

Of course we start with the only debate that matters, which pizza is truly the best

This is one in a series of travel industry interviews and tourism experts interviews recorded live at IPW 2026, part of View From Afar's ongoing look at travel trends 2026, travel marketing strategies, and the destination management behind a city on the rise. For a fresh read on Detroit tourism ahead of the Final Four and IPW 2028, it is a front-row conversation with one of the hospitality industry leaders shaping the future of travel.

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