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VISIT PHILADELPHIA

Is this your company?

Toxic leadership - Anonymous employee VISIT PHILADELPHIA Employee Review

1.0
23 Sept 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The lower-tier employees (who do all the work) are overall great. They're smart, talented, hardworking people who love what they do and are fun to hang out with. If only they had a voice in how the company operates... The PTO and holiday schedule is pretty generous. If you're a white man — gay or straight — at the vice president level or higher, you'll do just fine here.

Cons

This is the most broken environment I've ever worked in, and I came from a startup. A lot of the negatives have been discussed in other reviews, so I'll stick with this: The most infuriating thing about working at Visit Philadelphia is how much effort the CEO puts into pretending to care. Soapbox speeches, staff surveys, lame diversity panels — all of it is about him being able to say he asked for feedback. The reality is that the company has lost track of its mission to promote the city and is now just about making the CEO look good on the pages of the Philadelphia Business Journal. The people who do the work can't even get their ideas heard and more often than not, marketing campaigns are done by consultants who charge a ton of money, never meet deadlines and are all white men, despite the company saying it screens vendors for diversity and inclusivity. Work here if you love being gaslighted.

Explore other reviews about VISIT PHILADELPHIA

5.0
3 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

good team and fun outings

Cons

hard get hired unless you know someone

1.0
27 Nov 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

For prospective employees, I’m not sure there are any pros at the moment. It used to be a great place to work/learn and meet really driven and talented colleagues. At my time of leaving, morale was so low I’m not sure someone new would find any benefit.

Cons

For a nonprofit, they’ve strayed far from being mission-driven and are now entirely focused on PR hits rather than actually creating meaningful campaigns that generate tourism interest. Employees aren’t trusted in their respective fields and are instead expected to go through leaps and bounds to make a select group of the least hard-working individuals at the organization seem like they’re the ones worthy of praise. Decisions come at the last minute and disrupt any progress one could make at standardizing their responsibilities. I spent a good chunk of my last year there envisioning how great of a place it would be to work if the board saw through the hollow leadership, cleaned house at the executive level, and started fresh. It is truly a free for all for those that make the big bucks and everyone else has to follow suit, no matter how much sanity or integrity you lose along the way. While Visit Philly may still have a positive external reputation, these reviews make it clear it’s only a matter of time before the dam breaks and the hard work of the many individuals who laid the foundation (and tried to salvage the organization) will be overtaken by the failures of those select few.

4
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