Apr 17, 2026
Briana Konecke is the Founder of Rural Tourism Network (RTN), a New York-based consulting and research organization dedicated to helping rural communities harness tourism as a driver of economic development and cultural preservation. RTN works at the intersection of destination strategy, regional collaboration, and purpose-built technology infrastructure, serving as a connective layer for under-resourced rural destinations that are increasingly expected to compete in a sophisticated digital landscape with limited staff and constrained budgets. She has also worked on projects with a network of scenic byways, heritage trail, and themed tourism organizations nationwide, contributing research and strategy to multi-organizational initiatives aimed at raising the visibility and viability of rural destinations.
Before founding RTN, Briana built an international career in tourism and education. She grew up in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, a small community where childhood consisted of spending most of her time outdoors and enjoying the particular rhythms of a close-knit neighborhood. She went on to serve in the Peace Corps, work as a professional tour guide across multiple continents, and teach high school history before earning a Master's in Tourism and Travel Management from New York University. That combination of field experience, academic training, and classroom work shaped a professional philosophy centered on the idea that tourism, when done right, sustains not just a community's economy but its identity.
Briana leads RTN's consulting practice, research initiatives, and partner relationships. She advises DMOs on organizational strategy, technology adoption, and regional collaboration and pairs that work with original research designed to surface the structural challenges rural destinations face. RTN's foundational study, a 68-DMO survey conducted across 16 states, produced two key findings now anchoring the organization's thought leadership: the Capacity Paradox, the discovery that 79% of rural DMOs report growing visitation even as 69% cite staff capacity as their top operational challenge and the Trail Participation Paradox, which found that DMOs participating in organized tourism trails report significantly higher capacity strain than non-participating peers (88% vs. 44%). These findings directly inform RTN's approach to building infrastructure and programs that work within the realities of small, capacity-constrained teams.
This research has led RTN to launch Upstate Bound, a platform designed specifically for the realities of rural DMO operations: rather than asking under-resourced organizations to build and maintain their own digital infrastructure, Upstate Bound provides shared discovery, promotion, and analytics tools that individual DMOs couldn't cost-effectively sustain on their own. While simultaneously creating a unified digital discovery platform for New York state, with an editorial layer and engagement feature to enhance the visitor experience.
Briana remains a connoisseur of nature and the outdoors. She recently took up bird watching and joins weekly sessions at the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Jolene, her dog, is her favorite outdoor buddy and they regularly explore New York state together.