To the Nantucket Select Board and Town Administration:
Nantucket no longer suffers from a lack of recognition or exposure.

The island is promoted every day by national travel publications, hotels, restaurants, real-estate companies, visitors, social-media influencers, brand campaigns, and millions of photographs and videos shared online.

Our challenge is no longer attracting attention. It is managing the consequences of that attention.

Nantucket faces increasing pressure on its roads, transportation system, workforce, housing, public spaces, natural resources, historic neighborhoods, and year-round community. At the same time, public and institutional resources continue to support a tourism model that has traditionally emphasized marketing, visitation, events, and destination promotion.

We, the undersigned, ask the Nantucket Select Board and Town Administration to undertake a transparent public review of Nantucket’s tourism and economic-development structure.

That review should examine:
• Any Town funding, contracts, grants, appointments, or formal partnerships connected to tourism promotion and the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce.
• Whether Nantucket still needs publicly supported destination marketing at its current level.
• Whether resources should be redirected toward destination management, responsible visitation, workforce stability, year-round commerce, local ownership, transportation, and protection of residential and environmentally sensitive areas.
• Whether the Town, Chamber, Department of Culture and Tourism, business community, and residents have overlapping or outdated responsibilities.
• How success should be measured beyond visitor numbers, event attendance, guidebook distribution, social-media exposure, and summer sales.
• We are not asking the Town to oppose local businesses or eliminate useful business-support programs.

We are asking the Town to recognize that Nantucket’s needs have changed.

The island does not need more exposure for exposure’s sake. It needs a coordinated strategy that protects the community, supports locally owned businesses, strengthens the year-round economy, and manages tourism within the island’s physical and social limits.

We ask the Select Board to place this issue on a public meeting agenda and begin a community-wide discussion about what Nantucket’s tourism and economic-development system should become.

Nantucket does not need to be promoted more successfully. It needs to be managed more wisely.