5 Important Features Every Community Events Calendar Needs
Request a Demo
Does My Community Need an Events Calendar?
If you’re a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO), your role isn’t necessarily to host events — it’s to make sure your community knows what’s happening.
But too often, the events calendar on a DMO site is underwhelming. It’s hard to update, limited in scope, or disconnected from what’s actually going on around town. That’s where a purpose-built Events Calendar CMS (content management system) comes in — giving you the power to curate and showcase local events with far less effort.
From our aggregated customer data, here’s what communities have achieved after implementing our Localist Events Calendar:
-
Up to 450% increases in web traffic thanks to improved SEO and discoverability.
-
75% time savings on managing calendar content.
-
3x more engagement with event listings, even without running events themselves.
If your calendar still relies on legwork and hope, it may be time to consider an upgrade.
What is an Event CMS?
An Event CMS is a platform designed to help organizations curate, manage, and promote events online. For local tourism, this means consolidating everything from festivals and gallery openings to farmer’s markets and trivia nights into one dynamic, branded hub.
Unlike a general CMS or third-party embed, an Events Calendar CMS gives you specialized tools for:
-
Creating SEO-friendly pages automatically.
-
Accepting event submissions from partners and venues.
-
Filtering by interest, location, or theme.
-
Showcasing your town’s culture without the manual work.
You’re not trying to control every event. You’re making it easy for people to find what’s already happening while promoting local businesses.
Community Events Calendar Features That Make a Difference for Local Tourism
1. Seamless Branding and Integration
Your calendar should feel like a natural extension of your website. With the right Event Calendar CMS, you can match your brand down to the favicon.
Your calendar should also be able to exist on your website through widgets. Site visitors will stay longer, click more, and associate your website as the authority for events happening in the community. Google will, as well.
2. Place Landing Page
People often want to know what’s happening at a specific place — like the downtown plaza, a local brewery, or the performing arts center.
A good Event Calendar can automatically generate Place Landing Pages that show all events tied to a specific venue. These pages give venues extra visibility, offer visitors useful info (like parking, hours, what’s nearby), and become search-friendly assets on your site.
It’s a win-win for your partners and your audience.
3. Group Landing Pages
Group Landing Pages showcase all events tied to a common host or organizer — making them ideal for partners, internal departments, or community groups.
For example, you could create pages like:
-
“Events Hosted by the Culinary Food Truck Collective”
-
“City Parks & Rec Events”
-
“Downtown Business Association Series”
These pages automatically pull in events from that specific group, giving them dedicated visibility and making it easier for residents and visitors to explore offerings from a single source. It’s a great way to support local organizations while offering your audience a more organized browsing experience.
4. Event Landing Pages Built for SEO
Every event listing should have its own dedicated page. Ideally, this would be generated automatically by your event CMS. This would also help you rank for “Things to do in [city].”
These pages would include:
- Dates, times, and locations
- Descriptions and highlights
- A preview image of the event
- Website or ticket links
- Categories or tags
Each page becomes another indexed piece of content, helping your site appear in google searches like “events in [your city] this weekend.” Even if you’re not hosting events, these pages make you the digital gateway to your local community.
5. Channels
Channels allow you to group events by theme or audience; like date night, outdoor fun, kid friendly or local art. These can power dynamic website sections, custom widgets, or newsletters without having to rebuild every time.
They help visitors discover what’s relevant and keep your content fresh without extra work.
Bonus Feature: Admin Friendliness and Partner Submissions
A big part of local tourism is working with partners. Whether that be venues, businesses, or organizers. The easier it is for them to submit events, the richer your calendar becomes with minimal work on your end.
Look for an Event Calendar with:
- Submission portals for partners
- Moderation tools so you can approve, edit, or deny listings
- Recurring event support
- Communication to registrants in case an event is suddenly changed
The best systems also give you analytics, automation tools, and APIs to integrate with other parts of your site.
Ready to Take Event Engagement to the Next Level?
Schedule a demo today to see how other local tourism boards and Destination Marketing Organizations leverage our Calendar for a more fulfilling visitor experience.
