US $695.00

PhoCusWright’s Destination Marketing: Understanding the Role and Impact of Destination Marketers

June 2009
US $695 CA $744 £445 €508

Destination marketers play a unique role in the leisure travel marketplace, positioned at the intersection of travelers and travel suppliers. At the heart of leisure travel lies the destination, which drives the itinerary and all of the components purchased along the way. At the heart of each destination lies destination marketers. Thousands at the national, state, regional and local level play a vital role in stimulating travel demand.

For destination marketers, the explosion of online consumer tools and technologies provide unprecedented potential to connect with travelers and promote their destinations in new and effective ways. At the same time, destination marketers face challenges—ranging from funding constraints to navigating social media—that are forcing many to take a close look at what they need to do to remain competitive and relevant.

PhoCusWright's Destination Marketing: Understanding the Role and Impact of Destination Marketers represents a major research effort to analyze the capabilities and role of destination marketing in the global travel market. The report addresses important topics such as:

Role of destination marketers in the travel value chain
How suppliers and intermediaries can maximize DMO business opportunities
Consumer perception of DMOs and their services
Influential factors in travelers' destination selection and travel purchasing decisions
Percentage of overall travel influenced by DMOs and other destination marketers
Best practices of DMO advertising and Web site implementation
DMO structures, strategic priorities and best practices
Influence of DMOs on destination choice and purchasing decisions
Opportunities to partner with DMOs and other destination marketers

PhoCusWright's Destination Marketing: Understanding the Role and Impact of Destination Marketers addresses a range of innovation opportunities and recommended practices for DMOs.

Table of Contents Methodology

TABLE OF CONTENTS ^top

32 Pages
Section One: Introduction, Methodology and Key Findings

Section Two: Influencing Travelers

Section Three: Marketing Practices and Web Site Capabilities

Section Four: Future Outlook and Recommendations

Section Five: Industry Partners and Sponsors

TABLE OF TABLES
Figure 1 Organization Structure
Figure 2 Destination Types
Figure 3 DMO Funding
Figure 4 Types of DMO Information Obtained (or Desired)
Figure 5 When is the DMO Site Used in the Travel Planning Process?
Figure 6 Time Between Visiting a Destination Web Site and Completing a Booking on a Transactional Web Site
Figure 7 Travel Decisions Affected by DMO Site
Figure 8 Online Destination Selection Yields Higher Spend
Figure 9 Researching a Vacation Destination
Figure 10 Travel Web Sites – Booking
Figure 11 DMO Web Site Drivers – Traveler Perspective
Figure 12 DMO Web Site Referral Categories – Traffic Analysis
Figure 13 Motivations to Travel
Figure 14 Motivating Travelers to Visit a Destination – Advertisements
Figure 15 Mean Online/Offline Split of DMO Leisure Marketing Budget
Figure 16 Types of Advertising Used by DMOs Over the Past 12 Months
Figure 17 Planned Advertising Types for the Next 12 Months
Figure 18 Importance of DMO Web Site Features – Travelers
Figure 19 Destination Web Site Features
Figure 20 Destination Web Site Features (continued)
Figure 21 Traveler Tool Implementation
Figure 22 Economic Impact – DMO Users

METHODOLOGY ^top

The study was conducted in 4Q08 through 1Q09 and consisted of several concurrent phases:

Phone interviews: Fifty interviews were conducted with U.S. and international destination marketers and industry partners/service providers.

Consumer survey: A 31-question Web-based survey was fielded using InsightExpress in December 2008. Two thousand qualified responses were received, of which 62% were “DMO users” (i.e., had used a DMO Web site in the past 12 months). Responses were restricted during a portion of the survey period in order to reach a respondent quota of at least 50% DMO users.

Since only 24% of survey respondents had used a DMO Web site prior to restricting responses to DMO Web site users, the data has been weighted so that total results reflect 24% of the 2,000 respondents as DMO users
For DMO users, the resulting confidence interval is +/- 2.8 points at the 95% confidence level
For non-DMO users, the resulting confidence interval is +/- 3.6 points at the 95% confidence level

Destination marketer survey: A 23-question Web-based survey was fielded using InsightExpress. PhoCusWright received 176 qualified responses during the period from December 17, 2008, through January 17, 2009.

Web analysis: In partnership with Compete, Inc., PhoCusWright analyzed traffic to destination nation marketing Web sites overall and evaluated functionality on 15 selected DMO sites. The 15 sites represent a cross-section of different destination types (five U.S. cities, five U.S. states and five countries/territories) and sizes. All sites selected met the following criteria:

Attracted a significant number of unique visitors relative to other sites representing destinations of the same type and size in the destination category
Were engaging in terms of pages viewed per visit
Were visually impressive and rich in content and functionality

Compete conducted analysis through its proprietary data methodology:

Two million active panelists, aggregated from 10+ unique data sources (proprietary panels, plus ISP and ASP partnerships)
Usage, demographic and geographic weighting to match RDD (random direct dial) survey
Extrapolation to make data representative of U.S. Internet population
Triangulation across sources to identify and rebalance for bias