Tough love: what used to work for destination marketers doesn’t anymore (plus a roadmap for change)

Titan of the travel industry, Will Seccombe, recently shared his insight on the need for DMO’s to rethink their purpose and structure to better support the communities they serve post-pandemic. As the former President and CEO of Visit Florida, his perspective is knowledgeable and direct. DMO’s will not look like they did before, and a community-first strategy is the key platform to build upon.

Contributors

Zach Stovall
Senior Creative Strategist, Flip.to

Will Seccombe
President and Managing Director, Connect Travel

Transcript

Zach Stovall: We’ve seen massive technological and fundamental changes in many industries over the past decade. Even in travel. But, the role of a Destination Marketing Organization hasn’t much changed. Why have DMO’s generally been good with the status quo?

Will Seccombe: It’s really hard as a DMO leader to make any fundamental changes when everything is going great. Why rock the boat? As a result, destination marketing has been on a pretty linear path for the last 10 years because it’s working. The economy’s growing. Everything’s going great. It’s really hard to look back and say “how can we better serve our community?” It’s a lot easier to say keep doing what we’re doing and show record numbers. Rocking the boat now is exactly what everybody has to do.

I would hate to see a destination to come back and do what we’ve done after every other major crisis that the travel industry has addressed. From the hurricanes to oil spill or fires or any number of the crises the travel industry has had to deal with in the past. There’s a pretty tried and true crisis communication program. You let everyone know what’s happening. You take care of your constituents. Make sure they’re up to speed on everything that’s happening on everything you’re doing. Monitor the situation. Let your guests know what’s happening. When it’s time, hey we’re open for business and out goes the marketing messages ‘we’re back.’ Well, that kind of program will not work.

This crisis is not like the others. It’s impacted every destination around the country and around the world. We’re all starting fresh. It’s an opportunity for destinations to reevaluate what success looks like and set a new benchmark. 6 months ago we would have been talking about over tourism in some destinations. That’s not going to be the case moving forward for a while either.

Zach: Haha, it seems like the complete opposite problem for a while. So how can a DMO look within and make the changes needed to position itself for the other side of the pandemic… and beyond?

Will: I am a massive believer in Destination Marketing Organizations. I think they have proven to do a great job of promoting destinations and creating the tourism industry as an incredibly important economic impact for their communities. I believe Destination Marketing works. I think it works at the local level, at the state level, at the national level. That being said, as destinations kind of optimize for that full constant growth mantra, I think we took a lot of stuff for granted. There’s a great quote that says “universal disruption is the perfect time for reinvention.” It’s my hope that DMO’s take this time when we’re totally challenged, to really reimagine what they’re going to do for their communities moving forward.

A lot of that begins with identifying what is optimal for their communities. It’s not just driving for increased numbers quarter after quarter. We just know that’s not going to be the case. Moving forward, this is a great opportunity to reassess. What does success for a destination look like, and then how best can the DMO help facilitate that and be a real connector within their community?

Zach: That sounds like a huge opportunity for a savvy DMO. But it also sounds like starting over. If you’re starting from scratch what are the questions that need to be asked? 

Will: Fundamentally, the questions that were asked as we came out of 2019 about over tourism was the idea of “what is the optimal tourism model look like for any destination?” How many is the right people to have? What are the right audiences we want to serve? What is the perfect setup? That was conversations that came out of the sustainability in over tourism conversations. I think the same questions should be asked now. What is the right number of visitors? Who are the right visitors for our community? What are we trying to accomplish? This crisis gives us, as destination marketers, the opportunity to show how incredibly important tourism is to every community in the country around the world. And recognize how important that outside money coming into our community is to the things that we love about our community. Our restaurants, our shops, our local boutiques our attractions that couldn’t just survive on the local economy on their own. We know now that tourism is critically important to destinations.
Now, what is the optimal goal for each of our communities moving forward? What is the best mix of visitors to support our local businesses and our local attractions? To identify that allows you to set a goal, set a stake in the ground and then build a marketing plan and a community development plan around a shared goal.

Zach: Is that something you’re looking at from a perspective of okay, we’re all sitting around a table and we’re gonna say we really like these kinds of people coming to our destination. Or we like people from this area of the country. Or is that data driven or a combination of both?

Will: I think that really depends community by community. Ultimately, what does success look like for our destination and how do we get there? Some destinations are going to have different optimals. Some are going to want more visitors. Some are going to want to focus on more higher spending visitors. Some are going to try to focus on balancing out visitation on a year-round basis so they’re creating year-round full-time jobs rather than seasonal temporary jobs. There are a lot of different things that are going to go into play, and then the way you would come out of it – as long as it’s directed towards addressing those specific end games for the community.

Will: Take two specific examples. You have two very similar destinations. Two beach destinations. One destination just focuses on near-term. I want to focus on getting as many bodies back into the community as soon as possible. Just to get back to normal as fast as we can. The natural tendency will be to focus on regional traffic; local drive markets. That will bring one kind of visitor. When the funnels are full, that’s one thing. But when we’re starting with nobody in the funnel for travel, the first people you get back will be the most likely to continue to repeat visit. You’re kind of setting yourself up for the long term to be a regional destination.

The other tack you can take would be focusing on high end spenders. Doing a marketing campaign targeting just AMEX Platinum cardholders that are going to be most likely to travel, spend more money. You might not fill the volume as quickly as if you just focused on regional. But you’d bring in visitors that would be more likely to spend more money. The destination that just focuses on regional is not going to be supporting as many high-end local restaurants or boutiques as a destination that focused on higher spend visitors.

In Florida, as an example, I know that a drive market visitor is going to spend less than a visitor that flies in from ATL. We know that a visitor from Chicago is going to spend more than the visitor from ATL. NY is going to spend more than CHI. Toronto is going to spend more than NY. London is going to spend more than Toronto. Brazil is going to spend more than a visitor from London. A visitor from China is going to spend exponentially more than the visitor from Brazil.

Will: So you know relatively the kind of yield you are getting out of visitors from different markets. You can do the same kind of demographic, psychographic targeting as well. I think again, what is the right kind of visitor. What is the right goal that is right for our community? In order to do that you need to have some serious conversations at the local level. You have to get the political leaders on board. Visionary public sector leadership is critical. You have to get your private sector engaged and onboard as well so everybody is rowing in the right direction. Taking all of that together and then putting out a solid strategic plan for identifying what success looks like. Is it visitor spending? Is it seasonality and balance? Is it maximizing the workforce? There are a lot of different components that go into it.

Now is the time to really decide. What success in your community looks like. And then building a plan to address that. Not necessarily just building a plan to go back out and get more visitors.

Zach: Yeah, that means the definition of success is going to be different for each community. What other elements do DMO’s need to consider while looking at the community as a whole?

Will: It’s also a great time for a community to identify what is the right amount of visitors. I hear “there’s so many visitors I can’t even get a reservation at my favorite restaurant. Too much traffic. It’s high season, there’s so much tourism traffic it’s really a ding on economic development.” Well, in the time we’re there, we’re driving for maximum occupancy and everything like that. Whereas, maybe the solution is let’s maximize our year-round tourism. Let’s make sure that we focus 100% of our efforts on the shoulder season; on the low season; so that we can create, instead of thousands of part-time seasonal jobs, we can create full time jobs that can really benefit the citizens of our community.

There’s some other conversations, so that while we know there’s going to be a lag in visitation, we can focus on using tourism to solve really good issues within the community. There’s been challenges in many, many really big tourism destinations about the employment – people have to travel so far to get to the destination to do their jobs. Maybe that focus then becomes on the year-round job so that becomes better for the environment. Maybe it’s a time to focus on how to benefit the community by embracing some housing options, so that when tourism comes back there’s local places for the hospitality industry to live in addition to working in the community.

Zach: Part of this reimagining of the DMO means rethinking the structure of the organization itself. Are there new positions that we need to implement? Are there old ones that aren’t quite functional anymore. Are there new programs that can be more effective? What does rebuilding a DMO look like?

Will: I think it’s tragic what’s happened to DMO’s across the country – in terms of the number of furloughs and the work that people are left behind doing 5 jobs going 1,000 miles an hour trying to keep up. It’s like any other challenge like this. There’s a really good opportunity to look forward. As we start talking about identifying the optimal tourism industry looks like in our community. DMO’s are not going to want to necessarily build back up the way that they were. Now are there new positions on community engagement; public affairs. New focus on community development and partnerships. Might be new opportunities within the DMO’s. Any time you have a shakeup like we’ve had, it’s a really incredible opportunity to look at it. How would we build it if we were starting from scratch? What are our priorities and how do we start layering in new programs? What are the talent and skills we need to accomplish those goals, which may not be the same as the skillsets and talent that you needed to operate in an environment that was optimized for year over year over year growth.

Zach: Obviously, this is biggest change and set of challenges the travel industry has ever seen. How does travel look once the pandemic finally ends? 

Will: I don’t see us returning to normal. The way we travel will be different. I don’t think anybody will ever get on a plane without getting their temperatures checked. I don’t think we’ll go to an event without getting our temperature checked. Going to a sporting event, just like we go through metal detectors, they’re going to check and make sure we’re not sick.

Zach: No matter what, people are still going to want to travel at the end of the day. People are still going to dream about new places and experiences.

Will: I’m incredibly bullish on the travel industry recovering. If nothing else, we’ve seen that maybe our individual desire to get out and to travel and explore has maybe come back too quick, with some of the resurgence of Covid. It’s a clear indicator that we want to travel.

The travel experience will change, but the desire and the power of travel both at an individual family level is going to remain strong.

Zach: Some great insights on the future of both travel and the Destination Marketing Organization from Will Seccombe. I’m Zach Stovall for Shape.travel. Thanks for joining, and be sure to check out the other Thought Starters podcasts.