The Destination Marketing Technology Survey was born out of an industry need to better understand the current perceptions and attitudes of destination marketers toward the use of marketing technology. In its third year, the survey focuses on understanding the impact of the pandemic within these owned media channels and to deliver the results to the industry in the quickest possible fashion.
The report is compiled from the first wave of survey responses from over 175 destination marketers who have provided their input in order to capture the most up-to-date outlook on marketing technology’s role and importance in destination marketing.We are excited to share our biggest takeaways and full results from the first survey.
- The results show that because of the pandemic, DMOs have a renewed sense of importance around the purposes of their owned channels, specifically their website and email programs. Respondents also indicated that they would be investing further in these channels.
- It’s clear that DMOs are extremely or somewhat concerned (59%) about the evolution of data privacy policies. For some, this is new territory that’s outside their comfort zone; and with legal implications, data policies and how they operationally impact a destination are going to become an increased area of focus.
- Each year we ask what emerging technology a DMO might invest in if budget and resources were not a barrier for successful implementation. This year, we included “consumer data platform (CDP)” as an option, and it was the second most popular choice (34%). I think this speaks to destinations understanding the importance of their first-party data and desiring new marketing technology solutions to empower them to be able to act on this data.
We will conduct a follow-up survey event in August to track how vaccine rollouts and the return of summer travel have impacted your perspective, and we invite you to join us at the eTourism Summit in Las Vegas in September where we will present all findings and hold an in-depth panel discussion around the significant shifts and trends in the space.
To view preliminary results from the first survey event, please click below.