I recently attended HSMAI South Florida Chapter‘s 2022 Destination Marketing Panel.
During the event, I learned about all of the great initiatives that Visit Lauderdale, Greater Miami and the Beaches Hotel Association, The Palm Beaches and Visit Florida have in store for 2022.
In addition to individual initiatives, there were many great conversations about industry trends and predictions. I have compiled some key takeaways based on what I learned from these discussions.
#1. Consumer behaviors have evolved
There have been many substantial shifts over the past couple of years. Shifts in spending, working and communicating have impacted the needs and behaviors of consumers. For advertisers to execute effective destination marketing campaigns, they need to understand who their audience is and what their motivations are. Segmentation exploration will help advertisers increase audience knowledge and advertising relevance.
#2. Attention spans are dwindling
Video consumption more than doubled across all platforms in 2021. This year, the number of hours consumers spend watching video continues to rise. Video plays a vital role in destination marketing. The key to success with video will be appealing to short attention spans. Videos need to be easy to consume, highly informative and descriptive about the destination.
#3. Consumers crave purposeful travel
This isn’t a new trend, but it has gained more traction recently. Consumers are more conscientious and sustainability is important to them. We live in a world of finite resources, so with the anticipated increase in travel this year, there will also be an increased demand for sustainable travel. This is extremely important within the destination marketing sector as we need to protect and preserve the destinations being marketed.
#4. Life moments are on the rise
According to Google research, 56% of Americans are likely to participate in a life moment in the next two years. This includes weddings, finding a new job, or moving. 78% of people are considering travel related to those moments. Knowing this, marketers have a major opportunity to reach consumers with personalized advertisements during the key moments that lead up to these life moments.
#5. Online will be the main channel to book travel
The internet is the primary source of information for travelers when planning their trips. In fact, travelers who took a large trip in the past year spent 71% of their time researching their trip online. With so much information available at a traveler’s fingertips, it’s more important than ever for marketers to reach consumers with the most relevant message to them, during the moments that they are most receptive.
There were a lot of additional fascinating trends shared during this destination marketing event. If you’d like to discuss these trends and future destination marketing predictions, feel free to reach out to me directly at vivian.mur@a.ki.
Vivian Mur, Director of Travel and Tourism at Aki