Live From Destinations International: Redefining Indicators in Destination Promotion

Intro: Recorded live from the Destinations International Convention in Tampa, Florida: welcome to Brand USA Talks Travel. This year's Destinations International Annual Convention promises to ignite your passion and fuel your growth, and we'll plug you into all the visionary leaders making that possible. Now, here's your host, Mark Lapidus. 

Mark Lapidus [0:20]: Zartico says it "dreams in color and code." I like the way that sounds, but what does it actually mean? 

Ted Sullivan [0:26]: When I first got to Zartico, the thing I noticed was that everything was pie graphs and bar charts, and I was like, "What do those mean? That's a lot of just data. There's a lot of just insights there. That's just a lot of code." Color is the art of telling the story with it. Combining those two is dreaming in color and code. When we go to sleep at night, we're always thinking about what is the next story that comes out the next day. 

Mark Lapidus [0:45]: Research involves many steps to produce a result. What are your favorite aspects of doing a study? 

Andreas Weissenborn [0:50]: Challenging assumptions, and either being wrong or right on whether or not those assumptions are true or not. I think one of the unique things about research is that it's one way to challenge bias. Sometimes we don't realize we have it on our decision-making process and thought process. Research is a way to unwind that, and unravel insights that maybe you didn't realize were there, and it illuminates it for you. 

Mark Lapidus [1:14]: I'm so pleased to welcome to Brand USA Talks Travel: Ted Sullivan, Chief Marketing Officer at Zartico, and Andreas Weissenborn, Vice President of Research and Advocacy at Destinations International. You're both leading a session here at Destinations International in Tampa on redefining indicators and destination promotion, which I assume is a joint project between you two, right? 

Ted Sullivan [1:35]: Yes. 

Mark Lapidus [1:36]: I'm sure there are a lot of details that go into this session, but do your best to give me the top-line supposition. 

Andreas Weissenborn [1:42]: Sure. I'll start with the origin point and then hand it off to Ted. Just to go back to some core philosophy at Destination International, our core belief is that destination promotion is a common good for the greater good. It's what we call a community shared value. So what is a common good? These are things in society we understand that better a society. You understand the link between teachers for an education, clean water to be healthy, firefighters to be safe. Every community needs and warrants a brand. So every community needs an entity to represent that. One of the things that the other common goods have, though, is they have a very easy and succinct way to understand if they're performing well. I'll give you a great example. I don't have to know where your school system is, but if I ask you the question, "What is your school system's graduation rate?" I easily understand how well education is doing in your community. Now, more importantly, because I understand the link between teachers and education, I understand if that graduation rate is not the best, I understand that resources, i.e. funding, investment of time, are needed to go back into that school system and teachers to raise that graduation rate. One of the unfortunate things about destination promotion is that we have long not aligned ourselves in that same thinking. Yes, we certainly say things like "heads in beds" and "butts in seats," but those are one component of an indicator, but not often easily understood by residents in the community. That's the other core aspect to it, is that these need to be things that not just suppliers understand, but those- your number one customer, your residents understand. We started about this journey really in 2019. About two years ago, we put out an industry brief outlying our core philosophy of what is a destination promotion community indicator. Understanding that for every community it's unique, and that many of them have indicators or indexes and metrics and KPIs that are unique to them that illustrate how well that they're doing in the arena of destination promotion. With that, we are looking to, okay, who has the wealth of data and resources that can help us look into these unique metrics and KPIs? And that's what led us to this article. And I'll let Ted take the rest of the way. 

Ted Sullivan [3:43]: When we were starting the company, it was all about cleaning up the junk drawer of data. Just give us this data, we'll put it in, we'll make it a really easy thing. So we're asking our clients, "What are you doing with the data?" We're thinking they're going to use the same metrics. And they're like, oh, man, I use the data now to justify putting streetlights up in my downtown. I expanded my baseball park, and make it a year-long facility, and we have pickleball courts in the summertime now. They were using this data to improve their community. Then we realized these destinations now have more data and more insights than any other entity within that community, commissioners office, that, like, you are now the most powerful entity there, but you're not telling the stories the best way that we can. 

Mark Lapidus [4:17]: Did they know that? 

Ted Sullivan [4:18]: No, we're just realizing, we're like, "You guys have this." And now the press now goes to the DMO, not the mayor's office. We're like, well, how do we combine these and get them into buckets that people realize that are very simple, easy to understand, that you're using vernacular that your residents and that your civic people and everyone else understands, more so than, "I'm a tier one," "I'm a tier two," "I'm a state," "I'm a district." That's where we work with DI to come up with these things with new KPIs that they can really track and see how am I affecting the community in the best possible way. 

Mark Lapidus [4:46]: In doing this, I'm guessing that you're realizing that certain ROI metrics that have been traditional are not necessarily working anymore. 

Andreas Weissenborn [4:53]: Yeah. Let me just do a little bit of a soapbox about ROI. The thing is to point out is that our industry, in particular, we really live in the golden era of data analytics. It's pretty much unparalleled. To Ted's point, we have more access to stuff like that now that we don't even realize to harness into. The problem is, though, is that ROI and data and metrics are inherently logical, and we just don't live in a logical world anymore. I don't mean that as a negative; I mean that the opposite of logic, which is emotion. We live in a very storied and emotional times, where people are making decision-making process, policy on emotion decisions first, and then find data and ROI. 

Mark Lapidus [5:30]: Hasn't that always been true, though? 

Andreas Weissenborn [5:31]: No, I don't think that is. I think it's cyclical. If you go back into humankind's history, we've always oscillated between this. But the point I was trying to make out, though, if we lived in a logical world, we have so much data now that we'd be the most well-respected, well-funded, sought-after industry in the world right now. To put a comparison, we are greater than the steel industry ever is, but yet we are seldom first to the table of seeing of importance. The point being with this is that it's really a reorientation of how we articulate our work and our worth to meet us where the world is at right now. 

Ted Sullivan [6:02]: To that point, the KPIs that we've been using all this, we got to morph them. We've got to change them. They have to evolve. We keep counting all the time. We're doing this, and basically, that's just an extrapolation of just a basic number that we did on a survey, or from mobile devices. We need to start doing trends moreso, and showing what's the actual effect of these people. Quit counting. 20 kids can squeeze into a Days Inn, and they're not going to spend as much money as a couple that's going to stay the J.W. Marriott. So what is the best effect on the community? We need to look at these metrics differently than we did in the past and report them differently, more effectively. 

Mark Lapidus [6:33]: I imagine you're using AI to do some of this. 

Ted Sullivan [6:35]: Yeah. A lot of the extrapolation and everything is all done with AI. Yes. 

Mark Lapidus [6:38]: Because the numbers must be massive. 

Ted Sullivan [6:40]: They're billions. And to normalize those things, the biggest thing we do is we balance them against each other. We have four different data sets that we use. We use geo-location mobile data set, all right? Spending data, which is all the credit card data. Then we also have event data, which is Ticketmaster, StubHub, that data, and then housing data, hotel data from Amadeus. Combining those four, you need AI to then look at patterns between all four of these to normalize each other and keep them that way, because they can each be a little volatile. But when you put them together and you normalize them, the AI does that and makes really good stories out of the data. 

Mark Lapidus [7:09]: I'd like to get a little bit more specific with this, if we can. Can you give me some of the metrics that you're considering now that have never really been looked at before? 

Andreas Weissenborn [7:17]: Yeah, I'll give a couple of good examples, and I'll tie it back. Again, our core belief here is that at the end of the day, we see being a community of shared value as fundamentally contributing to your community's vitality. I think one of the things right now every community is competing upon is what I call the greatest currency in the world right now, which is talent acquisition. Think about what a destination organization fundamentally does: we steward a brand. That brand brings attention at the world stage for attention. So if you think about it like all these communities, whenever you see a home sold nowadays, that's a real estate agent that's out there saying- they're no longer saying two bedrooms and a bath, they're saying, "This is a great community to live in." That's our brand work at place there. So home sales is one in particular one. Again, keep leaning to talent acquisition. Think of all these college towns and universities. What do they need? They need talent, people to choose to go there. But seldom the destination organizations acknowledge like, "Look, we help- our colleges have grew admission by X. We help home sales by X or business, new business licenses," in capacities like that. These are things that add to the fundamental vibrancy of our community. That is our work at play, which is essentially brand management and brand promotion. 

Mark Lapidus [8:26]: For destinations that are considering adopting these new metrics, what advice would you give them to help them get started? 

Ted Sullivan [8:32]: I would take a look at, first of all, what kind of persona is your destination? Are you a destination that's trying to get better at foodie-ing, or are you a destination that's going to be bigger and use sports? Are you a convention center city? 

Mark Lapidus [8:42]: Do you think destinations always know? 

Ted Sullivan [8:44]: I think that they know, but sometimes it's like looking in the mirror, are you trying to be something you're not? You know what I mean? 

Mark Lapidus [8:49]: I've seen that. Sometimes you'll have a beach destination to suddenly decide they want to promote something else. It's strange, it's like, wait a second, you're known for your beaches. Why would you pick these five other attributes? 

Ted Sullivan [8:59]: That's why I love that quote: "Be yourself, everyone else is taken." If you are that and you know that... Like Lake Charles, it's a gaming destination. But they started looking in the data, and they really found out that 2-3 different cities out of Texas were coming and spending a ton of money on food because they'd like to go there for the cage, and feel like, "All right, maybe we could be a foodie destination." And they're doing a fantastic job of promoting their food that way and becoming a foodie destination. They are evolving into something else. I would recommend this. Who are you? Then, what KPIs do you want to measure to get to that place to see how you're doing? If you're Park City, you want to see how you're doing against Vail and that. So get those KPIs. Year-round visitation, how much money you spend on restaurants, how much spending in lift, did they fly, did they drive, and how much was that an effect on the community? 

Mark Lapidus [9:40]: Andreas, how do you think these new indicators will impact the way destinations advocate for themselves, the stakeholders, and their communities? 

Andreas Weissenborn [9:47]: Sure. I think it's important to point out as destination organizations, which are largely predominantly nonprofits, we have stakeholders, not shareholders. We're driven by purpose, not profit. It's important to remember that that means, employers, that our number customer are the residents and the community of that. For some, that is a radical shift in how they think about the work they do. Often, sometimes we ask the question, who's your number one customer? They've lift off their board, which is like hoteliers, restaurants, attractions. That's your suppliers. That's your job to attract that as part of it. What I will say is that I think that we were already starting to see this transition about, again, becoming a community value and being a common good, before the pandemic, but I think the pandemic, like a lot of societal norms, rapidly gave us this opportunity to show: here's what happens when destination promotion and tourism can't take place in our communities. And all these communities are looking around saying, "Oh, my gosh, we're missing out on not just revenue, but missing out on, again, this talent and attraction. How do we get that back?" And they're finally leaning more into the destination organization saying, "Okay, now we understand you have a purpose. It's bigger than we realized, how can we help leverage this to get this brand out there?" And they're starting to do that work. They're getting out of just simply saying, "Here's how many room nights we booked." They're talking about, no one said, "Here's how many people experienced our community for X, Y, and Z." So I think it's starting to happen. I think the pandemic gave us the opportunity to accelerate that fast than others. But I think, especially this year, an election year, how fraught and political and ostracized things can be. Destination organizations are seemingly finding themselves more and more in situations where it's like, "Well, I'm trying to prove my value, my worth that meets our community's values," which is the mixture of - interjection, I should say - of values and emotions, to talk about your work that appeals to both sides. And again, same reason you understand why we have to find teachers to make a better, educated society. They make better workers. I think we're strongly starting to see our work in that same realm, which is exciting. 

Ted Sullivan [11:36]: I actually think that there's a thing you could say that tourism after the pandemic had a George Bailey moment. I think it's a great quote. It's like, we got to see what it was like without us. And so did everybody else. You've been given this gift. How do you track things differently? How do you actually show your value to a town of Bedford Falls? How do you show like, "No, actually, we do so much more than just fill heads in beds." And now people realize that. And so if you get that, tell the story better. With backed-up data that you have more of than anyone else. 

Mark Lapidus [12:01]: Doesn't this also mean that DMOs are going to have to build further relationships internally with their own communities? 

Andreas Weissenborn [12:07]: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to recognize. Again, if I'm saying that your number one customer is your resident, then yeah, absolutely. The way you think about your nuts and bolts of org charts has to adapt and alter to reflect that. One of my core philosophies as well is that when you value something, you fund it. I think when you're always able to present yourself that is community-first and community-focused and has that community support, they'll help carry you through turbulent times and great times. I think that's important to recognize that, especially since the pandemic, those destination organizations that were able to weather that better than others, they probably had that community support and those community outreach when showing how they can be a solution, carry them through, weather the storm easier than others that didn't. Absolutely. But yeah, it's definitely something that you have to start to think about top down of every one of your departments, of like, "Okay, how do we adhere to this new need and requirement of the next normal for us?" 

Mark Lapidus [12:58]: Well, the core is really collaboration. Just as you guys collaborated on this, we're now talking about more internal collaboration in these communities. And so that requires education. 

Ted Sullivan [13:08]: Well, Mark, you brought it up. You were even saying, "Hey, how AI is affecting this?" I mean, this is a time that they need to start protecting themselves and tell that story before it's too late. Why do we even need you anymore? If people are finding this stuff out on their own, if they're able to Google this, see this, use AI for this, why do we need the DMO to promote it? So they need to stay ahead of it, we all do as an industry, just to protect ourselves and actually show our value, which we know is there. 

Mark Lapidus [13:30]: I'd like to hear more about AI. You brought it up again, and it comes up in pretty much every conversation I have in this podcast. What are a few of the most surprising discoveries you've made recently using it? 

Andreas Weissenborn [13:39]: I often see the work that I do is what I call high-tide and low-tide work. There's things that we're all responsible for being just good stewards of organization business. It's responding to emails, it's drafting of content. My line of work, I have a lot of committee meetings and committee notes and stuff like that. Just to have that accelerator on my shoulder that can help me take a large swath of committee notes and committee meetings and compress that workflow - that something maybe took 30 minutes, it takes three minutes - that's time I get back to go in to do high-tide work, which is deep thought creation, stuff that provides solution backs to our members. I see it firmly in the realm of going from abacus to a calculator in that regard. It's a tool. You learn to use it as such to better yourself as such. I think that's the lane, at least internally as I see it. I don't mean you're talking about an endless pit there. I mean, you can start talking about ethics as it relates it and sustainable usage of it, not to mention just distinctive tools as part of it. I'm always interested in just the arm of just like, hey, I've been doing this one thing in my job every day, and it takes X amount of time, and now I can do it in this amount of time to do other stuff. That's the stuff that I always gravitate towards. 

Ted Sullivan [14:44]: For us, it's looking at massive data sets, much clearer and much more frequently. So right now, what city do you think travels around the country and spends the most money in grocery stores, not restaurants? Chicago. So when Chicagoans travel, they go to a lot of grocery stores. What city travels the furthest to go out and they stay the longest and spend the most money they travel? 

Mark Lapidus [15:00]: I'm hesitant to answer because I'm getting myself in trouble. 

Ted Sullivan [15:03]: Phoenix. So you start seeing these things. You know what city travels the most and goes out and spends money in restaurants the most? DC. We're seeing those things just so simply now that it really allows marketers to make better decisions on who they're marketing to. 

Mark Lapidus [15:14]: How does D.I. facilitate knowledge sharing? I know the convention, obviously, is one way that it's done, but how do you do it throughout the year? 

Andreas Weissenborn [15:21]: Sure. I see Destinations International very much like a platform which has many different tentacles. So obviously, leaning into the wheels of community education, obviously, like annual convention, our summits, I think, are one of the greatest assets we have that distribute information down to it. But distribution of content is never-ending and always growing. Particularly myself, you will constantly find me, not only on the road at our members' events, but also our various other assets of webinars, speaking engagements, other parts of that, including newsletters, podcasts, blogs, videos, whatever we can take it into. One of the things that we make a really sustained purpose to do is we understand that we have to meet the members where they're at. A lot of times, we will make a really conscious statement to repurpose assets that speak to just a unique purpose or vertical audience. For example, you will see content here at the annual convention that we will now take and say, "Okay, how does this now apply to those who will attend Advocacy Summit?" This particular session with myself and Ted, we're going to then say, "Okay, how do we now repurpose this to talk about advocacy?" Those conversations happen for every single output of our memberships that we have. It's something that I take a lot of pride in that we try to always meet members as where it's at, and try to disseminate to meet them where they're at. 

Mark Lapidus [16:33]: Why have this discussion now since we've had metrics forever? 

Andreas Weissenborn [16:37]: What we started to see, I made that comment about leaning into an illogical world by a more emotional one, is that we have just found our arguments maybe not resonating the same way they used to. And there's an undercurrent, too, right? You can't deny, because Americans, we have a general distrust of the government and seeing them as a solution. There's this undercurrent of the misinformation age that's creeping in more and more. And we're out here trying to constantly talk about this logical argument for why we exist. And unfortunately, it's not getting us always the attention we should warrant. Like I mentioned, we're bigger than the steel industry, yet when the pandemic happened, we were seldom the first in line to get supplemental funding and things like that. That really showed us that, okay, it's not so much changing the work that we do, it's just altering how we talk about it. That's an important thing to emphasize here, is that I'm a big believer that actions speak a lot of than words; however, words still matter, and words are the only way to convey our values. What I think we're trying to do now is actually align these metrics and KPIs more with values than with stats. I think if you're able to transcend that into values, that's when people understand what you do. Again, I don't think the resident fundamentally understands when I say, "Okay, I booked 36 citywides at X number at peak." But if I instead say to them, "Here's how many new business licenses came to our community, because they saw our community as a vibrant place to visit, live, and invest in," then they start to understand that, "Oh, that's why the new restaurant opened up. That's what the new movie theater or pickleball court opened up." I think that's really the moment we're trying to transcend here is taking, again, this wealth of data that companies like Ted and others have, and just reorienting how we articulate the back to our communities. The other part, too, is that Ted made this comment earlier, I want to reverberate: we now also have a responsibility to reshare out that data about the work that we do. Because a lot of us are stewards of public funding. We have a responsibility to reshow that so that people see us as that solution provider to brand promotion, essentially. 

Ted Sullivan [18:40]: Imagine if we don't. This is the time. Actually, I think destinations need to compete more. I think this is a time to do that. Competition is progress, and we don't really compete on stuff other than conventions and budgets. It's like, now you can really compete. How is Tampa doing versus Fort Lauderdale? Those things. We have that data to do that and tell better stories through that thing, and it just justifies your existence so much more. Now is the opportunity. Got to do it. 

Mark Lapidus [19:01]: We can use the data to actually work together as well as compete together, right? Because from our perspective, from Brand USA, obviously, the wonderful thing about that we do internationally is, while destinations may compete with each other internally, domestically in the United States, we have to come together to market internationally. And so using the flip side of the coin that you just tossed up in the air, it's the other side of it, right? 

Andreas Weissenborn [19:22]: Yeah. I do want to lean into the competition aspect, and again, I'll hop on the I here in the DI here, is that we are all competing at the world stage for attention, right? And one of the things that pandemic re-shifted, all of our generations here, we were always told, "You got to go to X destination to get the jobs. That's where the job's at." That link has been severed. Now people pick places to live based upon their values, and now they find work to back into that. So the point being is that, well, how do we then inspire a person to come and consider living our destination and compete with that? Well, that is competing at the brand level to inspire that visit. And communities that fail to invest in that will fundamentally fall behind. And that's why it's important to compete on that aspect. 

Mark Lapidus [20:02]: We could keep talking about this for another two hours, but I'm sure we'll lose people's attention. So how can our listeners find out more about what we've talked about today? 

Ted Sullivan [20:10]: The deck that Andreas and I are presenting tomorrow, we'll have 2-3 different QR codes, and they all exist there. They can download the deck. There's also two different case studies for two destinations that have already done the community indicators and shows how they tracked it, what they reported, and what they learned, and what they convey to their stakeholders. Those will be available. I will also provide you, Mark, this thing so you can put it on your podcast. 

Mark Lapidus [20:29]: Good! 

Ted Sullivan [20:29]: I'll put it there so we can download it that way. And they can contact me or Andreas, and we'd be happy to email it to them. 

Andreas Weissenborn [20:33]: I just want to add as well, if you go to DestinationsInternational.org/advocacy, you'll see all our existing industry briefs on that, blogs and content as well. That points back to everything that Ted mentioned. 

Mark Lapidus [20:42]: Okay, a little inside baseball before we say goodbye in this episode. We're a podcast for the travel industry, obviously, this isn't for consumers. They would all fall asleep if they were listening to this. So I'd like to help to fill job opportunities around the industry, and I know you've got one right now, DI, unless you filled it. It's for Vice President in Marketing. 

Andreas Weissenborn [20:59]: That's true. 

Mark Lapidus [21:00]: Could you give us a little rundown of this role? 

Andreas Weissenborn [21:02]: That role is currently open for the organization. It's a role that I work hand-in-hand with and excited for whoever takes that field, because one of the things that's important about all that - you asked the question about how do we communicate the work that we do out to our members, that is through marketing, sales, and communication. It is an extremely vital role for us to connect the dots on the work that we do on the advocacy and research side and the tools back to our memberships. Very important position. Excited for whoever takes the role and excited to work with them. 

Mark Lapidus [21:29]: I'm sure it's listed on the website, too, for more information. 

Andreas Weissenborn [21:31]: Yes. 

Mark Lapidus [21:32]: And that's it for Brand USA Talks Travel, live from Destinations International in Tampa, Florida. More episodes to follow. I'm Mark Lapidus, thanks for listening. 

Outro [21:40]: If you enjoyed this Live From Destinations International episode, please share it with your friends in the travel industry. Production and music by Asher Meerovich. Media producer, Nthanze Kariuki, with assistance from Casey D'Ambra. Engineering, Brian Watkins, Kat Pommer, and Antonio Tyler. Art by Mimi Jung. Special thanks to Alexis Adelson, Bill Dickerson, Peter Dodge, and Colleen Mangone. More Live From Destinations International episodes coming soon. Safe travels!

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