As leisure and business travel rebounds following the devastating effects of the pandemic, hoteliers should consider partnering and ultimately maximizing the impact of their engagement with their local destination marketing organization to drive awareness, maximize overnight stays and reach higher-rated business.
DMOs are in place to lift the entire market by facilitating partnerships with local authorities and businesses and implementing extensive marketing programs to attract more visitors. An engaged hotel industry can support and guide a more results-oriented outcome from a DMO. Working with a DMO, whether it’s a stand-alone entity or part of a city or country government, can provide hoteliers a tremendous opportunity to piggyback off their efforts and increase revenues.
In addition, DMO’s marketing budgets typically are significantly larger than individual hotels alone and are designed to drive awareness and convert overnight stays into their partner hotels.
The No. 1 area hotels can partner with DMOs is on a strategic level to ensure marketing efforts are aligned to generate hotel demand. Understanding where DMOs are spending their time and resources can provide hoteliers valuable insight into how to further refine their marketing efforts.
For example, if the DMO has research and data on the reason for travel (visiting friends and family, attending a sporting event, a weekend getaway or true vacation), hoteliers can leverage that information into their own marketing efforts. Additionally, the DMO will have demographic profiles of who is coming to the destination. The ability for a hotelier to have as much marketwide information on the demographic profile can be of great value and as partners with the DMO, hotel partners should not only have access, but be able to leverage these resources. The key to an effective partnership is the ability to align strategies and create trackable approaches to demonstrate effectiveness and impact.
Group Support
On the group side, DMOs can help drive meetings and conventions to their hotel partners through a proactive destination sales effort. This segment, which has been among the hardest hit during the pandemic, currently has a tremendous amount of pent-up demand. Interest in scheduling meetings and conventions and bringing people back together is as strong as it was pre-COVID.
As navigating space with COVID still lingering remains a challenge, planners increasingly are looking to DMOs and conference and convention centers to facilitate their large-scale meeting plans.
Hoteliers are critical to a destination’s future and success. And from a lead-generation standpoint, it’s important to better understand the DMO resources and how hoteliers can leverage that information into their own marketing efforts. By sharing that research and development, hoteliers are better informed and can retarget and further refine their marketing efforts. In leading tourism strategic planning efforts, it is clear that there is an opportunity for the hotel industry to increase its involvement and influence the effectiveness of their DMO partners.
From both a leisure and group standpoint, DMOs offer opportunities in which to increase awareness, drive traffic and boost revenues.
Bethanie DeRose is JLL senior vice president, Global Tourism Group.