Q&A with Susan Thomas, CMO for Surf City USA

Susan Thomas, CDME, is Chief Marketing Officer for Huntington Beach, California. Internationally known as “Surf City USA,” the Southern California destination is…just kinda perfect, actually.

A 30-year DMO expert, Susan’s awards fill a big shelf: Adrian Award; Destiny Award of Excellence for PR Campaign; Visit California Poppy Award Best PR Campaign in Travel and Tourism; Destiny Award for Best Digital Campaign in the Travel Industry.

Thought Leaders See Tomorrow

Q: Digitally-speaking, what keeps you up at night?
A: Are we helping to enable an unintended but highly consequential society shift toward intolerance, narrow-mindedness and extremism through the hyper attention suck that digital communications and channels take on everyday life now, and that may only accelerate in the future?

Q: What will the successful DMO model look like in five years? What are its main differences to the current model?
A: DMOs will grow in their role with local, regional public and private sector entities as a go-to source for branding as well as helping to curate the visitor experience, overlapping increasing with destination economic development efforts. Traditionally, DMOs have focused on marketing, sales and visitor information services. This expanded role in destination planning and development will require broader strategic thinking and development of new planning skills/ partnerships.

Q: Where will DMOs be able to add value? And especially, how can we create trust and deliver on it?
A: Building trust starts with communications alignment and common agreements around vision, mission and goals among key stakeholders with the DMO, its board and staff. Part of this is taking the time to build trusted one-on-one communications relationships, as well as group dialogue, and then staying consistent with relevant communications outreach on a regular basis. DMOs add more value when they understand their key stakeholders’ goals and adapt their work to be relevant to their partners and communities, toward the common good.

Q: Outside of travel, which marketing work impresses you and are there lessons that can be applied to tourism marketing?
A: Now that Apple is the first $1 trillion company, it’s hard to overlook its phenomenal success. Clean line design, attention to product and packaging details and simplicity, making customer service an entertaining and engaging experience in their storefronts are all part of the secret sauce that travel marketers can riff off of to improve our connection with consumers.

On a much smaller scale, companies that have found micro-communities via platforms like podcasts, blogs and digital influencers to make their mark and grow WOM referrals are also intriguing, like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron in the fresh food home delivery sector, TommyJohns and Third Love in intimate apparel, and Aveda and Maison Reed in hair care products.

Q: Looking glass: What will the digital travel marketing landscape look like five years from now?
A: Voice-activated AI will be embedded into many everyday travel marketing platforms as well as destination products and experiences. Travel marketers will need to focus on making AI an enhancement to travel experiences, not a substitute for going to the destination and engaging in experiences. More human-like AI will be a part of making lives better for some and less connected to other humans for others. The value of human creativity will rise as mundane and rote tasks are increasingly handled by AI.

Q: How can data drive better creative?
A: About a zillion ways! Relevant data about our customers, their behaviors and the actions they take leading up to, during and after the journey give us great insight into what matters and what doesn’t matter in driving purchase and consumption decisions. As we get smarter about our most important body organ, the brain, and are better able to access emotional data, creative that connects emotionally in truly resonant ways should be improved.