Weekly stories curated exclusively for digital tourism marketers
One minute roundup: There’s plenty of research out there about the best times to post on social media.
And the research tells us that every platform is different, every target audience makes a difference, and every vertical changes things, too.
Amongst all the blog posts, we found a study from Hootsuite using data from Unmetric that focuses on travel and tourism, so sharing it here.
For more results from Hootsuite on the best times to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, click here.
The National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) of the U.S. Department of Commerce has released a new long-term forecast. The biggest surprise may be in regard to China, which has been on a double-digit run of increases for a decade. China is expected to flatten this year, yielding a mere two percent increase over last year in inbound arrivals. (Click here for a larger PDF.)
In summary, from “Inbound Report“:
—South Korea should surpass Germany this year as the number 4 overseas source market.
—While Brazil is projected to increase the number of visitors it sends to the United States over the next four years, its annual total will still be far below what it was in 2014 and 2015, when more than 2.2 million came to the US each year.
—While it will fall from number 2 to number 3, Japan will remain a stable generator of travelers to the United States, sending about 3.7 million visitors a year for the next four years.
Research notes:
“The U.S. travel forecast is prepared by staff in the Department of Commerce/National Travel and Tourism Office using economic/demographic/social factors, Commerce historical visitation trends, input from the DOC Global Markets staff abroad, and other numerous and varied sources. The forecast is based on a country-level, bottom-up consensus approach by a four-member forecast team. Each team member develops independent country-level estimates for the top 20 visitor origin markets based on numerous quantitative data and qualitative information. These 20 markets account for 88 percent of total international arrivals. The final estimates are based on consensus among the four team members. The NTTO multi-person, multi-factor approach reflects the lack of a strong statistical relationship (correlation) between total annual traveler volume to the United States from a specific country and any specific piece of quantitative data for that country, such as changes in real gross domestic product or currency exchange rate levels. Because of the multi-factor, multi-staff consensus approach, it is not possible to isolate the impact of any one factor on a country’s traveler volume forecast.
If you have questions related to the forecast, please contact the NTTO staff at: (202) 482-4754.”
The post-eTourism Summit survey results are in and here’s the tally on what attendees had to say about their top takeaways from the October conference. To compare these takeaway results to 2017, click here.
Case studies presented by your DMO peers and their agency partners continue to rank high along in popularity, along with networking. Due to the intimate nature of eTourism Summit and the strength of its highly creative, communicative, and connected digital tourism community, the opportunities for exchanging ideas will be a significant aspect of the 20th Annual eTourism Summit in 2019, and beyond.
And because “video, video, video” continues to rank #1, be sure to check out this link to Ryan Thompson‘s #eTS18 presentation on video marketing. See “What You Need to Know About Video Marketing,” prepared especially for DMOs.
Geek out now on fascinating trends uncovered by Destination Analysts in “The State of the American Traveler™” quarterly published reports since 2006. Crafted for DMOs, the research explores opinions, motivations, behaviors, perceptions, sentiments, and technology usage by today’s American travelers.
The Travel Vertical sat down with Erin Francis-Cummings, President and CEO of Destination Analysts who shared several more insights about what we might expect to see in 2019 and beyond:
Destination Analysts invites DMOs to register for free quarterly reports and sign up for an upcoming webinar for a deeper dive into the survey results on Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 12 noon (PT). Participating in the webinar are David Reichbach, Director of Data Security and Analytics at Destination Analysts and guest Steve Paganelli, Head of Destination Marketing, Americas at TripAdvisor.
Clocks have fallen back an hour, even Halloween is a memory, and summer vacation 2018 is ancient history. But travel pros know the busy holiday season is still ahead.
DMOs can pick up some expert advice from Sojern on how to strategize now.
More consumers are online for shopping this season and while extra eyes are fixed to the screen, travel searches are up. Learn about how travelers are planning to get away during the last part of 2018 and how to catch their attention in a timely report from Sojern.
