Destinations

Emerging markets are taking over outbound travel. Economic growth is increasing living standards across the world and outbound travel is growing along. International Travel Expenditure is now shifting from a handful of countries who have historically made up most of the outbound travel to emerging markets.

The meetings and events sector is evolving at a rapid pace. Pioneering events like South by Southwest and C2 are raising event attendees' expectations, putting pressure on organizers to design more engaging experiences at events of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, new types of event technology like artificial intelligence and personalization tools offer new opportunities (and challenges) for meeting planners. This report investigates the state of today's conference and event sector, and examines how organizers should look to evolve their own event strategies in response in the years ahead.

As the Chinese economy has grown and opened up to the West, both domestic leisure and outbound travel have ramped significantly. At the same time, the country is still in the early stages of moving bookings from offline to online. A growing travel market and increased adoption of online bookings is a potent recipe for growth at Ctrip and the industry as a whole.

This report looks deep into the current state of destination marketing, with a particular focus on current and developing content marketing, digital advertising and data analytics strategies. Skift Research Annual Subscribers also gain access to our 2017 Digital Destinations Survey full results. We collected over 300 responses from destination marketing organizations worldwide to assess budget, spend on marketing, reported return on investment on advertising platforms, and other metrics. The data sheet is a downloadable Excel file a full breakout of results from this 35 question survey (Annual Subscribers only).

The tours and activities segment is a two-sided race, with the big online aggregators clamoring to bring both suppliers and travelers into the digital age. The category has a relatively short booking window compared to accommodations and flights, leaving little room to use the latest in digital marketing and retargeting tech. Average booking values are also significantly lower than other categories. Yet, despite the challenges, the opportunities remain significant; the category is very much the next (if not final) frontier in online travel.

Disney’s success with its theme parks, hotels and cruise products is directly attributable to a highly-sophisticated marketing program that leverages cross-monetization of its different media businesses. It’s a case study for travel and hospitality companies on how to think and look outside of travel, when building globally successful businesses and brands.

Destination marketers face a new imperative to refine and align their culinary experience branding and marketing strategies to connect with today’s digitally savvy traveler. Even non-traditional tourist destinations must commit to smarter branding and marketing strategy, in order to capture sustained tourism in-flows. Here, stakeholders must work together to hone their content strategies and build local networks to bring out the best of what destinations can offer.

Industry consolidation and innovation is ramping up as the tours and activities sector finally comes online. But a range of technical and logistical challenges still hold the sector back. How are tour operators adapting, and what strategies are helping them thrive in this dynamic environment?

Driven by shifting consumer profiles and a demand for personalized discovery, luxury travel is evolving beyond its traditional parameters. Luxe travel brands are meeting these needs by developing more nuanced options for immersive destination experiences so consumers can customize their entire travel journey.

Staying fit and eating well on the road is important to a growing number of travelers, causing airports, hotels and spas to create better options for those seeking to integrate healthy habits into their journeys.

The winter travel market has been behind the curve compared to the broader travel market, but with recent investments in back-end technology and the embrace of a dynamic pricing marketplace, it is poised to leapfrog and nurture innovations that will enhance the quality of the experience.

The convention of the future is a co-created hybrid mechanism of live and virtual engagement, fluidly connecting more people through more channels over longer periods of time to leverage the collective knowledge of the community.