Measuring the Real Impact of Destination Marketing Organizations
Photo Credit: One impact of tourism promotion is that visitor dollars help support amenties that improve the quality of life for local residents. Photo: Millennium Park, Chicago. Flickr / Rick Harris
Skift Take
DMAI is working overtime to illustrate how tourism drives more than air arrivals and hotel nights to a destination when tourism marketers work well with local economic developers.
Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) are under growing pressure to prove their performance as tourism business drivers and their overall impact on local economic development.
Toward that end, the Destination & Travel Foundation—an arm of Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI)—released a research report last month conducted by Oxford Economics. The 58-page Destination Promotion: An Engine of Economic Development paper examines how investments in the visitor economy impact more than visitor-related industries and their suppliers.
“The research demonstrates that in addition to generating jobs and tax revenues by attracting visitors, the activities of DMOs drive broader economic growth by sustaining air service, creating familiarity, attracting decision makers, and improving the quality of life for residents,” says Michael Gehrisch, president/CEO of DMAI.
Local and state DMOs in the U.S. invested nearly $2 billion in destination marketing in 20
