The 20 Trends Destinations Need to Understand to Compete for Tourists

The 100th annual Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) conference took place this week at ARIA Resort & Casino Las Vegas, bringing together destination marketing organizations (DMOs) of all sizes from around the world. During the event, DMAI unveiled phase one of its DMAI DestinationNEXT industry report. It was designed to help DMOs understand travel behavioral trends and suggest strategies to capitalize on those trends, while providing new benchmarking tools and best practices to help drive business in today's rapidly changing tourism environment. In March, DMAI sent out a survey to DMOs worldwide to discern what they thought were the biggest issues impacting the travel industry in 2014. The survey included a list of 65 tourism trends and 49 potential strategies in response to those trends, which DMAI asked the DMOs to rank in order of importance in their region. DMAI polled two panels of experts to source the specific trends and strategies included in