Skift Take
How travelers feel about their destination experiences correlate to how much they spend and how many positive recommendations they'll make. JD Power's study is likely a wake-up call for U.S. destinations trying to measure these relationships.
Tourism marketers spend just as much time working to get first-time travelers to book a vacation as they do convincing them to return, though destinations may be surprised that nearly one-third of U.S. travelers are likely disappointed with or indifferent to their destination experiences.
That's according to JD Power and Associates' new study on travelers' sentiments toward their destination experiences and it seeks to measure traveler spending. JD Power conducted the online survey between February and April 2016 and it includes more than 13,000 respondents who are ages 18 and older, live in the U.S. and traveled to a top 50 U.S. destination more than 50 miles from their home during the past 60 days. STR, a hotel data company, determined the top 50 U.S. destinations by number of hotel room nights sold. Data represents trips taken between December 2015 and April 2016.
Some 52 percent of those surveyed are millennials born between 1977 and 1994, and
