Travel and tourism marketers are ‘keeping a pulse’ on declining visits, and tweaking messaging in a chaotic climate

Meanwhile, marketers who are more reliant on domestic travel are leaning into messaging for that market even further and touting messages of value — economic and otherwise — to appeal to travelers. What makes the current market so difficult isn’t just a reduction in international travel, but also the economic climate and the more “nervous and anxious” consumer mood that has marketers across the board worried about the next quarter and beyond.

“We continue to try to position the state as an approachable and affordable place to visit,” Stephen Foutes, Missouri Division of Tourism director, said when asked if Missouri will tweak its advertising efforts to adapt to the current economic climate. “We think that really ties in very nicely with today’s climate.”

For a state like Missouri, which typically spends the largest chunk of its advertising budget (some $2.5 million) during the months of April, May and June, travelers to the state are often domestic rather than international, explained Foutes. That may help it avoid some of the immediate impact being felt by other tourism and travel marketers.

“We do some international work but the vast majority of our advertising dollars are spent domestically,” said Foutes. Even so, “international travel to Missouri accounts for 3-5% of total visitation which would equate to 300,000 to 400,000 consumers and about $320-$350 million in spending,” Foutes added. “Certainly, those are figures we do not want to see decline.”

Missouri isn’t alone there. Even for tourism and travel marketers who aren’t reliant on international travel, the potential decline has marketers overall watching for a dip and planning accordingly. “It’s a little bit of tweaking what you’re doing now and focusing on that local [audience],” said Taylor Miles, vp of consumer engagement at ad agency Two Tango, which works with travel and tourism clients. At the same time, travel and tourism marketers need to be “making sure [they’re] saying in market with those audiences who aren’t [traveling now],” Miles added.

“We are keeping a pulse [on visitation numbers] as closely as we can,” said John Bowers, marketing manager for Wyoming’s Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board. He noted that that while the board hasn’t yet seen a dip in its visitation numbers, “that’s something we’re definitely paying attention to and focusing on.”

The dip in tourism is, again, just one shift that’s affected marketers in the space. Changes in the economy as well as in the government are also causing ripple effects on how tourism and travel marketers are managing their messaging this year.

One change Jackson Hole has made to its advertising and marketing approach this year is to offer more support for the public lands that make the area appealing to visitors. “They need support on responsible recreation messaging from us because they’re not going to have that with the layoffs they’ve seen,” said Bowers. “They’re going to have fewer people on the ground, specifically for us that has to do with the National Forests.”

Jackson Hole is providing the local hospitality community with a responsible recreation and messaging toolkit, which launched last week, explained Bowers, adding that the messaging provides guidelines and talking points as well as pre-written social media captions and assets for the community to use in their marketing. “What we’re trying to do is have that messaging come across in a unified front and that’s a big change for us and something we’re pushing really hard,” said Bowers. “Instead of it just coming from the Visit Jackson Hole channels, it’s going to be coming community-wide to visitors.”

The tweaks that travel and tourism marketers are making to their spending and messaging strategies vary by market. Even if a decline in international travel doesn’t materialize, marketers will still have to navigate the other factors causing disruption in the current climate.

To Valeria Mares, evp and global head of strategy at Mediahub, this is a moment for travel and tourism marketers to look to “new pockets of growth” and take advantage of a potentially “less competitive, less cluttered” market. When everyone is cutting spending there can be a sense that “we have to do the same,” said Mares, “but the reality is it’s a big opportunity to rethink and understand how to make your destination shine.”

Overall, travel and tourism marketers are, like most marketers today, taking a more cautious approach to their spending and looking for efficiencies where they can find them in a difficult market, according to agency execs and travel and tourism marketers.

Going forward, to counteract some of the “trepidation” international travelers have about the U.S., travel and tourism marketers may need to play up “messaging of being welcome and the cultural inclusivity that we have here and unique experiences,” said Erin Sarro, executive creative director at Two Tango.