S2

Episode 2

The Future of Travel and Tourism Marketing

Illustration of Jim Reagan, President of MediaOne North America

About This Episode

September 1, 2021

Since 2020, nearly every aspect of the travel and tourism industry has had to adapt. We reflect on the industry impacts and look at what the future holds for travel and tourism marketing.

Jim Reagan | President, MediaOne North America
Jason Laronde | Sales Director, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

For our destinations, you know, again you get to the consumer and okay experiences are available, and speak to those and make sure that you are paying close attention to the research and data, what people are responding to. And it’s pretty interesting. It’s not always what you think it is. People are looking for ways they can enjoy safe experiences. And so you just have to tell them how they can do it with your destination.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:30)

Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.

Matt (00:00:58)

Since 2020, nearly every aspect of the travel and tourism industry has had to adapt. With strict travel regulations stay-at-home orders and plans put on hold. Marketers have had to embrace challenges to navigate the waters ahead. In this episode, we’re joined by Jim Reagan from MediaOne North America and Jason Laronde from StackAdapt. To reflect on consumer trends impacts the industry and the future of travel and tourism marketing. Where you’ll find interesting about this episode are the insights on how the need for safe travel has vastly impacted the messaging and marketing campaigns. What I liked about this episode was the idea that now more than ever, travelers are discovering destinations right outside their doorstep that don’t involve getting on a plane. Things like driving to a local attraction, landmark or even a hotel are becoming an exciting way to break out from the daily routine that we’ve all experienced over the last year and a half, and also represents huge untapped potential for marketers. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoyed this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to today’s episode. My name is Matt Everard. I’m the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I’m also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I’m joined by Jim Reagan, the president at media one North America, and Jason Laronde, Sales Director at StackAdapt. As a tradition with every episode of the podcast, I’d love to hear a little bit about each of our guests before jumping into the questions. So starting with you, Jim, why don’t you tell us what you do? How long have you been in the industry, and what you consider to be your strongest area of expertise?

Jim (00:02:36)

Okay, well, thank you. Appreciate that work. I’m Jim Reagan, President, again, as you said of MediaOne, North America, and we are a media all across the performance company. So we work with agencies and clients, helping their digital media create their digital media strategy, execution and optimization, and then robust data and analytics to continue the conversation and build the lifetime value of their customer. And, you know, tourism was just as information I began, I’ve had about a 30-year career in marketing and advertising. And for some reason or another, maybe it’s because been located in the southeast in Atlanta, and the area, tourism’s a big part of what I do and what we do as a company. We currently work with about 50, little over 50, different tourism, destination marketing organizations, hotels, resorts, attractions, from southern Canada to Florida, and all points in between. I got my start in television, local television, and did work in tourism, and then went to work the vice president of a publishers rep firm back in the 90s, located in Atlanta, so we would, there were magazines such as National Geographic Traveler, to Fox now travel holidays, I was in the publishing industry, Forbes, magazine, National Geographic, all these different publications that I worked with destinations. And again, hoteliers, etc, helping them develop their marketing strategies and advertising in the magazine. So my, my experience goes way back. And so I’ve kind of felt like I’ve grown up in this industry to some degree, and AMC just watched his growth trajectory to where back in the 90s people you know, you had traveled to vacations or something you did a couple of times a year and you just went to a certain place stayed there, and then went home. And now it’s become more of a part of who people are a part of their identity and, and usually travel is something that is almost like our birthright people go on vacation. And that’s something that that’s that Everyone’s vacation, before they’ll do a lot of other things, because that’s just a part of who they are. So I think it’s, it’s interesting for me to have watched that evolution. And you know, see it kind of come, you know, grow into now, but it’s a robust, billion-dollar, multi-billion dollar industry. So that’s my background sort of started with the publishing industry. And then, at about 2003, pivoted over to digital, digital media, and then with, you know, again, still record representing people, and then went to work with a startup at a Denver, Colorado, spot exchange Spotnitz, I was employed 23 out there. And my job when I came in, was to help develop and grow the tourism industry and create a strategy for them. And then they, when they sold to RTL in Germany, took my little bit stuck in what to work with another company for a short time, and then decided I want to do my own thing again. And so started MediaOne in 2015. And we have just incredible growth. And I’m very grateful for that, and having the chance to work directly with a lot of friends and clients all across the country. So I hope that’s not too, too much of a winded answer. Sorry for the speech there. But that’s my background.

Matt (00:06:32)

No, it’s really good to get a sense of where you come from. I mean, you’ve definitely seem to have grown up with the industry seen a lot of ebbs and flows of how things have gotten emerging tech, things like that. So we’re definitely very excited to have you on the episode. So just to round things off, Jason, I’d love to pass it over to you get a bit of insight into your experience, from StackAdapt and within the industry.

Jason (00:06:59)

Yeah. Thanks, Matt. So Jim, obviously great to have you on here. And I’m excited for this conversation, because I think you bring quite a fair bit of knowledge that I’m actually excited to learn about today. Since I’ve been in the industry for about seven or eight years. Now I’m losing track of time, but not as much as 30 years. So it’s a little bit shorter of an explanation here. I’ve been in the programmatic my whole professional career, focusing a lot on the sales side. So I started as an analyst, learning instead of campaigns, DSPs, SSP social platforms, etc. and moved into more of a consulting approach with the sales side of things. So my specialization in verticals or expertise, I would say is actually travel. I’ve worked with a lot of travel brands and clients throughout my tenure, focusing on various areas like loyalty, within some of the major airlines and hotel chains have also worked with hotel chains themselves. So I’ve seen quite a fair bit of the industry. But I’m also very excited for this conversation today and hear more about what Jim has been doing in the past year and a half.

Matt (00:08:03)

Perfect. Thanks again, Jason. So as mentioned, this episode of the podcast is going to be an in-depth discussion on the future of travel and tourism marketing. And the big goal is to give our listeners a much better understanding of the lasting impact that the pandemic has had on the vertical, and also how travel, marketers can prepare for this surge in demand for travel. As the world continues to transform into this new normal and open up again, over the course the episode will cover about five questions, give or take. And we’re looking forward to the insights that both of you bring to the table. So to kick things off, I wanted to ask when the travel restrictions began to be enforced back in 2020. So think back to q1, right when you know, the new cycle began. And everybody was sort of in this frenzy of what they would do. What was the number one thing at that time that was on your mind?

Jim (00:09:05)

Well, I was looking at it. For me personally, I hadn’t had a mother and father who grew up in the depths of the depression in the 30s and their youth, my my thinking was, oh my gosh, we’re getting ready to go through a world-changing event. But there were so many unknowns that I think we just had to, you know, pause and look at it and say, Okay, how can we first, you know, take care of our clients and their needs, they were obviously a lot of them and in full panic mode and all varying degrees of that. So we looked at ourselves as guides, people who, you know, provide just no different than an attorney or for an accountant would in legal or financial advice. We’re here to help them with their marketing. And so we had to look at it and say okay with the end loans, you know, we don’t want to turn everything off, because no marketer ever wants to do that. But we need to certainly pump the brakes and what we considered a part of the loan approach initially. And you know, but you were concerned about the welfare and personal welfare, it’s a very personal thing for all of us. No matter where you were in the world, as it just just, you know, like a wildfire went across all continents to think, Okay, where’s this gonna end? And, and it’s like any, anything that’s cataclysmic like that you’re first things you’re shocked. And then you say, Okay, you have to employ what’s my father called him in commander’s intent. And that’s you have all these great strategies and plans. And soon as the border goes down on the beach, your plans as a military leader, sometimes just go right out the window, and you have to think about what the end goals and objectives are, and how you can adapt, think adaptively to get your people from where you are now to where they want to be. And so for us, the first thing is a god is we wanted to be a resource of all kinds of information information. So we aggregated data of all of our travel advertisers using Google Analytics and whatnot, engage them, trends or things that we’re seeing across the board and across all travel advertisers, and try to empower them with their stakeholders so that when they’re having conversations with either the boards of directors or their industry stakeholders if they’re a destination or state tourism entity, we’re helping them really be able to give them insight as to what, where things are going and how they can possibly navigate.

Jason (00:11:48)

Yeah, and, Jim, I think you bring up a great point there that there was a lot of confusion, right, we’re at an unprecedented time, which I know that word was that a lot. But, you know, it’s a global event that, unfortunately, is impacting every single from your day to day to actually your travel plans. So a lot of clients in the travel space, at least came to me, and I’m curious to see if this thing with you. They just came into this, what do we do? Right hotel bookings are down flights are incredibly down. Is this a short-term pain that we need to solve right now? Or is it something that is actually going to be changing our marketing strategy moving forward? I think a lot of the time the communication evolved, where we started off saying, you know, we don’t know what this is. And we’re going to be following the basic idea that we’re going to see what everyone else is going to do. And if everyone else stops their campaigns, and everyone else does this, we’re going to follow suit and see what the overall ecosystem does. And unfortunately, it got to a point where a lot of people decided, you know, what, better safe than sorry, let’s completely go dark. And, you know, focus our budget elsewhere. And Jim, as you know, as well as I do, when any kind of executives looking at where to save money, unfortunately, marketing budgets are very easy cut for them. And they don’t realize the overall impact it’s going to have on their bottom line, but it’s a very easy budget to cut. So I’m curious for you, Jim, when you’re talking to your clients, what was really the main thing you were trying to tell them? Is it more about, you know, stay the course? Is it more about you know, adapt to the change? What was going through your mind when you have these conversations with your clients?

Jim (00:13:21)

Yeah, I mean, so. And again, it’s very interesting, we had not necessarily by design so if you look at the key market, that the key segments of travel and tourism, you got that meetings and conventions, group tours, group travel, like we call it bus tours, etc. Those, as you know, just shut down about he wanted to illegal liability, or the health liability of having people in the meeting. So we had just tons of, I mean, a number of our destinations who were just hammered by that. And if they were heavy into those markets, very painful situation. On the other side, here in the southeastern United States, we had places like the Great Smoky Mountains, Florida, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, North Myrtle Beach, some of these destinations that were you know, a lot of their focus was outdoors and if you’re going to the beach or the mountains, you can get out and kind of socially distance and have a good time. So those folks were wanting to get as active and as quick as they could. The on the lessor side. You know, so, from that standpoint, we had to navigate another thing is that you had a lot of stakeholders, hoteliers, locals who were like man, you know, we don’t want to import COVID. And there was one situation in Florida when we’re one West Coast, Florida destination, put some big ads in some of the Miami media area trying to talk to people in Miami about coming over Spin weekends ended up getting some people terminated because, you know, there was a big uproar about, hey, look, we don’t want, we don’t want people coming here who could possibly stick and make an our, our situation worse, right. So that was something we had to look at that. So I say that to say there were a number of our destinations, like one of them severe Nashville, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains, their occupancy, hotel occupancy was at 72% for 2020. Now that was after Q2. But if you if you take the second half of 2020, they just were bet right back histones to some degree is business as usual, there were some inside, like restaurants and attractions might be a 25% or 50%. But they had the ability to accommodate people. And so that gave us a lot of different things to consider. And we had to kind of tell some of them, Hey, man, you got to, you got to think about the sensitivities of the consumer. We’ll get a little more into this later on. But you know, what you always, when we say begin with the end in mind is the consumers experience that you have to think about. And in the case of travel, it’s also, you know, you’re inviting people to your home. And so you want to be considerate of your constituents too. So, right. So yeah, so we had to navigate that that was threading the needle, in that, you know, there were times we had to tell people, let’s let’s pump the brakes a little bit. And, and let’s look at the elements and the places and the experiences make sense. We’ll stay away from those that could be, you know, a political lightning rod or, or a health lightning rod and let’s see a wave and kind of dive in into a little bit.

Jason (00:16:50)

You know, over a year ago, when it was still in the heyday, you know, as a first line of defense, what were you testing out there? And what kind of strategies were you working with your clients? And we’d love to know what worked, what didn’t work in, you know, if you’ve learned anything from there that you can actually share today?

Jim (00:17:11)

Yeah, we, we looked at, you know, a lot of native and content-driven marketing that would talk about the experience, if you come to this destination, or if you come there’s hotel, here’s some of the things we’re doing to keep you safe, to help you have that great experience. And to really so changed, and it was much more subdued, not a, you know, anything that was, I think, exhilarating, you know, showing, like, you know, carefree experience that you’ve seen in 2019. But more paid here, you know, because we want you to come here and have a good time. But we want to make sure you do that. So we employed a good bit of native and content and you know, different things easy video to really tell their story, utilizing those those tactics and strategy.

Jason (00:18:04)

And, you know, within that, I know a lot of times I was reading a marketing report earlier today talking about that a lot of travelers were just hoping they could socially distance when they’re actually getting there was a big part of the marketing, you guys were doing. Focused along those states precautions, er, was really just saying, don’t worry, we’re good. Get us here. And we’ll be good.

Jim (00:18:23)

No, I mean, it was it was definitely that had to be a component of it. Because you didn’t I mean, you have to be responsible. And obviously, we wanted to make sure that our destinations and our clients, were they ever sensitive to that none of them wanted to just go whether somebody wanted to, but they were like, hey, we want to make sure people are totally aware. One of the things that happens, especially here in the southeast, is we call it the triangle, you had the Great Smoky Mountains, which is America’s most visited national park, the South Carolina beaches in Florida, specifically in the North Carolina, the Outer Banks, because people couldn’t travel out of the country. Right? It really created. There was some blowback locally for some of these folks about just how many people were coming. So that was the we had to be very, again, I got used to the term threading the needle, making sure that we are media. So we would have to that point, we’d have one strategy that was a BDC going out to the consumers. And we did a lot of what we call day trip and itineraries. So those are people that might drive two and a half, three hours at max, mostly two to three hours that at most where they could come spend the day, enjoy the destination and then go home. And then the second one was a strategy locally talking to the locals about how the industries what things they’re doing Want to make sure that the traveling public is tested to their needs and, and then also advertising locally to get people who live in a destination to come do some of the things you can do, you know, if you can come eat at a restaurant that has outdoor dining, social distancing, come. And so, you know, we did what we could to try to it’s that balance of trying to protect people’s rights, you know, an ability to keep their business owners and people employed with that health concern. Yeah, again, you know, each destination was a little bit different, because as you guys know, that got very political and still is. And so you have to have the you always every destination and every Gosh, come to church, from Canada, Mexico, anywhere you go, you have both sides. So you have to really pay attention to this product that’s going to change for a while.

Jason (00:21:00)

Absolutely. And I think there’s another good point there, you know, there’s a lot of noise, besides health and safety. Besides, you know, what we need to do to make sure people feel comfortable or politicized issues. You know, a lot of times brand messaging is kind of top of mind for many marketers in this travel space to make sure, you know, your brand is actually first and foremost, and not the issue that is plaguing people on a day-to-day basis. So I’d love to know, from your experience, you know, are there any strategies out there that have helped you and your brand stay relevant in the era of a lot of noise and a lot of misinformation.

Jim (00:21:34)

So we did some things kind of interesting. I thought that one obviously, we did a number of podcasts and Zoom meetings with our collectives with our clients and their constituents, helping answer their questions, giving them insights, giving them research, that’s one thing that we did. A second thing we did was kind of, we did a direct mail campaign to a lot of our clients, where we actually purchased a big supply of blankets with our logo on it, and sent a note or a letter out to clients around and encouraged them to take that blanket. And you know, when it’s cooler weather this winter, sort of the marginal time periods when it was actually in the fall or, or early spring. And going down support your local restaurant that stays warm uses us to one blankets, phrases, that sounds, that was a pretty cool thing that people really seem to respond well to, is it you know, sit in those blankets out and, and that sounds. And that’s just a little thing that we did. But we really did try to keep a lot of regular conversations. And we didn’t do it with just email, there was a lot of emails and a lot of, I think, that type of call it noise. And there was a lot of that going all over the place. But we did it with regular telephone calls, touchpoints, and old old-fashioned thing that I used to do, where you cut something out of a magazine or newspaper or predict from an online article, and rip it off, put it in an envelope and actually use the old snail mail and send it to people, it really was a note attached. And it just kept you top of mind. And then we began meeting with our clients collectively. And after about that, well, we started doing that we went to the second quarter of last year and kind of sheltered in place, but then selectively began seeing our clients in in places not in their offices. But in I mean, we’d do bag lunches out in a park or we do different things where we’d be able to talk to our clients and, and they love that because nobody else was really doing that it gave him a chance to you know, just kind of get away from all the garbage and actually, or, or some cases, get out of their own homes and actually see another human being another adult. So if they just need to really appreciate. So those are those were some just low-tech strategies that we did seem to work?

Jason (00:24:15)

Well, I think you brought up a good point where it’s actually a personal touch. And when you everyone went back home, you’re seeing anyone just on a zoom or Microsoft Teams screen and you don’t really get that human connection, any little thing like that, you know, really does make a difference in my opinion. And I think people are now more appreciative of that more than ever, when you lose it. And you have to focus on online only. But, you know, before we go to our ad break, I wanted to quickly ask you a little bit too, about the marketing strategies for your clients that either wanted to pause or continue. What did you find worked well for you and your clients in, you know this period of uncertainty?

Jim (00:24:51)

Well, and again, each one of them is different, but their strategies to again, utilize US digital media. And where we would be very, again, don’t use words to do, but we did campaigns that, you know, again, focused on that experience for the consumer, and how they could utilize their destination or what their did, it really did diving in to see what their destination we could offer that we could do, that the consumer would enjoy safely. So it’s really about so marketing strategies were more for them, or were us smaller campaigns. Not not full on just pedal to the metal. But again, branding, you know, to your point what you said it was more of a branding focus, and really trying to make that continue that emotional connection that they have with their, their consumers, because with tourism, and you guys may have this, you know, we all have our happy place. And our happy places, a lot of times those places that we take vacations, and so if you can make sure that you’re out there in front of your people that there is no, no, just I think that the consumer wants to know that you’re there. And they can you can come and when you can come. So I think it’s important that you really, with honesty and transparency, talk to your consumers. And again, lastly talking to him via digital media, to let them know what’s going on in your destination, what, what they can do and when they can come. So that’s those are some of the things that we have that kind of love, which What’s your thinking?

Jason (00:26:41)

Yeah, I think that’s perfect because I think a lot of times, when people see times of uncertainty, they cut and they go dark. But I think you bring up a good point that we need to make sure that hey, while we’re not can visit, you’re right now we’re still here. And when we can go back, we’ll be ready. And I think that’s a really good message to take away from here. Is that kind of what you were pushing with your clients as well.

Jim (00:27:03)

Yeah, and again, one of the things we talked about, since we we’ve worked with over 50 different destinations, we would aggregate that media and index that media against what they were doing and how they were doing. And we would be able to say to because you know, there are I’m not saying clients are there people. So they always want to know what other people are doing without sharing a this is what this destination is doing or that destination is doing, we would provide some case studies and examples, but it by aggregating a lot of data and what people were doing, like with the among our clients, and clients that that are in your segment, so if you’re a destination that say from a tertiary destination that might be not Myrtle Beach, but North Myrtle Beach or not Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, or not Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, but some smaller destination intensity, or, you know, it’s somebody who’s not the most recognized brain in that region, you know, we want to, we try to make sure that those folks looked again, at something that they could do that was unique, but by showing them what other people were doing, it allowed them to have some confidence and going okay, we can continue to spend money, because these other destinations are doing the same thing. And that gave them some political cover with their stakeholders and constituents to continue marketing. And that worked really, really well.

Matt (00:28:38)

Perfect. Yeah. Thanks again, Jim. These things and buts have all been really good. And Jason, thanks again for keeping the conversation going. With this in mind, we’re going to take a quick break. And then, when we come back, we’ll talk about what the world to travel and tourism is going to look like. As the world begins to open up in how consumers are shaping the direction of future campaigns. So we’ll take a quick break, and we’ll see when we’re back.

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Matt (00:29:43)

Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we’re joined by Jim Reagan of MediaOne North America and Jason Laronde of StackAdapt to talk about the future of travel and tourism marketing. So as we head into the latter portion of This episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about how important you think it is for travel and tourism marketers to take cues from consumers, when it comes to shaping the direction of campaigns. So things like messaging and how valuable it is to have the right messaging or the right creatives that are really going to speak to your target audience. As these travel and tourism companies start to open up, more trips, things like that.

Jim (00:30:26)

Yeah, I mean, for our destinations, you know, again, you get to the consumer, and we’ll try to experiences are available and speak to those and make sure that, that you are paying close attention to the research and data of what you know. And again, you guys know this, what people are responding to, and it’s pretty interesting, it’s not always what you think it is, again, people are looking for ways they can enjoy safe experiences. And so, you know, you just have to tell them how they can do it with your destination of the creative doesn’t have to be as in my mind, you do want to continue to brand. But the branding also has to travel as experiential right now. And I think it’s that element of it is going to continue to grow. So, you know, I had a discussion with a European marketer, and he was, you know, his view of the European market was, you know, they go on holiday, and that may last a long time, and they just go and they’re gone. And then they come back home after several weeks. And I talked to him about here in the United States. You know, they there’s a lot of folks that do, you know, they take they go mountain biking for their vacation, or obviously golf there, but kayaking, hiking, biking, all these different things. So you have to really, I think, be specific about what those experiences are they can do and how they can do it. Do they have to have their own equipment? Can they rent that? And I think that’s where content marketing and great storytelling has been very beneficial for our customers. Just great, tunnelled site and engagement, again, with great storytelling

Jason (00:32:16)

Yeah. And I think, Jim, there’s some interesting insights in there, because there was a marketer stat. And they asked people back in October of last year, when would you feel safe to travel again, in pretty much the majority of every single region, they asked, said Q3 of 2021. And I think that is really the time when people’s vaccination rates are up, and it’s getting nice weather and people starting to look inside there, they’ve built up a little bit of a nest egg that they can then spend on. But you know, what you said early in this episode was that a very domestic focus travel. And it might be because people are a little more cautious to avoid crowds, they aren’t as comfortable with air travel as they’re driving a car or an RV. And while those safety concerns are, you know, maybe a little bit waning, the price concerns are still there. And, you know, really I found what was efficient was we’re traveling budget travelers that are going for close-to-home getaways. And they’re looking to you know, rent an RV rent a car to actually get to that location. And it worked very, very well, for some of our clients that were trying to capture an audience they normally wouldn’t get. Because, you know, a lot of times, especially up in Canada, we look at international travel is a big part of our market segment. And when borders closed, and different things happen like that, a big, big marketing push was explore your own country. And I think it was a very, very successful avenue for a lot of our travel boards that weren’t expecting that big surge in local there. So I found a lot of times that you know, this was the time when people started testing mentioned messaging around that whole idea of being local, being more discounted and explore your own country. And personally, for me speaking, we had a lot of success there.

Jim (00:34:01)

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, we, we had an interesting thing with one of our destinations, which was on the Canadian border in northern Minnesota that had a unique problem. And that to get to the Lake of the Woods is called, you have to go up into Manitoba, and around and then come back down into the United States to get to their actual destination. And it’s one of the only places I think in North America where that’s true. And so, you know, they do their, their big thing is fishing on those beautiful lakes. And so they actually had to employ testing with that Ice Road Truckers mentality and figure out ways to get people coming across the frozen lights, which is kind of interesting, but that was not fun. That happened but you’re right. That’s the same thing. I think one of the things we saw here in the United States was so many people were you know, there’s so much pent-up demand. Yeah, so much frustration among, you know, in front of a lot of people. And I always like to look at things in quintiles. And by that I mean, you know, while the reasons when you have any sort of I used to do totally agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree, totally disagree or whatever, how you want to say it, you have to look at marketing, and especially in the tourism sector, in the same way, there are people who, who were just so frustrated, you know, asked to be damned on going somewhere, and you can shoot me, but I’m gonna get to that. And so, you know, we had a, we had a lot of scenarios where, I mean, destinations, especially like, I was in Florida in May, and it was just, almost, there was a couple of places just overrun to the point where I was gonna, you know, I’m gonna go somewhere else. It’s too many people. Yeah. And so yeah, so you’re right. I mean, but it was the same thing. People stayed locals, stayed in the country. And, and, and had because they didn’t, they’re not spending as much money on clothing, and gas, commuting back and forth to work. Oh, for sure. Yeah, getting money. So they had cash. And I’ll give you an example I was talking to back in May, I was at a conference in Florida and one of the, the executive director of the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau at Amelia Island plantation, said that the Ritz Carlton there normally went for about 250 to 300 American dollars a night. And they thought well, and they were just so sold out at that point that they decided just to keep raising their rates. And at $1,600 a night, during the week, they were still sold out, wow. People were just wanting to get out of their homes, get out of their hometown and just go somewhere and cost became irrelevant. We have one client in the Smoky Mountains, that they projected a $1.3 billion expenditure by consumers. And they ended up at 1.8 billion. And for the month of July 2021, this last month, they had a 93.4% occupancy rate for all the hoteliers in the county combined. And that’s basically stalled out. That’s just an in that there’s a way. I mean, if you count, you know, somebody stays Friday to Monday, and then somebody else comes in Thursday and stays to the next Sunday. Those two days, you really can’t really be more sold out than that. So it was insane. So I think that’s we’re having to deal with and that again, instead of a little bit of backlash among the locals and people that are invited you here but too many of you. So it’s changing. And we’ll get into some of the dynamics, I think marketers approach going forward. We’ll get into that when you’re ready.

Jason (00:38:06)

Yeah, I think the economics of it get very interesting when you start comparing where these challenges are coming from, how much they are willing to pay? And, you know, will this also be replicated locally? Yeah, during the week and stuff like that. I know, personally, for myself, there are some places in Canada that are actually incentivizing locals to, you know, join there by offering different discounts. There are places in Niagara Falls, that were normally suffering, during this time, they’re offering some very good incentives just to get people back there and get back into that mood of, you know, it’s safe to be back here, it’s safe to enjoy the era that it is. And we’ll give you a little bit of a bonus, whether that be, you know, discounted rooms, from credits on food, or whatever might be if you show that you’re a Canadian resident. So I noticed there’s a lot more benefits and discounts that were being offered to get people there. So it’s a little bit different than, you know, jumping to prices up there. But typical tourist destinations that people used to go pre-pandemic are now, I think, a little bit on the west side, because people are now exploring more within their own little area. So, you know, which brings me to this next question that I thought would be very interesting. And that’s one thing I’m wondering about recently, because we follow trends all the time, we follow forecasts and reports, and we’re coming out of an area that was again, unprecedented, but as the travel restrictions start to ease off, are you seeing any trends in either the travel or tourism area that you’re most excited to see emerge in the coming months in the year?

Jim (00:39:33)

Yeah. Thanks, Jason. Yeah, the things that I’m seeing are with remote working and remote learning, there are a lot of, you know, people that that’s just opened up, travel, because you have again, I live here in Chattanooga, Tennessee, our company is based in Atlanta, but it’s not that far away, actually. So many people here who come and stay a month or two, license tax from all over the country, Washington State, California, people that you normally wouldn’t have an area here, we’re more of a regional, about 85 90% of our tourism in this area, and in the southeastern US tends to be draft travel. But you’re seeing people who will, you know, get their kids their family and go spend the summer in a horse spend a month or two, working and, you know, learning remotely in destinations. And that’s a trend that I think it’s, I don’t think that you’re gonna have, you know, there are a lot of folks, a lot of companies that are saying, Okay, let’s go. We don’t want to be a remote organization, it doesn’t work for everybody. But I think as you look at even big companies like Google that said, they’re gonna do that at 60/80 plan, where 20% of the people will be there all the time in their offices, and 60% will be, you know, two or three days a week and the other 20%, totally remote. Well, those people now have incredible liberties to travel, take advantage of weekday opportunities. And so that’s what I was talking about when you use quintiles, you look at segmenting out some of these people and having creative and different focus to talk to those, you know, because those are, those are great opportunities for you to get people to say about the state for welfare state. I mean, those are short business that can be pretty extended.

Jason (00:41:27)

Well, absolutely great point because I actually just got an email, I think, a couple days ago from the Royal York and Toronto, and they said, you know, change up your work-from-home view. And it said, basically, spend x amount of dollars to get a free day pass to all the amenities stay in the room there, and basically treat it as a home office there. And you’re 100%, right, that’s a completely untapped market, that no one would have thought it would be a big market segment. But I think as people are starting to get more flexible, able to work multiple hours, our entire job is online now. It allows a lot more freedom and mobility for people to actually explore all these places. And that’s just down the street from me, I can only imagine some of these tourism boards that are going to offer some discounts, deals, incentives for me to spend a week to three weeks, even a month there, instead of in my own home office during the same wall, I’m looking at every single time. Are you finding that that’s going to be a big thing for some of these places? Or is it more of an isolated trend recently?

Jim (00:42:24)

Absolutely. I’m sorry. Yeah, definitely shouldn’t should pay close attention to that, because that’s going to be important, you know, people, you know, were made for connection and were made for, you know, to be around each other. And it’s important, I think that we have that opportunity and travel presents that opportunity. And so you really want to speak to those folks that are at home because they want to. I mean, that’s a huge segment. Again, one of the things I have is, you know, travel is predicated on leisure travel is predicated most of the time on discretionary income. And you can save a lot of money on these photos, on our money on clothing and commuting costs. The one thing that was a little disturbing early on as they were saving money on deodorant and some other things. I was like, man, let’s let’s come back to us. For sure. That’s a good thing. But yeah, I think that’s, that’s awesome. And, you know, if we take just a second and look at some of the trends with the meetings and conventions market that was talking to one of our clients, Pinehurst resort, actually one of my colleagues on my team, which is, it’s called the home of American golf, Pinehurst, the resort itself, was notice dementia, few trends and corporate meetings, as they’re coming back, we’re starting to see now our company’s example. I had, we had our first we continue to have our team meetings, but not as often we did one in the mountains. Actually, the interesting thing, it was a farm and a barn that was committed into a kind of boutique hotel. So we were able to socially distance and have a meeting and do that. But what they’re seeing is where in the past a lot of you’d have a lot of sales meetings or, or corporate meetings where people would just, you know, go to a hotel, in the conference room, they’d be there all day, then they may go out and eat and do some golf or whatever. But now he says where they’re seeing is an interesting trend of where they do have people come, they’ll spend a little bit of time in the conference room, then they’ll try to find a place outside where they can meet and kind of do team building. So it’s that dynamics changing a bit. So whereas they’re still having the meetings and their meetings are coming back, they’re coming back, like everything, I think, a little bit different.

Jason (00:44:53)

I think that’s, you know, again, expanding this market to travelers that wouldn’t have an impact normally, and I know for airlines, business travel was, you know, absolutely massive for them. And while that might change the way they think you write that people still need that human connection still need that feeling of being part of a team, and this is the time to start doing it there. So, overall, I think these trends that we’re starting to see, are going to continue on. And personally, for me, I’ve been doing a lot of proposals with a lot of my clients talking about that specific market segment. And I think you’re right, I think we’re in a really good area to move forward with a new targeting idea alongside the other local or international, whatever the statement is out there. So I think this had been a great discussion.

Jim (00:45:39)

And we looked at it, I like to talk to our clients and our own team, we talked about operating in a cone. So whereas in the past, you may have a linear strategy, we do a business plan or a strategic plan for the next year. And we like to forecast out what we think we’re going to do and where we’re going to be, and how things gonna work. But as we can see, right now, you know, even with this, as the pandemic continues, you know, there are hotspots and ebbs and flows and flares and new iterations of the virus to change things. So the column strategy allows us to have an overarching strategy, again, that Commander’s Intent, looking out to the future and saying, here’s where we want to go. But you’re operating in that if you think if you can visualize a cone, that you may have to migrate either to the top of that count at the bottom of the column, as you move through in each of those might integrate different various tactics that would make sense based on where you are within that column as you wish to continue moving forward. Again, using the military, do you know you don’t want to, if you sit still, usually, you perish. So you got to continue moving and learning how to do that. So that’s something we’d like to talk about so that we can have our clients build that column and then and then continue to move forward.

Matt (00:46:58)

Absolutely. So, you know, with that in mind, this actually concludes the episode. So, on behalf of myself and our listeners, Jim, Jason, thanks so much for your expertise on travel and tourism. We hope our listeners took away some valuable insights from this episode, and we can’t wait to see how everyone will succeed in their upcoming campaigns. So thank you, again.

Episode Outro (00:47:20)

Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share a podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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