Determining what works, what doesn’t and why - Tourism Marketing - page 209

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Determining what works,
what doesn't and why
Evaluating tourism marketing campaigns
Stephen Pratt
Introduction
Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) face threats, both external and internal (Gretzel
et al . 2006). Stakeholders of DMOs are demanding more accountability than ever before from
their colleagues (Gretzel et al . 2006). Increasingly, DMOs have to justify their marketing budgets
to their funding organizations. The funding organizations want clear evidence that the funds
they provide for marketing are achieving their objectives. Tourism marketing campaign objectives
need to be quantifi able, realistic, achievable, relevant and time specifi c. A critical factor in
determining the success or otherwise of DMOs' marketing campaigns is deciding what the key
performance indicators (KPI) should be, fi nding the right benchmarks and deciding on what
techniques or methods should be used in their evaluation. A recent study by Williams et al . (2012)
among Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) members found that the performance
of destination marketing/management strategies ranked second as a research priority area.
Both academics and practitioners want to identify the strategies and programs that contribute to
long term sustainable growth of tourism destinations. In terms of research into evaluation
methods, the study by Williams and colleagues found the second-most priority area for a better
understanding was return-on-investment. For practitioners, this area had the highest ranking.
There is a clear desire to estimate the (predominantly economic) benefi ts of a marketing
campaign and compare them with the costs of implementing the campaign.
The systematic evaluation of marketing campaigns assists DMOs determine what works and
what doesn't, leading to a more effi cient use of marketing resources. Despite 'marketing control'
being a necessary element of every marketing plan (Kotler et al . 2009), this component is often
overlooked so that, in reality, DMOs are unable to determine the success or otherwise of their
marketing. Several approaches have been proposed to evaluate tourism marketing campaigns in
the tourism research literature. These approaches include conversion studies, advertising tracking
studies, quasi-experiments and cross-sectional analysis. The following section discusses some of
the diffi culties in deciding what to measure before reviewing the most common evaluation
methods. For each evaluation method, advantages and disadvantages of each evaluation method
are highlighted. Further, with increasing use of online marketing, a new set of marketing metrics
have arisen that have been used to assess the success of DMOs' websites. These Internet marketing