Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Conclusions
There is a growing need to standardize marketing strategy evaluations and provide more robust
assessments in comparing ROIs for different marketing campaigns (Williams
et al
. 2012). This
chapter seeks to review the most common marketing evaluation tools used to date to measure
the effectiveness of DMO marketing campaigns. Learning and adapting from previous research,
more recent conversion studies have found that marketing campaign evaluations undertaken
using experimental design also have value. For several reasons, this type of evaluation has not
been as widely implemented as conversion studies. Both conversion studies and experimental
design studies seek to capture the incidence of those exposed to the marketing campaigns who
are then been converted to visitors. DMOs should desire to quantify these KPIs as they estimate
the ultimate goal for DMOs - to drive potential tourists to visit their destination.
Nevertheless, intermediate goals, such as destination awareness, destination preference and
intention to visit, as well as potential tourists' perception of the advertising creative, are equally
important to DMOs. Where suffi cient resources are available, marketing evaluations carried out
in a holistic framework, as suggested by Morgan
et al
. (2012) would be ideal. This applies to
marketing campaigns undertaken through traditional media as well as web-based and Internet
marketing campaigns. Yet, the current funding environment for many DMOs means they need
to do more with less. The funds that they are given will come under more and more scrutiny and
need to be justifi ed. The lack of resources will drive DMOs to use more creative (and free)
marketing tools, such as Facebook and Twitter. Undertaking comprehensive and holistic methods
as outlined above or undertaking data mining procedures to assess the effectiveness of online
marketing may be too expensive or too diffi cult for many DMOs. Consequently, rigorous
evaluations are not completed and DMOs are back to wondering which marketing campaigns
work and which don't.
As mentioned by Li and Wang (2011), there is a need to go beyond merely evaluating
destination websites. Evaluations of websites need to link their effectiveness with visitation and
expenditure statistics if they are to be seen as truly effective. Hence, using a combination of
methods for website evaluations seems most prudent. Regardless of the marketing channel,
DMOs need to pay more attention to quality rather than the quantity of their marketing
strategies (Li and Wang 2011).
Current performance measurement and benchmarking approaches have several shortcomings.
As highlighted by Gretzel
et al
. (2006), to adequately measure the effectiveness of all the marketing
activities, both above and below the line, offl ine and online can be time consuming and expensive.
There is a need to evaluate internal marketing efforts, partnering initiatives and community
outreach, long term and short term marketing activities as well as strategies using traditional and
new channels and technologies.
Almquist and Wyner (2001) argue that the medium of evaluation should match the medium
of the marketing program so that Internet-based marketing strategies should be evaluated with
Internet-based evaluation techniques. Further, the evaluation process needs to be built into the
planning process. Evaluating marketing campaigns and strategies should not be conducted in an
ad hoc manner (Hieggelke n.d.) if DMOs are to determine what works, what doesn't and why.
Considering how marketing evaluations might develop in the future, the challenges DMOs
face will become exacerbated in the next few years. Potential tourists are exposed to an increasing
number of tourism marketing stimuli, especially with the emergence of new media (Xiang and
Gretzel 2010). The pre-decision stage of the travel decision is infl uenced by multiple factors.
Distinguishing which marketing execution motivated the tourists to visit the destination may be
beyond the capability of DMOs, even if they have the resources to undertake evaluation. Tourists
