Tourism is a wide-reaching industry that affects much more than hotels and booking agencies; local travel impacts the surrounding community and all its businesses. When large conferences, tradeshows, retreats, concerts, and other major events select a destination, they have the potential to bring booming business to a region, often with lasting positive impacts. Within the hospitality industry, Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) play a significant role in incentivizing visitors, companies, events, and individual travelers to choose their destination among seemingly endless options. An engaging CVB could be the difference between your destination or a competing location landing a multi-day conference.
Supercharge your CVB's digital marketing presence with these 7 tips
Discover how CVB marketing can boost your economy
CVB professionals, like destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and tourism directors, are responsible for and dedicated to generating travel that powers the surrounding economy. Whether you’re new to destination advertising or seeking to supercharge your CVB marketing efforts this year, these strategies make attracting new visitors to your location easier.
Know your destination inside and out
To attract new visitors and encourage past event attendees to return, CVBs must have a comprehensive understanding of their area (i.e., town, region, and overall destination). This includes knowing which travelers, groups, and companies are visiting, when they come, and why. Are there specific attractions, recurring events, or natural wonders that draw travelers?
What conferences and conventions does your location appeal to? Does your destination lend itself to big-budget business events, laid-back wellness retreats, or corporate conventions? Does your destination offer luxe hotels and spa services that elite travelers seek, or are you located in the middle of a bustling city center with high-energy nightlife conferencegoers can enjoy at the end of each day?
Take advantage of data
If you’re unsure which market segments seek out your destination, demand reports and historical data can help identify them. Collect and analyze regional data points to monitor traffic, pinpoint travel patterns, and identify opportunities to drive new business to your area. Some valuable data points to consider include—
- Hotel occupancy spikes
- Restaurant revenue trends
- Event inquiries
- Venue site visits
- Proposal request numbers
Dive into data to discover even more about your destination. Collect and analyze essential consumer and behavioral data to identify demographic and destination trends.
- When are your peak, shoulder, and off-seasons?
- When is business busiest?
- When do the most travelers visit your region?
- What events, patterns, and travel habits drive these trends?
- Is there a large university nearby?
- Is your destination a hub for festivals or artisan trade shows?
- Is your destination popular during football, festival, or fishing season?
Once you understand what brings visitors to your area, you’ll be better prepared to entice them to visit again.
Consider your target audience
Reed & MacKay, a corporate and travel event management company, researched which factors influence event planners and groups when selecting a destination. In a 2024 article, Reed & MacKay detailed some of the most influential factors impacting group travel and how organizers make destination decisions. Some key factors influencing planners’ destination travel decisions include safety, budget, infrastructure, travel restrictions, accessibility, technology, and sustainability.
- Safety: Is the event location safe and well-lit? Are emergency vehicles easily accessible? Is the venue located near a hospital, hotels, or restaurants?
- Budget: Can planners and event organizers afford to book large-scale events in your destination? What bundles, discounts, or travel perks are available?
- Infrastructure: Does your venue have the space, staffing, and infrastructure to accommodate large groups, multi-day conferences, or multi-functional events? Do venues provide food service, lodging, or vendor partners?
- Travel restrictions: Could travel restrictions, visa requirements, or other hurdles prevent international groups from booking events in your destination?
- Accessibility: Besides being easily accessible by air, train, or car travel, diversity, inclusion, and physical accessibility are major priorities for event and group planners in 2024 and beyond. They seek destinations offering specialized assistance and services to accommodate as many attendees as possible.
- Technology: Modern meetings and contemporary events are about much more than access to strong Wi-Fi. Planners, groups, and event organizers seek hotels and venues that offer affordable, innovative technology, like next-generation meeting room equipment, dynamic conference lighting, wearable attendee technology, and more.
- Sustainability: Companies, corporations, private planners, and groups are feeling the pressure to travel sustainability. Appeal to eco-conscious group planners and green decision-makers by highlighting your destination’s environmental and community protection commitment.
While focusing on significant groups and events, remember to target leisure and transient travelers. Think about your current and target customers. Who is traveling to your destination right now? Which travelers come back every year? Consider what customers or events you want to attract in the future. What makes your location unique and valuable?
- What experiences does your destination offer that exceed travelers' expectations?
- What experience quality can you guarantee travelers, and how do you know?
- Do regional hotels, restaurants, and attractions offer enough value for their cost?
- Does the perceived quality of what you advertise match what customers get?
- Does consumers’ perception of your destination match the image you project?
- Why should travelers, planners, or group decision-makers pick your location?
Be more available
Expand the availability of your CVB so they can assist planners and visitors by delegating tasks and designating primary contacts for different market segments. Depending on the size of your team, you may designate one individual as the local expert and primary point of contact. Larger tourism teams may have one person focused on corporate events, another committed to generating leisure travel, and another responsible for incentivizing sports teams to visit.
To increase CVB availability, utilize numerous channels to communicate with travelers, tourists, event planners, and other decision-makers. Connect with tourists and advertise where the planners are using your website, social media pages, destination guides, and blogs. Consider employing a chatbot or an AI-driven text messaging service to communicate with all interested travelers, even those uncomfortable speaking face-to-face or over the phone.
Finally, gather with your team regularly to share updates, pass along information, and identify the most successful marketing strategies. Learn from each other’s mistakes and commit to increasing, improving, and incentivizing travel to your destination.
Team up with hotels
Many hotels, particularly large properties, luxury resorts, and branded hotels, have extensive marketing budgets and multi-person teams that government-funded travel organizations, like CVBs, often do not. Work together to create wide-reaching destination marketing campaigns that benefit both businesses, drawing more consumers to your destination and providing them with a reputable, exciting place to stay. Collaborate to create captivating social media campaigns, partner on eco-tourism initiatives, or create exciting stay packages with tickets or access to other areas your CVB wants to promote.
CVBs are dedicated to using their sales and business development expertise to attract new business travelers, events, and conventions to their destination. CVBs frequently work with meeting planners, corporate executives, and other decision-makers to showcase their destination's unique attributes, highlighting what makes it the perfect location for large-scale groups and events.
Hosting trade shows, industry conferences, and brand presentations is a fantastic way to demonstrate why your area should be considered a top meeting destination. Consider organizing familiarization tours designed to introduce planners and decision-makers to your region.
Partner with destination marketing organizations
If you haven’t already, contact DMOs in your area to form a partnership dedicated to driving tourism. Meet regularly to share valuable insights, host events, and brainstorm incentives that could attract companies, travelers, and headlining events to your area. Combine your resources and marketing strengths to create far-reaching destination marketing campaigns featuring area adventure opportunities, highlighting local attractions, or announcing your destination’s new tourism rewards program.
For example, your area's travel partners could collaborate to create a group stay or event loyalty program that incentivizes planners to host conventions, tournaments, and other events in your area. In addition to CVBs and DMOs, your venue’s expansive destination marketing efforts should include cross-promotional campaigns highlighting local restaurants, hotels, bars, attractions, recreation spots, art galleries, and other hospitality-based businesses.
Focus on the entire funnel
Every lead generation funnel has three major pieces: the top, middle, and bottom.
- Top-of-funnel marketing attracts awareness and introduces consumers to your product/brand/destination. It strengthens your destination’s reputation and grows awareness by providing consumers with informative, engaging, and valuable information.
- Middle-of-funnel marketing content generates desire and further interest. During this stage, CVBs strive to move consumers closer to the desired result (i.e., visiting a particular site).
- Bottom-of-funnel marketing is dedicated to brand advocacy. At this stage, a call to action typically pushes consumers toward a conversion. Instead of directing visitors to a booking page or meeting inquiry form, destinations may encourage consumers to visit a specific hotel site, open a restaurant page, or click through the remainder of the campaign.
Destinations may have traditionally focused on upper-funnel marketing, targeting consumers at the discovery stage of their sourcing journey. However, research indicates that almost two-thirds of destination marketing and CVB teams will shift their focus to full-funnel marketing this year. Sojern, a travel marketing platform, partnered with Digital Tourism Think Tank to assess the State of Destination Marketing in 2024. Of more than 300 global DMOs surveyed, 70% of respondents stated they would embrace full-funnel marketing campaigns this year.
Put sports tourism on your radar
Look for sports tourism opportunities in your destination. Do you have space to host a youth travel baseball tournament? Are there multiple soccer fields in your area? Identify opportunities to entice collegiate, youth, and travel sports to travel to your destination.
Create a rescheduling strategy
Planners may call you in a panic because they believe an event has been canceled or because their plans fell apart at the last minute. Event organizers, group contacts, and corporate planners often turn to CVBs for assistance and recommendations for nearby alternatives.
Work with hotels to stay up-to-date on availability, especially during major events, high-demand periods, and inclement weather. Some CVBs create a team dedicated to juggling event changes and rescheduling needs. If you have enough staff, divide your team into two parts: one dedicated to major demand drivers and the other focused on accommodating intricate or luxury events.
Highlight sustainable tourism initiatives
Eco-tourism is a more critical consideration for all travelers, including companies and event planners, than ever before. For hospitality businesses and destinations wanting to remain competitive in an increasingly green industry, investing in sustainable solutions is no longer an option for travel brands and destinations; it’s necessary.
Create sustainable travel initiatives for your destination. Work with hotels, event venues, restaurants, and other businesses to form eco-conscious tourism partnerships, promoting green partners on your social media sites. Lobby for green initiatives and eco-conscious policies that positively impact your area and share your efforts with online viewers. Encourage visitors to participate in local efforts by choosing green hotels, booking eco-conscious venues, and connecting with the local culture during their visit.
Incorporate short-form videos into your social media strategy
Short-form videos dominate social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. According to a recent 2024 report from Arrival, the number of travelers and planners using social media to find trip destinations is higher than ever before. Ismael Garcia, Chief Marketing Officer of Civitatis, claimed that over 75% of people now use social media for travel inspiration. Arival’s latest research also indicates that TikTok, a platform once renowned for short-form video content, now acts as a search engine for many destination seekers and event decision-makers.
To make your CVB short-form video content even more compelling, consider incorporating engagement tools, like live Q&A, polling, and interactive stickers, into videos to encourage user engagement. Open a casual and honest line of communication between the CVB and social media users, responding to comments and posting short-form answers to travelers’ burning questions.
Collaborate with niche creators
Partner with niche advertisers and travel experts to create compelling, trustworthy, destination-focused marketing campaigns. CVBs targeting adventure-seekers may partner with outdoor living enthusiasts or eco-tourism experts, whereas destinations that want to attract digital nomads may partner with off-the-grid, nomadic creators.
Keep your eye on the pipeline
Monitor tourism and hospitality pipelines to know what businesses or brands are coming to your market. How will new companies affect travel, comfort, and availability in your area? Collaborate with hotels and event venues to share important information, such as pace reports, cancellation trends, anticipated market fluctuations, destination advertising efforts, and rescheduling updates.
Still have questions about CVB marketing?
If you want more information about CVB marketing, check out these FAQs.
What are the core responsibilities of a CVB?
At its core, the role of Convention and Visitor Bureaus is to provide resources, information, and support for hospitality and tourism in their destination.
What is a CVB quizlet?
A CVB quizlet is essentially a set of flashcards tourism professionals use to learn everything they need to know about their destination. From the local “bed tax” to the details of the town’s history, CVB quizlets help tourism professionals become local experts.
Where do CVBs get money for marketing?
Like other not-for-profit organizations, CVBs are primarily funded through local governments. While they may receive some supplemental funding from taxes or fees derived from local businesses that benefit from tourism (e.g., hotels, restaurants, and attractions), most of their funding comes from the local government where the bureau resides. Due to limited funding opportunities, creativity and cross-promotion are key to CVB and destination marketing success.
Now you’re ready to build a CVB marketing strategy that works for you
You know your destination better than anyone, so you understand how its unique features can benefit companies, adventure-seekers, families, and other travelers. Team up with other hospitality businesses in your backyard to form a powerhouse travel and tourism support network. Strengthen local industry bonds by hosting hospitality networking events that lead to long-lasting relationships.
