What Timeshare, Hotels, Travel and Tourism Marketing Means for Local and State Economies

Yesterday The Timeshare Authority blog looked at The High Cost of Failing to Market Timeshares, Resorts, and Tourism.

Here are some interesting follow-up facts about the results learned from the study, which was commissioned by the US Travel Association and conducted by Longwoods International.

• According to Bill Siegel, founder and CEO of Longwoods International, “The return on investment of destination marketing programs is significant and nearly immediate.”
• Marketing campaigns more than pay for themselves by generating new business and typically yield a 12-to-1 return on marketing dollars.
• In 1993, due to budget constraints, the state of Colorado abolished its tourism marketing program. Colorado eventually lost more than 30 percent of its share of domestic visitors and more than $2 billion annually in visitor spending.
• When funding was restored to the State of Colorado tourism marketing efforts the state treasury saw, “… a 12-to-1 return on marketing investment, and trips to Colorado have rebounded to record levels.”
• In 1995, as the city of Philadelphia lost manufacturing jobs, one report identified leisure travel as a potential replacement. This insight led to the creation of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC). Since 1997, overnight visitors to Greater Philadelphia have increased by 66 percent, six times faster than the national growth rate.

Our federal budget is in crisis and many state and local budgets are not far behind. Yet as the Longwoods report points out, “Legislators are ignoring basic economics if they slash destination marketing programs.”