Looking to enhance your destination in a challenging environment? Gavin Eccles, Aviation and Tourism Development consultant and IATA Training instructor on strategic destination management, shares his insight into the key challenges destination marketing is facing today and what to do about them.
By the end of 2024, tourism had made a full recovery from the turbulence of the pandemic [1], and 2025 looked set to be the start of a steadier growth period. At the beginning of the year, Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General was pointing out that recent record growth in demand for air tickets had “made it absolutely clear that people want to travel”[2]
However, both the cost of travel and tourism, and overall consumer confidence, have been affected by a geopolitical and economic situation that has remained unstable and become more challenging.
Already in January 2024, the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) had found that “globally, travelers are less impulsive and planning trips further in advance”.[3] As the first quarter of 2025 closed, there were clear indications that, while consumers are still choosing to prioritize travel, according to both IATA[4] and the World Travel and Tourism Council[5], they are giving careful consideration to the value they receive for the money they spend.
With uncertainty set to continue for a while, the time is ripe for destination management organizations (DMO) to reconsider their approach to attracting travelers and tourists. Certainly, some have been aware of the need to rethink their offering in terms of experiences for some time, and some were even working on it before the pandemic. Back in 2017, Constanze Hilgers of the German Tourist Board told IATA that “Data enables us to market experiences not destinations: city breaks are an important product for us; some visitors want a beach holiday, others are attracted by the countryside; some come for architectural heritage, others for Beethoven.”[9]
In addition to culture and landscapes, travel organizations are now expecting consumers to be considering sustainability, as well as fewer people, among their top decisional criteria. And this is borne out by the top trends identified in the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s 2024 survey[10]:
In fact, according to a Euromonitor International report, 80% of consumers surveyed were willing to pay “at least 10% more for sustainable travel features despite the cost of living crisis”.[11]
As consumers move away from ‘traveling to see’ and towards ‘traveling to experience’, how can tourist boards and destination marketing organizations attract them, particularly in the face of stiff competition and travelers’ greater need for value?
It used to be that a few choice images of key landmarks and landscapes, along with a few key statistics, such as hours of sun or miles of beaches, were enough to sell the dream. These days, more creativity is needed, to get people to understand what’s really going on in our country and get them thinking about how they might like that. One way to do that is to use the art of storytelling.
For example, the city of Oslo in Norway recently went viral with its video of a local resident highlighting why Oslo was not a great place to visit.[12]
In a different style, Saudi Arabia also launched a new tourism destination, AlUla, weaving a story of the ancient and the modern intertwining to revitalize “always and in all ways”.[13]
The key is to start by identifying what makes you stand out from the crowd, in line with what travelers want.
Attracting visitors is only one piece of the puzzle however. As World Travel Market noted in an article in early 2025, opening up less well-known parts of the country and encouraging off-peak travel require improved transport infrastructure.[17]With 58% of global tourists traveling by air, and air transport supporting 37.3 million jobs in global tourism,[18] adeptly managing relationships with airlines is crucial to DMOs’ success.
Understanding what goes behind an airline’s decision to fly, and having team members that know the airline side, would be key to achieving goals to improve connectivity. Additionally, working together with other stakeholders, such as airports and tour operators, could strengthen the impact. One destination that has made major gains with such an approach is Saudi Arabia, with its Air Connectivity Program.[19]
An integral part of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 vision of an improved position for the Kingdom on the global tourism map, it:
As with any business decision, a strong business case includes meaningful indicators of potential impact. To negotiate with airlines, to encourage tour operators to develop product, or to get domestic partners such as accommodation providers, the catering industry, and events and attractions to get on board with the vision, requires clear information about traveler and tourist behavior. In recent years, DMOs have significantly expanded use of data, signing up to platforms that track data from both the supply and demand sides. Some are using mobile phone data to track where tourists go. Others are using flight data, to track not just where consumers are flying in from, but where they began their journey, what stops they made, when they chose to fly, and how much they are paying for their seats. Still others are identifying through which channels visitors bought their tickets.
This information can help DMOs understand where gaps in connectivity lie and build a compelling sales pitch to airlines. Coupling it with information on in-country spend and movements, we can paint a fuller picture of the people that visit our destination, better segment our market, and formulate a complete strategy.
For example, Menorca has been recognized by the travel and tourism industry as a shining example of how to use data to grow air connections in the off-season. Data insights helped the DMO to identify key markets, optimize airline partnerships, and align local tourism services to extend the season from the traditional four-month June-to-September period to nine months.[20] More recently, some destinations such as Northern Ireland have been going beyond historical data, investigating what consumers are searching for on the Internet and the bookings they are making for the future, to better anticipate what motivates them now, and not just what has motivated them in the past.[21] And still others, such as Destination Canada, are using sales data to target marketing campaigns in key markets and through key channel partners such as travel agencies.
Data needed: Top travel agencies for international vacations to Canada
Objective: Better target promotional campaigns
Read more about how Destination Canada leveraged data from the IATA Global Agency Pro business intelligence tool.
Of course, data also tracks whether our strategy is paying off. By looking at domestic data such as hotel occupancy rates, revenues, average length of stay, numbers of visitors, average spend, and even customer satisfaction, we can gauge our performance. There are even data tools that allow us to see how our destination measures up to our competitors.
As we have seen, the scope of action of tourist boards and destination marketing organizations in 2025 has grown. We have to critically review the features of our destination that we were comfortable with, assess what else we have to offer and how it fits with what today’s traveler is looking for, and compare it to what other destinations are offering. Then we have to ask ourselves, can we build experiences around what we’ve got and, to do that, do we have clarity on what segments we want to attract and from which markets? Knowing who we are, and, who we want to focus on, can we change our mindset from traditional promotion to the new art of storytelling?
To ensure visitors can get to our destination, we need to work effectively with key channel partners. Can we target major travel agents and tour operators to help us in our marketing efforts? Can we work with airports and tour operators to negotiate with airlines? Do we have the necessary understanding of what matters to airlines, to convince them to improve connectivity?
To tie all of these efforts together, do we have the know-how to identify and exploit meaningful strategic indicators, based not only on past visitor behavior, but also on probable future intentions? Can we build a true strategic dashboard on who is planning to come, who has arrived, where they came from, how long is a stay, what do people do, and how much do they spend? Can we build compelling business cases for channel partners and stakeholders? Can we measure and report on our performance?
If the answer to any of these questions is not a resounding yes, IATA can help. The course on Strategic Management of Destinations: Tools and Best Practices for DMOs was specially designed to address skills gaps that tourist boards are facing. Explore our further resources below.
Find out how expanding your use of data can help you better reach your objectives.Discover how Brazil's Embratur, Destination Canada, and Atout France are using IATA’s Global Agency Pro to feed strategy and track performance.
Gavin has worked across the world supporting destinations in their drive for a solid tourism strategy. With three decades of experience in strategic marketing and management in the airline, airport, hotel and tourism sectors, across public and private enterprises, he assists DMOs, at both the national and city level, in defining and achieving their vision of who they want to attract, and in reaching their goals through storytelling and a successful channel partner strategy that targets airlines, travel agents and tour operators. Gavin has written numerous book chapters and articles on tourism and building country and city brands. He is also an IATA instructor for destination marketing.
