TTRA Central States Chapter News & Activities

Sharing Research with Stakeholders

Presenting digestible information to your board is important. A good pitch can be the difference between getting buy-in for a new project or losing support. So where should you begin when preparing for your next meeting? Here are a few tips to get you started.

Preparing pitches to your board – how to share your talking points in a digestible manner.

Before you begin:

Determine what questions you want answered. This will determine the data you will collect.
Know your audience. How much information are they already aware of and who is in the audience? If your audience is media relations, journalists and the press, you want to stick to five strong indicators and get ahead of questions. With your stakeholders you can include more research and go over data points quicker because your audience is more familiar with what you are presenting.

1.When developing the presentation – set the stage.

Give your data a story
Set the context of the current situation to show comparisons with your findings
What data is relevant to your board? What are your metrics? Highlight these and then provide interesting or surprising results at the end.
Go over the methodology but stick to bullet points and high-level information. Going too deep into methodology can sometimes only lead to more questions.

2.Dissect factors that lead to your conclusions.

YOU know your board. How will they react to what you are showing them? Prepare to answer their questions by answering them while presenting.
Lay out your findings in 3-5 bullet points. Put the summary of findings front and center, so they are easily discovered.

3.End with looking ahead – cover the game changers that affect your forecast.

Example: “We are looking forward to a good travel season but factors that could change this are: gas prices, traveler sentiment, etc.”
Go over any positive or negative exponentials that you foresee. This will help set the stage for your next meeting.

Other tips:

Infographics are popular but can be difficult to understand. Stick to basic charts. They are easy to understand by everyone.

Any research/data that you already have, make sure they continually see you using it. If you ask for more research, they will ask what you are doing with data already acquired. Always point to your data when decision making is happening.

Deciding What Research is Right for You

CenStates TRAVEL SPOTLIGHT | July 2021

If you’ve been in the destination marketing world for a little while and are ready to ramp up your strategy game with some data-driven decision-making tools, here is a tool for you! In focusing on our intermediate members, we’ve aligned some of the most common questions DMO clients need to have answered, with the research tool that gets you those answers and some DMOs that have experience in this area.

For more on these research topics, join us at the CenStates annual conference IN PERSON on November 3-5, 2021 in St. Joseph, Missouri. More info here: https://ttra.com/central-chapter/conference.

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Webinar- Safety and Savings in Numbers

Third Thursday Conversations on Tourism
May 20, 2021 at 1:00 EST

Presenters:
Carrie Lambert | Executive Director, Indiana Tourism Association
Stephanie Pace Brown | Executive Vice President, SMARInsights

Hear from SMARInsights and Indiana Tourism Association representatives as they walk through the benefits and successes of cooping research among peers.

WATCH PAST WEBINAR

3 Ways to Start Your Research Right

CenStates TRAVEL SPOTLIGHT | APRIL 2021

Rebuilding your research after an unpredictable 2020 means taking a fresh look everything. Many travel industry leaders are starting their research from scratch in 2021. To ensure you start on solid footing, TTRA CenStates is here to guide you on research tips and tricks through our quarterly Travel Spotlight.

Let’s start the year with some basics for collecting, interpreting and sharing your research.

COLLECTING THE BEST DATA

Evaluate where your data is coming from and how its source may impact the interpretation of your findings.

When reviewing your data, be careful you’re not combining different sources and counting the same visitor multiple times.
- Someone who visits your Facebook page may or may not be the same person who requested a guide. Combining those two numbers may be duplicating your audience size and over-representing your findings.

Use digital resources as a starting point for understanding your audience but be careful using only those sources for visitor statistics.
- Friends/fans of your Facebook page may not be the same as the visitors booking a trip.
- Combining data from Facebook, digital media, Google Analytics and other digital platforms is a great way to start understanding your audience.
  - However, you may not see the types of visitors you’re missing out on and who isn’t coming from the total available audience pool.

Decisions in travel can happen at any point and it isn’t required to browse before someone purchases. If someone is visiting your site or your Facebook page – they may have already decided to visit.
- You may be evaluating data points from visitors at all different points in their decision making process, regardless where your data is sourced from.

FINDING STRONG INSIGHTS

Now that you’ve collected the information, how can you interpret it for the truest story it’s telling?

Comparisons give our data power. Use benchmarks, industry averages, past performance or other context to compare and contrast your results to show the impact of your numbers.
- TTRA, the U.S. Travel Association, and your state travel organization are reputable resources to ask for contextual research.

If evaluating engagement with your marketing campaigns, start by identifying if your data shows appeal, action, engagement, connection or attribution. Advertising metrics may only show ‘action’ and don’t necessarily mean appeal of the message or action in booking a trip.
- Know the difference so you can measure and report accurately.

Use Google Analytics’ source/medium dimension to understand where the action from your advertising campaigns is originating.
- Understanding where your audience was before they engaged with your ads can help you understand more of their intent and opportunity to reach them in the future.

PRESENTING A SOLID CASE

Before meeting with stakeholders, review your information with others to ensure you are prepared for questions and comparisons in the results.

If your research was limited and only provides insight in one of many areas of interest for your DMO, position that as an opportunity to your stakeholders and what we can do from the learnings today.
- Highlight what the research does say and what it doesn’t say, using that to open the door for future research.
- Develop a research plan for what you’d like to measure in the future and plant the seed for a way to get that research next time.

Use your network (CenStates) to gut check your presentations before you send them to stakeholders.
- Ask for tips on avoiding potential landmines on the critique of the research and how to best communicate the results to a non-marketing or non-tourism industry audience.
- Many of your colleagues in CenStates have navigated presenting tourism research to Boards, public meetings, etc. Don’t be shy about asking for guidance!
- Watch for updates on CenStates’ 2021 Conference. It’s a great place to grow your network.

Interested in more on this topic? View our latest THIRD THURSDAY webinar, “Quick and Easy Research Without Breaking Your Budget”

Webinar- Sports Tourism Deep Dive

Third Thursday Conversations in Tourism
April 15, 2021 at 1:00 EST

Presenters:
Jordan Musall | Data Intelligence Manager, Hamilton County Tourism
Evan Saunders | Vice President, UberMedia

Many destinations faced difficult questions the past year. How do I get my tourism economy back up and running? How can my destination make it through the pandemic – and beyond?

For Hamilton County, Indiana, sports tourism was the answer.

Join us for a deep dive on how geolocation data provides insights on how outdoor sports venues performed during the pandemic and how these venues will help visitation rebound during the recovery.