eTourism Summit 2024 Highlights and Insights

The eTourism Summit 2024, held from April 2-4 at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas, marked the 25th anniversary of this event, which originated in San Francisco, and which has become a cornerstone for professionals in destination marketing who want to stay at the forefront of digital trends.

This year's summit featured sessions on topics ranging from the role of AI in destination marketing, to maximizing the impact of influencer marketing, and from short-form video strategies to coping without cookies.

Winistry was proud to co-host a panel with Madden Media, Digital Edge Marketing and Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau focusing on how to encourage inter-agency collaboration to maximize efficiency and impact.

Sheretha Bell, Senior Vice President Marketing and Brand Strategy, Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau led the conversation with Winistry founder, Amy Wilson, Madden Media's Kaitie Burger and Digital Edge's Mae Bodine discussing how the annual agency l❤️vefest hosted by ACVB in market has fostered trust among the agencies tasked with collaborating and yielded great results. They explained that it took time to build that trust, but that having the opportunity to meet face-to-face, present to one another, and brainstorm ways to support ACVB's mission, laid the groundwork necessary for us to come together on projects where there was an overlap of responsibility.

A key example of how collaborating drove results for ACVB, was the 2023 campaign for 50 Fun Things to Do in Atlanta. Each agency had a role to play: Winistry build the Mobile App Check In Challenge, Madden Media built the 50 Fun content on the DiscoverAtlanta.com website, Sparkloft created social media campaigns to promote the program, and Orange 142 managed the paid media campaigns that supported it. With all of that work together, ACVB won a Silver HSMAI Adrian Award in the category of Integrated Campaign - B to C, for the multi-platform campaign!

As we all prepare for a cookie-less future, it was great to hear from presenters: Tom Loftus, VP of Marketing, Richmond Region Tourism; Tricia Miller, Digital Systems Manager, North Dakota Department of Commerce, Michael Pierce, Chief Digital Officer, Odney, Karinna Sostre, Web Content Manager, Discover Puerto Rico and moderator: Tucker Oakley, Account Director, Nativo.

They talked through strategies for coping without cookies and even provided Oreo cookies! Since destinations need prospective visitors to see their ads at the right time, when they are likely to act on them, they will need new ways beyond retargeting to find their audiences. That's where Nativo comes in. Through a combination of machine learning, proprietary data, and contextual signals, Nativo identifies the right target audience for ads. Nativo can predictively target audiences who are not only interested in but are also at the right moment in their customer journey to engage with a destination's ad. This targeting continues to adapt and refine as more data is gathered, making it increasingly effective over time. Very cool!

Another Session that was a favorite of Winistry's was titled, Using Data & AI to Build and Measure Your Digital Marketing Plan. Presenters: Justin Bresler, Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Visit Denver; Lauren Cleland, Vice President of Strategic Marketing, Visit Savannah and Moderator, Leroy Bridges, Vice President of Sales, Adara – A RateGain Company explained how they use AI tools to understand, target, and engage their audiences. Visit Denver, using the SATISFI AI platform to deliver a natural language chatbot trained on their own content, was able to use the SATISFI dashboard to gain insight on what site visitor were asking about and to use the SATISFI interface to simplify the conversation user experience, with easy-to-use topic buttons that move the interaction along quickly. They were surprised by some of what they discovered, including the fact that 53% of questions asked were related to public transportation. They've used the insights they've gained to partly drive their content strategy.

Visit Savannah showed a really interesting implementation where they are able to run display ads that contain a chatbot right in the ad. That way, potential visitor interact with your brand before even coming to your destination's website.

Last, but not least, we were super impressed by the a post that appeared after the conference with artwork by Jim Morrissey, Executive Creative Director at Vladimir Jones. Rather than taking photos of panels and screens (ahem), he doodled. And oh boy, did he doodle. Below is his illustration for the panel Winistry cohosted. He described our panel, Partnering for Success: Atlanta’s Recipe for Collaboration and DMO Excellence, as a "Great blueprint for how a DMO should work with their agencies. Start a LoveFest. Bringing everyone in from day one helps build collaboration, not competition."