Top Destination Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2016

We've leveraged the amazing brain trust of resources available to us by our partner DMO's and agencies to identify destination marketing trends that you should be on the lookout for in 2016. The thoughts and insight below are from some of the brightest minds in the destination marketing industry so be sure to take notes!
And be sure to take a look at our 2015 predictions to see how they worked out.

Justin Bresler, VP of Marketing & Business Development at Visit Denver

Expansion of social media advertising. We can no longer look at Facebook as an organic channel (they said so themselves at eTourism Summit). We spent the last few years growing our page Likes by organic methods and now we're crying into our drinks that Facebook has choked off access to them with their throttling practices. Well, get over it! Smart marketers realize with a modest investment that their Facebook audience can be activated for engagement and site traffic. Add to that the new accessibility to Instagram advertising and marketers should be hitting up their bosses for more money. And if the sleeping giant of Pinterest ever truly encourages big ad investments then even that won't be enough!

Bill Geist, Chief Instigator at DMOproz

2016 will be the year that the need to explain DMO relevance becomes irrelevant…at least for those DMOs that successfully employ the Longwoods research findings regarding the 'Halo Effect' of Destination Marketing. When a DMO's value can include the notion that Tourism is the "First Date' for potential investors, community and governmental leaders will be hard pressed to ignore the impact of Destination Marketing on their communities.

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[Full article here.]