For DMOs and tourism marketers, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed one tough question after another:
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Do we close the destination/business to visitors?
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How do we do that?
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When is it safe to reopen?
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How should we re-open?
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What does that re-opening message look like? And with a second wave looming… should we close down again?
They’re hard questions to answer, and even harder when answering on behalf of an entire community.
In some ways, charting the proper course forward is the easy part, building consensus among local business owners and residents, many of whom have wildly different views, is the real challenge.
So, how do you do it? How do you plan for anything with the world constantly changing under our feet?
They say the numbers don’t lie. Whether or not that’s true, they’re pretty tough to argue and they are a great jumping off point.
By relying on data in our decision-making and consensus building process, we’ve been able to quickly pivot based on the needs of our community, build consensus around those strategic changes and expect to be able to do so moving forward.
Here are a few examples:
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Mammoth Lakes was one of the very first destinations to ask visitors to stay away. In retrospect that seems like the obvious call but it was anything but at the time. The decision to do so relied on visitation patterns from major metros areas in Los Angeles and San Francisco that were likely to have higher numbers of cases due to higher populations. The modeling also showed how quickly the healthcare infrastructure of a small town like Mammoth Lakes could be overrun. Once those numbers were available it became clear what the correct course of action was. It turned out to be the right call, with Mono County, where Mammoth Lakes is located, reporting the highest infection percentage in California several weeks later.
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Once the economic data for the region started to come in, operating a food bank was the logical response and that turned out to be a great use of Mammoth Lakes Tourism’s resources. Keeping out of work tourism employees fed so they could stay in town, while simultaneously working on recovery plans was a critical effort for the DMO. After a 14-week stint, the food bank fed 10,312 households containing 37,054 persons with 25,000 bags of food. Stakeholder buy-in was high once we could quantify the need and our effective response to it. More than half of the funding for the food bank ended up coming from donations. Approximately 196 volunteers gave more than 3,500 hours of time to keep the food bank running effectively. Operations wrapped up on June 26 following the reopening of many businesses in the community.
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The re-opening process and strategy has been informed by a very detailed visitor survey conducted in April that provided a foundation for who to target and what the message should be. As with everything else going on in the world, consumer sentiment continually fluctuates, but the survey gave us a solid place to start planning and preparing the community. The survey provided information as to what would be the most important aspects for visitors when they returned to the destination and who would be most likely to return first.
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By focusing on repeat visitors and visitors within the drive market interested in the summer road trip vacation, the occupancy numbers for Mammoth Lakes are strong thus far this summer. The visitor survey also provided key information that shows that the highest intent to visit Mammoth Lakes this year would be in the fall, providing a great opportunity to plan for and execute communications to that visitor group.
While survey data specific to your destination or business will always come at a cost, it is a vital piece of planning and moving your organization forward during times like these.
More than that, though, an organizational focus on data collection and accurate interpretation has given our DMO a solid foundation for decision making and strategy.
That foundation has been key to building consensus in our community and it will play a vital role as we face the next round of challenges.