Advance Travel Tourism's Midwest Team hosted an informative webinar, featuring expert discussions on Midwest travel trends, the four stages of the travel decision-making journey, and an engaging conversation with Mackinac Island's team.

Most destinations don’t struggle to collect data. They struggle to use it. Inside most organizations, the pattern is predictable: dashboards grow, reports multiply, and insights get buried. The issue isn’t access—it’s translation. In conversation with Frida Bahja, the breakthrough isn’t technical. It’s structural. Teams that act on data involve marketing early—before the research is complete, not after. Because the failure point [...]

For years, marketing relied on intent. Search a keyword, join an audience, serve an ad. But intent is noisy. In discussion with Ktimene Axtell, the more durable signal is behavior—where people actually go, how they move, and what patterns repeat. That’s a different level of truth. Intent suggests interest.Behavior proves action. And the difference shows up in performance: audience targeting becomes [...]

Most marketing decisions are made using data that’s already outdated.   Not because it’s wrong—but because it’s late. In conversation with Josh Gibson, the key idea is simple:the goal isn’t perfect attribution—it’s useful attribution. That shift matters. Because: annual reports can lag 12–18 months travel behavior shifts in weeks economic conditions change overnight When data arrives too late, teams default to [...]

This is the shift most teams are still underestimating. The website is no longer the center of the journey. It’s just one input. In the episode, Eric Hultgren frames this as a “Copernicus moment” and it’s exactly right. We’ve spent years optimizing for: TrafficClicksSessions But now: Travelers get answers without visiting your siteAI systems synthesize information before users ever [...]

Pinterest recently launched a campaign encouraging people to spend less time on social media.