Our 2024 Travel Outlook highlights DMOs’ Marketing Priorities, with professionals from destination marketing organizations (DMOs) emphasizing brand awareness as their top goal for 2024, even surpassing the importance of increasing visitor numbers.

Brand awareness, indicated by 40% of respondents, is deemed crucial for destinations in generating demand and emerging from the recent pandemic years. DMOs recognize that establishing brand awareness is foundational to achieving other objectives.

They understand that fostering emotional connections with customers can yield significant dividends. For destination marketers, opportunities abound to build such connections through various avenues such as visiting friends and relatives, family vacations, adventure travel, youth sports, college reunions, destination weddings, and corporate events. Savvy destination organizations, along with their partners and stakeholders, recognize that cultivating and preserving positive sentiment from both residents and travelers holds greater significance than merely focusing on increasing accommodation occupancy rates.