ESTO Webinar Series

COVID-19 has disrupted travel marketing in unimaginable ways but our travelers are still seeking inspiration.  In this session, Ryan Thompson, Miles Partnership's senior vice president, dives into how we’re continuing to tell stories during COVID and doing it in a cost-effective and informative way. Key takeaways include:

• Managing video on a smaller budget
• Remote production when on-set isn’t possible
• Empowering your audiences to become your storytellers
• Masks – show them or not?

Over the past five years, the philosophies underpinning the destination marketing sector have been slowly evolving. The ravages of the global pandemic provide the opportunity for many communities to hit the reset button on how destination marketing is designed, deployed and endowed. In this webinar, you will learn how two industry veterans are suggesting a refreshed approach that will serve communities and residents more effectively than ever before.

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Building an accessible landing page is essential as we look to accommodate the aging Baby Boomer generation in the next several years and continue to support those in our community that identify as having a disability (15% according to the CDC). Many in these categories are not aware of the many travel experiences they can partake in right in their own back yard. An accessible landing page is crucial to ensuring your travel business or destination is inclusive and welcoming. 

In this webinar you'll learn:

• Three different approaches to building an accessible landing page
• Where to begin and how to make it affordable
• Why it’s important to become the Staycation hub during the pandemic

DMOs are resilient and have quickly shifted their marketing strategies during COVID-19. Simpleview’s Katie Cook and Shanda Maloney discuss social media trends they've observed during the pandemic and share best practices you can apply to your organization's recovery marketing plan.

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This webinar summarizes the findings and recommendations from "Funding Futures," a major study of the recovery and future of tourism and DMO funding coming out of the COVID-19 crisis. The project analyzed 115 North American cities, all 50 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces to summarize the current situation, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, and the outlook for recovery. The study also introduces and explores nine alternative funding options for DMOs to be “built back better” – options for more balanced, resilient and sustainable funding. 

John Lambeth of Civitas, Chris Adams of Miles Partnership, Adam Sacks of Tourism Economics and Erin Francis-Cummings of Destination Analysts, along with Al Hutchinson of Visit Baltimore and Cathy Ritter of the Colorado Tourism Office, discuss this essential update on your DMO’s funding future.

In this webinar, Matthew Landkamer of Coraggio Group explores four key practices of resilience and how they apply at both the organizational and individual levels for destination leaders. He also explains how to integrate this thinking into your planning process, setting you and your organization up to be both strong and flexible in the face of future challenges.

Participants learn:

• Four key practices that foster resilience.
• How to assess your organization’s resilience.
• How to apply this resilience into an integrated planning ecosystem.

Tourism transactions are improving across the U.S., but there is great variance by region, city and state. What cities can expect an increase? Where is it not looking good? Who could gain or lose market share?

The ADARA team of Adam Johnson, Vivian Mur and Bill Obreiter takes a look at the data from 10 U.S. destinations and compares and contrasts flight and hotel booking trends. Sure, we all know there are some UGLY outlooks out there... but it's not all that BAD. This webinar highlights the GOOD insights we're seeing across our country and when our industry should act!

CrowdRiff has spent the last several weeks speaking with hundreds of destination marketers as they grapple with adapting to the effects of COVID-19 on their destination marketing plans for 2020. 

Join Amrita Gurney, VP of Marketing & Community,  as she shares best practices of how to use Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more both during periods of restriction and when regions open up again for tourism. Learn how other city and state DMOs are using social media as an essential tool in their overall marketing plan.

Especially in these turbulent times, it is important to celebrate the exceptional work that DMOs are doing to promote travel and tourism in their communities.

Each year, ESTO's Destiny and Mercury Awards recognize excellence and creative accomplishment in destination marketing. 

Join U.S. Travel staff for this webinar, where you will learn about the background and requirements for the awards program, as well as insights into the strategy and process behind a successful award entry. Hear from past award entrants and a veteran member of the judging panel for tips on how to create a standout award entry. 

This webinar will:

• Share an overview of the ESTO awards program, including background on how to navigate the award submission form.
• Demonstrate how to craft an award entry, utilizing strategies practiced by leading creative agencies.
• Explain how to create an award entry that will WOW the judging panel.

Join Travelzoo as they share new data from a 2020 travel trends survey that will shape the industry in the decade to come. Attendees will gain insights on how responsible travel and sustainability are impacting travel decisions, the top destinations and experiences travelers are interested in and how world events are affecting current and future travel plans.

Studies show consumers spend 8.7 billion minutes viewing digital travel content every year. The most successful DMOs optimize their content to serve as micro-moments designed to drive a user to their destination. The development of conversion-worthy webpages, advertising copy, emails, and social content is critical to destination marketing. In this session, experts from Simpleview's award-winning digital marketing team review solutions for crafting content designed to convert. You will be ready to take your web, email, video and social strategies to the next level from campaign conception to conversion completion...like a BOSS!

*Please click here to view the videos described in Simpleview's webinar presentation.

• Learn to craft the right message for each of the five stages of travel.
• Discover new techniques for content research.
• Get inspired with real-world examples.

Are you tired of hearing about millennials and their travel habits? Wouldn't you like to use data to discover more than just age and gender? Forget what you think you know about targeting by demographics. When companies target specific audiences, people are often generalized into categories such as gender, age and sexual orientation. Humans want to be recognized as individuals. Stop targeting travelers based on generalizations and instead start looking at why they are traveling.

• Understand the advantage of targeting based on traveler intents versus demographics alone.
• Identify where you have content or marketing gaps for your identified traveler intents.
• Rethink how to create your “perfect” marketing mix for your destination’s traveler intents.

With so many destinations to choose from, how do travelers decide which vacation destination is right for them? In this webinar, Travelzoo will share travel trends and what inspires travelers to select a vacation destination, including generational data and tips on how DMOs can bring their destination to life using video and social. This webinar will show:

• The top trends influencing a traveler's destination selection.
• How video is impacting traveler decisions, including specific data.
• Best practices for utilizing different types of video.

For many travel marketers, while research shows that personalization is important, the path to getting there is still unclear. The problem is pervasive across the travel industry with only 38% of travel companies rating their ability to personalize at four or five stars out of five. For years, travel marketers have lagged behind in the trend of prioritizing data-driven marketing—but there is good reason to start to emphasize it.

On this webinar, Andria Godfrey, senior director, global customer success, and Ted Sullivan, vice president, destinations, Europe, ADARA will:

• Share key insights into the tiered journey to personalization and measurement.
• Demonstrate how travel marketers can significantly increase the relevance and understanding of their brands.
• Debate how a few global travel brands are driving personalization and redefining measurement in travel.

The meetings and convention industry has faced a constant state of disruption for more than a decade. Because disruptive software and an increasingly younger workforce are changing the space so quickly, DMOs/CVBs need to understand how to evolve at a similar rate to remain an important resource in the meeting planning process.
Backed by the latest, "The CVB and the Future of the Meetings Industry" research, this webinar will highlight the importance of the CVB's role and focus in on how a CVB can adapt in a rapidly growing segment of the travel industry.
 
This webinar will share:

The meetings and convention industry has faced a constant state of disruption for more than a decade. Because disruptive software and an increasingly younger workforce are changing the space so quickly, DMOs/CVBs need to understand how to evolve at a similar rate to remain an important resource in the meeting planning process.
Backed by the latest, "The CVB and the Future of the Meetings Industry" research, this webinar will highlight the importance of the CVB's role and focus in on how a CVB can adapt in a rapidly growing segment of the travel industry.
 
This webinar will share:

• Factors that are disrupting the meetings industry.
• Five key value drivers CVBs offer meeting planners as a critical resource in the destination.
• Examples of how CVBs are evolving to help meeting planners reach their business goals.