Destination Marketing Data Strategies: Industry Insights with Epsilon

This edition of “Industry Insights” features an interview with David Chastain, vice president of travel & tourism with Epsilon. 

Chastain set his sights on challenges and opportunities for travel destinations in the current industry climate. Because travelers typically interact directly with suppliers like hotels, airlines, and travel agencies, marketers at destinations themselves often do not have first-hand access to their customers’ data or behavioral patterns. Chastain explored with Skift how destinations can use data and insights to better understand visitation patterns and take advantage of year-long demand, and why doing so can empower destinations to embrace their past visitors to drive loyalty and additional revenue, and unlock visitor value over volume.

Here’s our conversation.

SkiftX: What are the biggest opportunities in the industry right now?

David Chastain: There has never been a better time to be a destination marketer. There are more data, technology, or media attribution solutions available for destination marketers today than in years past. The democratization of data allows destinations to drive demand by investing in solutions that drive real outcomes for the stakeholders. Great trips are more than a booking and now destinations can measure success beyond directional anecdotes. Additionally, more insights allow destinations to lean into what makes them special and find their niche by embracing local culture, attractions, and businesses.

What are the biggest challenges or watch-outs?

Relying too heavily on a destination’s busiest season. Overtourism is a rising problem across many destinations, but it’s not happening all the time. The ability for destinations to spread out peak visitation to other seasons or shoulder periods is critical for long-term stability in the visitor economy.

Destinations historically have been reliant on generic cookie-based data and activated via third-party audiences. With this type of targeting, it’s difficult for them to understand the actual individuals they message and to gain insights into whether those same people actually visit their destinations. 

Travel and hospitality brands invest heavily in creating loyal customers and messaging them; however, destinations lack the insights to know who their actual loyal visitors are, and they have even less of an ability to reach them even if they could. Many of them rely on surveys, third-party vendors, and other forms of ‘enhanced data’ to collect snippets of information about what visitors do when they visit. Unfortunately, that yields very little performance insight around how the dollars destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have invested directly resulted in visitor behavior. Imagine knowing who visited in the summer, what they were interested in, and having the ability to invite them back in the fall to fill a need period.

How does your brand push the industry forward?  

Epsilon curates relevant conversations between individuals and the brands they care about, helping destinations engage with real people who are a good fit for their hometowns. We know the pseudoanonymized individual visitors who’ve transacted in a destination, so we can then partner with destination marketers to invest in ways to drive sustainable growth year round.  Epsilon empowers destinations to embrace their past visitors to drive loyalty and additional revenue and unlock visitor value over volume.

What’s your secret travel hack?

I may be sharing a big secret that my fellow Atlanta-based travelers do not want the world to know. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport travelers can, in fact, fly domestically via the (often less-busy) International terminal. Check TSA Pre-check hours for a much easier flight.

For more information, please visit https://www.epsilon.com/us/industries/travel. 

This content was created collaboratively by Epsilon and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.