Destination Organization Playbook
Destination Organization Playbook
Florida Keys, FL
Phoenix, AZ
Diversify Visitor Segments and Product. Diversification of visitor segments and products can be an effective way to reduce exposure to any single weather- dependent product line across multiple cycles. The Swiss Tourism Board’s asset-mapping exercise, undertaken in response to recognized climate variability in winter infrastructure, prompted a shift to diversified cultural and wellness tourism products that reduced reliance on snow-dependent visitation. • The same logic underlies the growing practice among mountain-town destinations of marketing summer hiking and mountain-biking packages with the same intensity as winter ski packages, converting a single-season economy into a genuinely bi-seasonal one and reducing the revenue swing of any single bad snow year. • For coastal and Sun Belt destinations, diversification runs the other direction: building indoor, weather-independent attractions and heritage-tourism assets alongside outdoor and beach product so that a wet or stormy El Niño winter does not eliminate the visitor’s reason to come.
Coordinate Across Regions and Sectors . Data-driven, cross-sector coordination has repeatedly proven more effective than isolated marketing response. Destinations facing a climate-driven disruption should benchmark performance against neighboring and competitor destinations, monitor booking-window and cancellation data by source market and adjust campaign geography toward markets that are recovering fastest rather than applying a uniform response everywhere. • A destination promoting a wetter-than-usual winter to visitors should simultaneously be coordinating with, not working around, the same local agencies managing flood response, debris-basin clearance and coastal-permit issuance, so that marketing messaging and public-safety messaging never contradict each other in front of residents or the media. • Multi-mountain pass alliances such as the major western ski coalitions functionally implement this principle by pooling risk across dozens of resorts spanning different microclimates, so that a visitor whose first-choice resort is snow-starved in a given El Niño winter can be redirected to a sister property elsewhere in the network without losing the sale entirely.
Integrate Crop and Visitor Forecasts. For agrotourism destinations, agricultural conditions are demand conditions. A helpful approach can be to combine CPC seasonal outlooks with crop-specific indicators, document normal yield and season length before a disruption and establish direct relationships with extension services and agriculture departments. This gives destination organizations a more credible basis for member guidance and creates the records needed for later disaster-assistance applications. Prepare Product-Specific Contingencies. Destinations should build down-vintage, shortened-season and delayed- bloom messaging before it is needed. A low- yield wine year may support a scarcity-and- quality story, while a shortened maple season or damaged u-pick crop may require redirecting visitors toward complementary food, cultural or indoor experiences. The objective is not to deny the loss but to preserve a reason to visit without making claims the operator cannot fulfill. Monitor Reefs as Operating Infrastructure. Reef-dependent destinations should place NOAA Coral Reef Watch alongside hurricane forecasts in the regular operations dashboard. Dive operators, marine sanctuaries,
emergency managers and destination organizations should agree in advance on
thresholds for visitor advisories, trip rebooking, reef-access messaging and heat-stress education. Communications should distinguish between bleaching, mortality and closure so that risk is neither minimized nor exaggerated. Separate Suppression from Safety. A forecast for fewer Atlantic storms does not eliminate landfall risk. Destinations should keep El Niño hurricane-suppression messaging separate from public-safety messaging, particularly when Atlantic temperatures are unusually warm or storms may form close to shore. The same probability-based discipline used for snowfall and flooding should govern coastal campaigns. Prepare Assistance Documentation. Recovery programs require evidence that differs from a marketing report. Destinations may find value in establishing normal-season baselines for yield, crop quality, visitor volume, bookings, cancellations and business revenue; identify which entity owns each record; and retain dated photographs and repair estimates after a physical loss. This preparation supports disaster- designation requests and helps hybrid farm- tourism businesses separate agricultural losses from eligible hospitality or retail losses.
12 | RESEARCH REPORT - DMO RESILIENCY
RESEARCH REPORT - DMO RESILIENCY | 13
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