Destination Organization Playbook
Recommended Preparedness Actions
Negative Steps and Recurring Missteps Overpromising Snow or Sun Ahead of an Uncertain Season.
Treating a Regional Event as a National or Uniform Message. Because El Niño’s tourism effects are geographically bifurcated—punishing the Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies while often benefiting the Southeast and Southwest—a uniform, one-size-fits-all industry message risks being wrong for roughly half of the destinations it reaches. • Post-event analysis of the 1997–98 cycle specifically flagged this as a global pattern: media and even some national forecasters described El Niño’s environmental impacts as though they affected an entire country uniformly, when in-country and inter-regional variation was often the more operationally important story. • Destination organizations and state or national associations that issued undifferentiated seasonal messaging risk both under-preparing vulnerable destinations and under-selling the opportunity available to destinations positioned to benefit. Reactive-Only Postures and Delayed Stakeholder Communication. Destinations that waited to communicate with lodging partners, outfitters and local government until conditions had already deteriorated consistently reported worse outcomes than those that initiated dialogue early. • This is consistent with broader crisis- management literature on tourism, which finds that continuous monitoring and a standing, rehearsed crisis-communication plan—reviewed and practiced before disruption occurs— meaningfully shortens recovery time and limits reputational damage relative to organizations improvising a response after the fact.
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A recurring risk for destinations is marketing seasonal weather conditions with greater certainty than the science supports. Campaigns promising exceptional snowfall or favorable weather based solely on El Niño conditions risk undermining credibility if actual conditions fall short. During the strong 2015–16 El Niño, Northeast ski destinations experienced unusually warm temperatures, limited snowfall, and shortened ski seasons. This example illustrates why destinations should distinguish seasonal probabilities from guarantees when developing promotional campaigns. • The corrective is not to avoid forecast-based marketing altogether but to communicate in probabilities rather than promises. Destinations should consider expressing outlooks as percentage likelihoods of above-, near- or below- normal conditions rather than deterministic predictions and pairing any promotional use of a favorable seasonal outlook with a genuine contingency message for visitors. Underinvestment in Advance Mitigation and Infrastructure. Another common theme is the failure of governments, industries and destination-adjacent institutions to promptly invest in resilience following a particularly consequential cycle. • Coastal California’s ongoing build-out of living-shoreline and sediment-management infrastructure only accelerated after repeated, costly El Niño-driven flooding events across 1997–98, 2015–16 and 2023–24, rather than being undertaken proactively between cycles.
RECOMMENDED PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS FOR 2026–27 Destinations may find value in building ENSO-informed scenario plans now, using CPC’s monthly Diagnostic Discussions (next scheduled updates run through the peak winter window) as a standing input to marketing and budget review. This includes:
Preparing differentiated, probability-based messaging for snow-dependent and sun-dependent product lines rather than a single organizational talking point, reflecting the geographic bifurcation documented throughout this report.
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Establishing coordination with local flood-control, avalanche-forecasting and public-safety agencies well ahead of peak winter, so that marketing and safety messaging remain aligned if conditions turn severe.
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Stress-testing financial reserves and cancellation/rebooking policies against a plausible worst-case single-season revenue shortfall, informed by current ENSO forecasts.
Communicating proactively and transparently with residents and stakeholders about both the opportunity and the risk the coming winter presents, consistent with the trust-preservation practices identified above.
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