USDM conducted a survey recently that revealed that cities that developed websites for the purpose of attracting tourists, saw a huge increase in them being visited by them. The survey was conducted in reference to 11 websites created for the purpose of attacting people to their specific destination. According to the survey it was estimated that a total of $9 billion would be spent collectively at the various places represented.
The totals included lodging, dining, shopping, entertainment and transportation.
"The 11 destinations represented in the survey are Arlington TX, Atlanta GA, Atlantic City NJ, Beaches of South Walton FL, Bloomington MN, Fort Worth TX, Memphis TN, Miami FL, Pigeon Forge TN, Raleigh NC and Tunica MS. Together, the 11 destination websites recorded more than 25.7 million website visits in 2005 and an average of approximately 20 percent of website visitors surveyed reported they decided to visit the destination after visiting the website.
"All eleven sites had conversion rates (percentage that visited) above 40 percent, and eight of the 11 sites had conversion rates of website visitors to destination visitors higher than 50 percent. Collectively, an estimated average of 55 percent of the 11 website's visitors subsequently visited these destinations in 2005. The visitors' expenditures in individual destinations ranged from a low of $214 million to a high of $1.95 billion in 2005, with an aggregate average of $640 million."
The reason why this is important is because they do this with extremely small budgets as they are usually a city's convention and visitor bureau (CVB) or department of tourism. Yet the result is that billions of dollars are being spent in response to the offerings they are presenting.
How can this happen? How can these low-budget sites compete with the giant online travel agencies?
Jeff Woolford, director of research for USDM.net says that "We believe their success is due, in part, to a combination of superior destination information and superior search engine ranking and interactive marketing, while the big, brand name, online travel agency with multi-million dollar advertising budgets do attract a much larger volume of visitors to their sites, their conversion rates are five percent or less, surveyed visitors to these official destination sites are reporting conversion rates of no less than 40 percent."
"The internet can offer the smart destination marketers a strategic advantage over much larger competitors, when they leverage their superior content relevancy in search engines, and invest in leading-edge interactive marketing tactics that research indicates online travelers respond to most."
While I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusions here, I do think that the reason the conversion rates are so high is contrast to the big sites is that the specific areas are a niche. People are searching specifically for where and what they offer as the larger sites are connected to a much more general demographic.
As you can see and hopefully learn from this research, niche markets are not a fad, they are for real. These lessons can be applied to almost any product or service that consumers desire.
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