What truly defines a visitor?

Feb 13

Written by Dave Bahlman

I’ve always liked to question things. I’ve learned that success is not about providing the right answers, but more about asking the right questions. And I’ve always wondered, ‘what is the best way to measure visitation?’

So for as long as anyone can remember... and according to the tourism cognitive bias; the Department of Congress established that if you travel fifty miles from your known home location, you are a visitor. We can poke a million holes in that.

Everyone wants to know if your destination or business is growing by counting, but it’s the WRONG QUESTION to ask when trying to measure the visitor economy and a destination marketing team’s contribution to it.

Counting has its benefits. The data gathered from counting can assist with reducing energy consumption, improving customer service, staffing, safety, security and inventory management. This is optimizing operations. Better operations = better visitor experience. In theory, generating demand and increasing travelers should increase the tax dollars. However, other factors can be negatively affected, like sustainability or residential sentiment. Dampening that impact of the visitor economy, when overuse and compression will become the headlines.

Here’s My Point of View

I would like to introduce another way to think about how to define a visitor... Destination Yield Management℠. Let’s stop putting a distance minimum on visitors. Destination Marketing Organizations should measure the visitor economy by anyone traveling from outside of your tax funding boundary, regardless of distance. Period. If we do that, we take away the ambiguity and could establish benchmarks and effectively track ‘yield’. ‘Yield Management’ is a common term in the travel industry. It has been applied to hotel room reservations, airline seats and advertising inventory. Now, Destination Marketing Organizations have an opportunity to apply this same practice to our calendar, seasons, ideal customer profile, and events to maximize tax collection. It makes the Destination Marketing Organization more accountable, valuable and transparent. Which is what we’ve always wanted. A destination holding themselves accountable to nobody, should ought not to be trusted by anybody.

So what now?

My move... In the next blog, I’ll describe Kingfisher’s Destination Yield Management℠.

It’s your move.

Dave Bahlman

Dave brings a holistic view of the hospitality industry to his role at Kingfisher with over 25+ years of experience in the hospitality industry managing sales and customer experience teams for data analytic and advertising companies, hotels, and restaurants. His career is highlighted by roles at the Maryland Office of Tourism as the Deputy/Acting Director (an appointee of Governor Robert Ehrlich), Orbitz Worldwide as Director of Global DMO and Supplier Marketing Strategy, and Vice President, Tourism and Hospitality Division at ADARA.

Prior to co-founding kingfisher, Dave was one of the original leaders and the Chief Revenue Officer of Zartico. There he led the revenue optimization strategy, enhanced the customer experience, business analytics, forecasting, budgeting, monitored the sales performance and assisted other departments with operations, corporate development, marketing, and revenue management.

Dave, his wife, and three boys reside in Ocean City, Maryland. They enjoy beach life, fishing, golfing, and skiing. Dave volunteers his time with local recreation sports as a Coach/Board Member and to High School Sports as a Booster and volunteer.