Messaging for the 2017 Colorado Tourism Office Research Release
MESSAGING FOR 2017 COLORADO TOURISM OFFICE RESEARCH RELEASE
Colorado Travel Impacts 2017, Dean Runyan Associates
Colorado Travel Year Report 2017, Longwoods International
April 2017 through March 2018 Marketing Effectiveness Research, Strategic Marketing & Research, Inc. Arrivalist 2017 Report, Arrivalist
Tourism Economics Colorado International Market Travel 2017 Report
What are the major takeaways from the research studies released by the CTO?
· Colorado welcomed 84.7 million U.S. visitors in 2017, an all-time record for visitation and up 2.8 percent from 2016, compared with a national average increase of 2.0 percent.
· 37.9 million overnight visitors and 46.8 million day travelers.
o This is the eighth consecutive year the CTO has seen record-setting growth.
o The state has posted a 41 percent increase in visitation, double the 20 percent growth in travel nationally, since the depths of the recession in 2009.
· Total direct travel spending in Colorado in 2017 reached $20.9 billion, up 6.5 percent from 2016, more than twice the national average increase of 3.0 percent.
o Visitors that stayed overnight in commercial lodging (hotels, motels, rented condos, bed & breakfasts) accounted for about two thirds (67 percent) of all visitor spending.
· The Colorado tourism industry generated $1.28 billion in local and state tax revenues in 2017, a 5.7 percent increase from 2016.
o To replace those taxes generated by visitors would have required an additional $228 tax payment from each of Colorado’s 5.61 million residents.
· Travel spending in Colorado directly supported more than 171,000 jobs and earnings more than $6.3 billion.
· Marketable leisure trips reached an all-time high of 18.9 million, representing a 2 percent increase over 2016.
o This increase moved Colorado from 9th place to 8th place nationally for its share of marketable leisure travelers.
o While five top-tier tourism states lost market share, Colorado’s share of marketable leisure travelers stayed steady at the record high 3.1 percent achieved in 2016..
o Marketable leisure trips, unlike business travel or visits to friends and family, represent travelers who have a choice of destinations and thus can be influenced by marketing.
· The CTO’s April 2017 through March 2018 advertising campaign generated $4.45 billion in economic impact to the state and 2.66 million incremental trips.
o An incremental trip is basically a subset of marketable trips that can be linked to a specific seasonal CTO advertising campaign and reports the level of travel from ad-aware households that is above the level of travel among non-aware households. Incremental trips are one indicator of the CTO’s overall tourism marketing effectiveness.
· The return on investment (ROI) for Colorado’s April 2017 through March 2018 advertising efforts was $546 in travel spending for every $1 invested in paid media, up from $534 the previous year, mainly due to an increased focus on a national audience. The state’s return on investment has ranked consistently among the top 10 percent nationally in recent years.
· According to Arrivalist data, the top origin markets for travelers who stay 3 nights or longer in Colorado areTexas, Colorado, Florida, California and Illinois.
· Just over 989,000 international travelers visited the state of Colorado in 2017, an increase of 29.2% in the last five years, and the highest number yet recorded. The annual increase from 2016 is of 5.4 percent.
o The top international markets coming to Colorado are Mexico and Canada, followed by the overseas markets of the UK, Australia, Germany, France, China, Japan, and Brazil.
o The average spend per trip for international travelers was a record $1,763 for all international travelers, and even higher for overseas travelers at $2,424.
o The overall travel spend for international travelers has also increased in the last five years in double-digits, at 23.7 percent, and 11.41 percent over 2016.
· CTO for the first time this past year measured the impact of a destination’s sustainability practices on travelers’ choice of destinations. Strategic Marketing and Research Insights found 43 percent of travelers said sustainability was important in their selection of a destination, with 12 percent describing it as very important. Millennials were the most likely age group to cite the importance of sustainability. Millennials were the most likely age group to cite the importance of sustainability. A total of 53 percent identified sustainability as important to their destination choice, compared with 45 percent for Gen Xers and 25 percent for Baby Boomers and beyond.
Why does the Colorado Tourism Office conduct research from several sources?
The CTO invests in an annual research program to measure the impact of the tourism industry and to track its importance to the Colorado economy. The CTO also engages in research to measure the effectiveness of its national marketing campaign in driving incremental travel and measuring the return on investment of taxpayer dollars. A related goal of the CTO’s research program is to gain insight into opportunities to increase the state’s competitive edge for attracting additional high-value travelers.
What is the purpose of each study?
The Colorado Tourism Office (CTO) has used Longwoods International since 1992 to measure annual visitation to the state and gain insight into visitor trends and the performance of various visitor segments, including overnight visitors, skiing, touring and outdoors. Longwoods also provides a national perspective of market share for each segment and for Colorado’s standing as a U.S. tourism destination. Longwoods conducts a national quarterly survey on American travel behavior, called Travel USA, from which it derives Colorado's results.
The CTO has worked with Dean Runyan Associates (DRA) since 1996 to report the economic impact of the Colorado tourism industry. DRA each year collects information from all 64 Colorado counties relating to visitor spending and uses the findings to state the total economic impact of travel on a statewide, regional and county-by-county basis. DRA also measures the amount of state and local taxes generated by tourism and identifies the number of jobs and amount of earnings directly linked from travel spending. This research allows destinations across Colorado to report the impact of their tourism marketing and promotional efforts.
The CTO engages Strategic Marketing and Research Insights (SMARInsights) to measure the impact and track the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns. The results are carefully analyzed to identify the most productive tactics for targeting Colorado travelers and inspiring them to choose Colorado as a vacation destination. The SMARInsights survey exposes a national panel to the elements of each campaign and measures awareness, recall and motivation to determine the campaign’s reach and impact. Through this process, SMARInsights is able to compare the behaviors of travelers who were exposed to the campaign with those who were not and arrive at a calculation of how much incremental travel was driven by the campaign. By calculating the spending of these incremental travelers and comparing it with the total media spend, SMARInsights is able to calculate the CTO’s return on investment and compare the results with those of other clients.
The CTO engaged Arrivalist in 2017 to gain insight into the origins of Colorado travelers, how they move about the state and the influence of the CTO’s marketing campaign on the destinations they choose and how long they stay. Arrivalist technology monitors the mobile devices of travelers, providing insight both into the movement of travelers exposed to the CTO’s digital campaigns and to those who were not. Arrivalist reports the movement only of travelers who are more than 50 miles from home, spend the majority of their trip time in Colorado and (to eliminate commuter traffic) do not repeat the same trip more than once a week.
The CTO has worked with Tourism Economics since 2016 to measure visitation and spend from international markets. Tourism Economics leverages multiple information sources to arrive at their final estimates. Combining the data sets allows Tourism Economics to balance the weaknesses and strengths of individual sources to create sound estimates of international travel and impacts. The sources include the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and other information maintained by US Custom and Border Protection; Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to track spending; Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) for data on border crossings; nSight, an aggregator of data on internet searches related to travel and bookings; the National Travel and Tourism Office’s survey on international air travelers; OAG information on origin and destination of worldwide air travel; Statistics Canada (StatCan) surveys of Canadians who have traveled to the US; STR benchmarking data and research for the hotel industry; VisaVue Travel reports on transactions made by Visa cardholders; and Oxford Economics global economic forecasts.
To view the full reports for Colorado Travel Impacts 2017 (Dean Runyan Associates) and Colorado Travel Year Report 2017 (Longwoods International), visit industry.colorado.com/research.