TikTok Bans by States in U.S. Will Impact Tourism Marketing

With the pandemic now over, what’s the future of tourism? What does the decline of full-time office employees mean for tourism and business travel? Why hasn’t U.S. solved its visa delay mess? We’ll discuss these topics with the executives of NYC Tourism+Conventions, U.S. Travel Association, Visit Britain, Intrepid Travel and others on-stage at the Skift Global Forum in New York on September 26-28. 

New Orleans & Company will have a new president and CEO on January 1. Walt Leger III will be replacing Stephen Perry, who has been in the role for 20 years. He wants the destination marketing organization to embrace a more direct-to-consumer strategy and take more risks with emerging technologies.

The Justice Department on Tuesday asked an appeals court panel to reverse an April 2021 ruling that declared unlawful a government order requiring masks on airplanes, buses, trains, ridesharing services and at airports and other transportation hubs.

If the pandemic taught the travel industry anything, it is that change is necessary. For some local tourism officials in the U.S., transformation had been under way well before 2020, but new plans to serve visitors and local communities alike crystallized in the past year.

The U.S. travel industry will soon have an official voice at the highest levels of federal policymaking under the newly-created assistant secretary of travel and tourism. 

Twitter continues to decline in relevancy in destination marketing. The platform has been reduced to a press release distribution platform because of its ineffectiveness at audience reach and engagement, politicization and competitors offering better storytelling capabilities.

Rural and outdoor destinations are contending with slower growth rates compared to their pandemic boom as big cities become competitive again and Americans travel internationally. 

Tourism agencies are investing more of their advertising dollars in streaming because of its targeting precision, measurement and flexibility.

Gullah Geechee communities are turning tourism into an empowering force that can help keep them in control of their ancestral lands and stories while preserving and sharing their unique heritage.

The great promise and hype by travel executives several years ago about the potential of voice search to revolutionize the industry have gone nowhere. Voice-based search hasn’t progressed as serious destination marketing avenue because the technology underpinning it yet can’t drive effective engagement, inspire travel and handle the complexity of travel search.

Destination marketing executives say they are taking a wait-and-see approach to ChatGPT. Some executives speaking last week at the ITB Berlin tourism conference said they aren’t sure yet whether ChatGPT and generative AI tools will have an impact on destination marketing and haven’t devoted internal resources directly toward its use. They offered their views during a the session titled “Digital, Personalized and Open: How DMOs Gain Ground in Digital Travel.” 

A national TikTok ban in the U.S. would put an end to tourism agencies’ growing investment in the platform and push them to redirect it into Meta and Google’s social platforms as well limit their ability to influence global conversations about their destination.