ESTO 2024 Recap

In this episode, we provide a concise recap of ESTO 2024, an Educational Seminar for Tourism Organizations held in Columbus, Ohio. Joined by Chief Creative Officer Abbey Reifsnyder and Senior Account Executive Kerri Keefer, we attended various informative sessions and panels. Key topics included branding strategies emphasizing daring and audience-centered approaches, advocacy for travel and tourism, workforce development, and rethinking KPIs and measurement in tourism. The discussion also highlights the growing importance of short-form video content and authenticity in social media and marketing strategies. For more details, check out our 'Happy Hour Highlights' on our social channels.

00:00 Introduction and Overview
00:42 What is ESTO?
01:58 Key Takeaways from ESTO 2024
03:23 Branding Insights
04:47 Advocacy Strategies
07:38 Workforce Development
08:41 KPIs and Measurement
10:22 Social Media Metrics
12:57 The Importance of Authenticity
13:44 Conclusion and Next Steps

Transcript

Pat: 0:12

Hey everybody. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. It's gonna be short and sweet, and this is gonna be a recap of ESTO 2024, which recently had the opportunity to attend in Columbus, Ohio. I was joined by our Chief Creative Officer, Abby Riefsnyder, and our Senior Account Executive and Resident Food Critic, Kerry Kiefer. And all three of us attended some different presentations and panels at the event. And if you're unfamiliar with ESTO, it stands for Educational Seminar for Tourism Organizations. This is put on by the U. S. Travel Association. Every year, I have had the opportunity throughout the years to attend a number of these, and I have always walked away feeling like these are incredibly valuable conferences. Many times you walk out of a conference and you're like, okay, that's interesting. But give me something actionable. Give me some real insights and some genuine takeaways. And Esto delivers on that. And, and it has for each one that I've attended. And anytime also that I go to an event like this. I'm seeking to learn, obviously, connect with folks and just have conversations about challenges and so forth, and really just listening and learning. But it's also really interesting to feel validation when you hear other people talking about the things that you, I don't mean myself, but us as an organization and our partnerships and so forth, things that We are thinking about or already doing that are being discussed at conferences like this. So again, Esto 2024 was in Columbus. I'm just going to run through a couple things in my notes. This is going to be probably all over the place. If you know me, that's nothing new to you, but I literally, I'm just going to run through some of the notes from some of the things that Abby, Carrie and myself pulled out from some of the sessions that we went to. Also, if you are interested, we did. Do something new and different and we recorded some videos while we were there. We call these happy hour highlights. We had a lot of fun with it and it was literally just each of us kind of sharing some of the takeaways. If you are interested in viewing that, you can go to our Facebook page. You can go to Instagram that is slash digital relativity on the platforms and you can find some reels and some videos. That are going to have a little bit more information and a little, maybe a little more detail of what I'm going to share with you. Cause I just want to talk about a couple of key points. First of all, as I said, Estos, just, it's just a really fantastic event and people from all across the United States and the globe, frankly, um, to show up. And it's a really. Welcoming traveling tourism people were the fun and nice people, but it's just really always a great time to connect with the people that you know, and yet you work with, but also meeting new people and just learning and sharing information about the challenges that we all face in the travel and tourism space. And in my world in particular, in the marketing side of things, a couple of things to talk about, branding was talked about in a number of different sessions, obviously, it's always an interesting topic when you go to these, but I was really excited to listen to some of these sessions and some of the ideas about how people are approaching branding and shifting some of the mindset and a key word that I heard numerous times. Was daring, and that really resonates with me as that is a core tenant of digital relativity is to be daring, be willing to put your neck out there, take calculated risks. I'm not suggesting that we're doing silly things, but again, being daring with your branding, your strategies and taking bold and unconventional steps and how you present you and your destination. And one of the other pieces, too, was the audience centered branding. And that is just not necessarily shifting your branding for each little thing, but rather just making sure that your brand and your branding and your messaging resonates with each of the different audiences that you're trying to reach, instead of that just across the board, homogenous approach. I also attended a session on advocacy that I was. really excited about, and it's something that we as an organization of digital relativity have been strategizing on ways that we can help our partners with their efforts to help, just help people understand the value of travel and tourism. So this particular session focused Largely on building, maintaining relationships with elected officials all the way up the chain. We see a lot of folks dealing with their local elected officials and just trying to help people understand, again, the value of travel and tourism. One of the key takeaways, it really just resonated with me because whenever we see these types of Scenarios, let's just use as an example, a local elected official is new, comes in, does not quite fully understand one, the value of travel and tourism, but two, the reasoning behind where some of the tax dollars flow to DMOs and CDBs and things of that nature. So it's not a position of malice, spite, or whatever nefarious word you'd like to use. But there's often tension there between the leaders in travel and tourism. And again, I'm going to use this example of local elected officials and there was a quote and I don't have it verbatim, but I'm going to paraphrase here for you is that us as travel and tourism professionals, when we find ourselves in those positions, instead of, you know, Becoming defensive or becoming offensive in the sense of really getting in there and just being frustrated and not having a true strategy behind how you're going to communicate your ideas. But again, come back to the quote was start where they are, okay, so trying to really understand what their viewpoint is and where they are hoping to find themselves in the future and meeting them in the middle there. And just one of the other key points to me was just authenticity in your advocacy efforts. And if you are dealing with. Elected officials, don't wait until you need their assistance to reach out, start building those relationships and become a resource to them and helping them understand again the value and the importance of travel and tourism. Moving right along. There was a number of discussions about workforce development and West Virginia's very own secretary, Chelsea Ruby was part of a session on tourism workforce development. This is something that West Virginia is absolutely leading. And, and there was just some really great information about how to target younger audiences to get them involved in attracting them for careers in travel and tourism hospitality. I'd really love to hear from you if you're working on things related to this. I know that it's an issue that I hear people discuss quite often is that you have all these travel and tourism opportunities, but really struggling to find. Uh, that workforce to help to deliver that product. I know that this is going to be an ongoing topic of discussion. And again, if you happen to have any ideas or thoughts, things that you're doing, I'd really love to hear what you're working on. Moving right along. There was a number of different sessions and just a general topic about KPIs and measurement and tourism. And I was pretty fired up to see this because I. I personally get a little frustrated in the ways that we look at things simply because of how we have always looked at them or how we have always reported out to our boards and our stakeholders. And the truth is, There has been so much change in measurement and data and analytics and not only the things that we have visibility into, but the things that we no longer have visibility into. Or, because of the shift in media consumption, the way that people are, you know, spending their time online, does a website visit have the same value? I don't think so. I don't think so. And it's time that we start having some really difficult decisions and folks are doing this already and it's really exciting and fun. And in fact, I'm bragging on my home state here in West Virginia, Tim Brady from the Charleston Convention of Visitors Bureau led off a panel on rethinking KPIs and just really dropped a bomb and just saying, don't show me economic impact numbers. Okay. He's got a really interesting viewpoint on it and it's, that is a starting point. For all of us to begin truly rethinking how we measure, how we report, and what is genuinely important in the work that we do. One of the other conversations that I sat in on, again, coming back to this measurement piece was, A discussion about social media. And in fact, the leader from the Wendy's social team was there and, and forgive me, her name escapes me at the moment. I'm just riffing off of some notes here, but there was a discussion in that particular panel about social media metrics. It's like, are we concerned about likes and impressions or saves and shares? Some really interesting things to be thinking about there. And, let's see, there's one other piece. Oh, how valuable is a website visit today? Is significantly different with the, I'm going to call the diversification. Of social, but the advent of AI and AI generated descriptions and things like that, that you're now starting to see in Google thinking about short form video content as part of your overall strategies. And right. You may be sitting there thinking, Oh, that's really innovative. Short form video. This is not some new topic, but again, coming back to what the data is telling us, the shifts that are occurring, this one particular statistic really stood out to me. Young travelers are using TikTok and Instagram for search. 40 percent of them are favoring these platforms over Google. So they're not going to be doing a traditional Google search of where should I go this weekend, stupid things like that. They're going in and they're looking at things that TikTok and Instagram, they're never going to visit your website. They're not going to, and for everybody that's worried about my organic search traffic is dropping. It's going to, it is going to, is it still important? Yes, absolutely. It is. And you should continue to invest in that, but it's time that we start looking at things differently and embracing some of these new approaches. Again, short form video content, getting it out there. And again, coming back to this session with Wendy's was don't be afraid. To make a mistake, it's going to happen, but trying to keep myself from going off topic again here, but short form video content, start paying attention to it, another recurring theme. And this one is, I don't know, funny, maybe in a way that authenticity is back, right? It's been a while since folks have really been talking about quote unquote authenticity, because it just seems like a given. Authenticity beyond the brand is one of the things that I think is important to keep in mind here, the concept that authenticity is not just about your brand identity, but it's about being true to the audience's expectations of you being true to who you are, instead of embellishing, for example, and Reflecting on the challenge of maintaining authenticity across the different segments of your audience is really important. I think that's pretty much going to wrap up my wrap up of ESTO 2024. Again, U. S. Travel Association puts this event on every year. Next year it will be in Phoenix, Arizona. So if you haven't attended, definitely check that out. Also, just once again, you can find our videos, the happy hour hangout. That's Kerry, Abby, and myself just talking about things from each day. If you go to our social channels slash digital relativity, look under the videos, the reels, you will find those there. If you happen to have been there at ESTO and you've got some thoughts, you've got some questions, um, I'd really love to hear what your takeaways were. Feel free to text 209 300 5017. That's 209 300 5017.