Destination Marketing Impact

Key 2023 Destination Marketing Stats

The Destination Marketing department leads all marketing initiatives for Visit Greater Palm Springs (VGPS), working in close collaboration with the Partnership & Community Engagement, Convention Sales, and Tourism Development teams. This ensures a unified and impactful message across all media channels, reinforcing the Greater Palm Springs brand identity and marketing position.

Campaign Strategies & Objectives

In 2023, VGPS’s marketing strategy was centered on solidifying Greater Palm Springs as a premier destination for both leisure travelers and meeting planners.

• Comprehensive approach employing a mix of high-funnel awareness tactics such as television and billboard advertising, alongside targeted lower-funnel digital advertising designed to drive conversions.
• Launch of international marketing efforts was a significant milestone in 2023 strategy focusing particularly on key markets in the UK and Ireland.

The 2023 campaigns were highly effective, generating a total of 25.3 billion impressions.

• Results were driven by the continuation of our core brand campaigns, “What Will You Find?” and the summer-focused “Check In. Chill Out,” as well as specialized campaigns like “Oasis of Art” and Restaurant Week, which strategically support our destination pillars.
• Campaigns elevated brand visibility and reinforced Greater Palm Springs' positioning as a dynamic, multifaceted destination that offers a diverse range of experiences.

Consumer Advertising Initiatives

Maximizing Outreach
Our consumer advertising maximized outreach and engagement with a comprehensive multimedia strategy that allowed VGPS to connect with diverse audiences effectively throughout 2023. 

• Television: Played a central role, with strategic placements on Spectrum Cable, KTLA in Los Angeles, and connected television platforms. 
• Out-of-Home: Provided significant impact in drive and direct fly markets with high visibility.
• Online Travel Agencies (OTAs): Created prominent visibility on Expedia, VRBO, TripAdvisor, and Travelzoo, ensuring a significant online footprint. 
• Digital Campaigns: Executed strategically across various platforms, including Centro, Sojern, Nativo, and Pandora, offering a dynamic online presence. 

New Program Highlights for 2023

• Content Driven Media
  • ​New programs with AFAR Magazine and Lonely Planet provided expanded coverage of the destination and pillar-specific content (dining, outdoor activities, arts & culture, and wellness) via custom editorial articles
  • Aligning with travel-centric publications allowed us to reach audiences with a propensity to travel to Greater Palm Springs.
  • Broadcast programs in the California drive markets allowed us to create custom television segments focusing on late spring/early summer resort getaways, dining, and vacation rentals. 
     
• VRBO Summer Vacation Rental Campaign - New custom campaign launched with VRBO promoting vacation rentals throughout Greater Palm Springs included social media content driving to a landing page where users could select their own “pool floatie” persona
  • Resulted in $17.5M+ in vacation rental gross bookings and a $166:1 return on ad spend.
  • 36K room nights were generated with an average length of over 8 nights
  • 1.9M+ users were reached through social media, resulting in 43K clicks across Facebook and Instagram.
     
• New Video & TV Programs
  • Partnership with California Live to create custom hosted segments promoting Greater Palm Springs across NBC stations in select California markets
  • Digital video program with Clicktivated added interactive links to existing video content, further promoting featured partners and driving traffic to our website.
  • Added ESPN+ and Disney+ to television plan in an effort to expand our streaming television presence

Co-Op Programs
Co-op programs in 2023 included television, digital outdoor billboards, digital advertising (display, native content, streaming audio), and social media:

• Television and Digital: Year-round programs for active VGPS partners, as well as a summer-specific Pandora streaming audio co-op, subsidized for partners by a Riverside County Grant through December 2024.
• In-Kind Event Support: Billboards in Los Angeles and San Diego for first-time and signature events.

Flight Marketing
With an increase in year-round flights, VGPS supported the marketing of both new and existing nonstop flights through advertising in fly markets, including:

• Custom airline-tagged television spots in seasonal markets
• New television markets in one-stop locations including Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Washington D.C., and Indianapolis
• Digital campaigns also ran supporting flights with advertising directing to dynamic content landing pages customized for consumers browsing flights nationally

International Marketing
In January 2023, VGPS entered a strategic partnership with Finn Partners, a comprehensive marketing and public relations agency. The collaboration allowed us to enhance and broaden our commitment to international recovery efforts. Our international consumer marketing initiative kicked off in April 2023, leveraging a comprehensive approach encompassing digital, social, and video. With a particular focus on the UK and Ireland, our expanded partnership focused on elevating awareness.

• Media plan efforts in 2023 resulted in a total of 48.5M impressions, 276K clicks, and an average 0.57% CTR across all programs for the year.

Additionally, consumer marketing co-ops were established at the end of 2023 with Visit CA and Brand USA, including digital programs and co-ops with Expedia, Sojern, TripAdvisor, and Despegar that launched in UK/Ireland, France, Australia, Germany, and Mexico.

Meetings-Focused Advertising

The convention sales media plan included a comprehensive range of advertising programs including digital, video, print, content pieces and advertorials, social media, and e-blasts with strategic partners and publications like Northstar Meetings Group, Smart Meetings, Connect, and many more. 

New Meetings Campaign - "The Oasis is Real"
With continued recovery of group business as a key priority for our organization, we launched a new meetings campaign in October 2023, “The Oasis is Real.”

• New video assets from this campaign allowed us to include more engaging video placements as part of our Convention Sales media plan, in addition to highlighting our destination's unique attributes through e-mail newsletters, lead-generation opportunities, and digital targeting to reach planners, executives, and decision-makers.
• Strategic partnerships included organizations like ASAE, CalSAE, Conference Direct, Helms Briscoe, HPN, Maritz, PCMA, and Prestige, which allowed us to increase our advertising presence across their channels and receive customized benefits such as event registrations, sponsorship opportunities, and access to research and survey data.

Community/Resident-Facing Advertising

In addition to our consumer and group meetings advertising plans, specific campaigns addressing our local community continued to run in 2023. The Benefits of Tourism campaign included resident-facing messaging highlighting the importance of tourism and vacation rentals to our destination, and the Workforce Development campaign promoted the variety of unique opportunities the hospitality industry offers.

Summary

Over 25B impressions were generated across digital, out-of-home, print, and television in 2023, and over 1.9M television spots aired. Digital media, which is pixeled and tracks people exposed to advertising over a 60-day window, showed nearly $6M in hotel revenue generated and over 6,400 flight bookings as a result of our efforts.

Co-op advertising increased in 2023 with 19 total partners participating in our television, digital, and billboard opportunities, and a total of 11 partners for our summer co-op television season.