June-August 2025
Overview
Over the summer months, Visit Greater Palm Springs (VGPS) has continued to demonstrate strong digital performance and visitor engagement despite significant industry-wide disruptions brought on by changes in Google’s AI-powered search results and other evolving technology shifts. While topline growth has slowed compared to prior years of rapid expansion, Greater Palm Springs is holding its position as a strong digital performer—outpacing industry averages in key engagement and conversion metrics.
During the months of June, July and August, the website has had over 622K users and over 261K key actions taken including referrals and sign-ups.
Active Users and Sessions are tracking within 1–2% of last year’s levels, showing stability despite industry headwinds. The strongest traffic drivers over the summer were Paid Search, Display Campaigns and Organic Search.
Major campaigns supporting these results included Escape Your Ordinary, Born to Chill, and Summer Travel. Top landing pages included Summer Travel, the Homepage, and Escape Your Ordinary, highlighting strong seasonal and campaign-driven interest.
The website also provided the following engagements during this period, which highlights the effective strategies implemented and response from the VGPS audience:
- 75,484 Partner Referrals
- 1,294 Visitor Guide (VG) Downloads
- 1,350 E-Newsletter Sign-Ups
There were 10 new blogs created (including 4 mentee's blogs from the PR/Comms department's "Meet the Mentors" initiative) 25 blogs updated; below are the new blogs:
- Where Desert Meets Design: Three Hotels That Capture the Spirit of Greater Palm Springs
- Soak, Sip, Savor: Spas with a Side of Flavor
- The People Who Built Palm Springs
- Your Guide to Matcha in Greater Palm Springs
- Top Deals for Spa Month in Greater Palm Springs
- From Classic Greens to Scenic Fairways: A Beginner’s Guide to Golf in Greater Palm Springs
- How to Stargaze Without Leaving Greater Palm Springs
- Unique Vacation Rentals in Greater Palm Springs
- Stay in Style: Themed Vacation Rentals in Greater Palm Springs
- Your Guide to Greater Palm Springs’ Gorgeous Gardens
Campaign Landing Pages
Targeted campaign landing pages play a key role in amplifying our digital advertising efforts, providing dedicated spaces to highlight special promotions and engage our audience. The Born to Chill summer travel page continued to showcase exclusive offers, accommodations, and curated activities for the season. The performance of our main campaign landing pages demonstrates strong engagement and reach:
- Summer Travel - Born to Chill: 141,895 Users and 193,090 Views
- Restaurant Week ( May 30-June 8): 37,010 Users and 170,309 Views
- Summer Eats Pass:
- Website: 13,173 Users and 21,086 Views
- Mobile App: 4,782 Users and 66,660 Views including 946 App Downloads
Email Updates
For the months of June, July, and August, the consumer and dineGPS newsletters exceeded the industry average open rate (31.0%).
|
Newsletter |
Open Rate |
Click-to-Open Rate |
|
June Consumer e-Newsletter |
44.9% |
3.8% |
|
June Dine GPS e-Newsletter |
43.6% |
3.5% |
| July Consumer e-Newsletter | 43.9% | 4.3% |
| July Dine GPS e-Newsletter | 42.6% | 4.5% |
| August Consumer e-Newsletter | 43.6% | 3.7% |
| August dineGPS e-Newsletter | 44.2% | 4.5% |
Industry-Wide Challenges
As shown in the dashboard at the bottom of this page, the VGPS website is pacing below its year-to-date goal. To address industry-wide challenges stemming from rapid, ongoing technology shifts, the team has implemented strategies this past quarter such as updating content for better visibility in AI-generated results and auditing key pages for text optimization. The summary below outlines the broader industry factors currently at play.
The recent slowdown in website session growth and decline in on-site conversions is not unique to Visit Greater Palm Springs. It reflects a series of structural changes impacting destination marketing organizations across the industry. These changes are driven by evolving technology, shifting user behavior, and the normalization of traffic after several years of exceptional growth.
1. Impact of Google AI Overviews
Google’s AI-generated results now answer many travel-related queries directly on the search page, directing users to hotel, attraction, or booking sites without visiting destination websites. This has led to a decline in organic search-driven conversions and fewer total pageviews across the sector. This shift reduces click-throughs and pageviews but does not indicate reduced demand—only that more of the planning journey happens off-site.
2. Shifting Traffic Dynamics
After the post-pandemic surge, industry traffic has leveled as demand normalizes and media costs rise. With a higher baseline, VGPS’s year-over-year slowdown looks sharper but is still outperforming the industry on several key engagement metrics. Achieving the same level of growth now requires significantly more investment than in prior years.
3. Evolving User Behavior
Travelers are increasingly using mobile-first search, social media platforms, and AI-powered tools to plan trips. They prefer quick, targeted information rather than navigating through multiple site pages. Many users are planning closer to their travel dates, creating shorter booking windows and fewer long research sessions. This behavior leads to fewer sessions and fewer pages per session on the VGPS website. These shifts reflect how travelers consume content today, not a lack of interest in the destination.
What This Means
Traditional metrics like sessions and conversions are less reliable as standalone measures. These challenges and shifts are industry wide affecting DMOs everywhere, underscoring the importance of diversifying channels to maintain visibility and impact. Traditional website metrics, such as sessions and on-site conversions, are becoming less reliable as standalone indicators of success.
Despite these external headwinds, VGPS continues to outperform industry benchmarks in engagement time, pages per session, and paid media conversion rates.
Looking Ahead
Meanwhile, our Escape Your Ordinary Fall travel campaign commenced again in this month to inspire visitation by highlighting the region’s unique offerings and will continue throughout the fall months, targeting travelers looking for warmth and sunshine as the weather where they live begins to get cooler.
Spa Month in September is also well underway, with what promises to be a standout event in the seasonal calendar.
Over the next few months, we’ll re-launch Escape Your Ordinary, and continue the promotion of Spa Month and the Escape Series.
We are also updating a large volume of site content specifically for AI discovery—optimizing pages to surface in Google AI Overviews/AI Search Mode and LLM results with clearer entities, FAQs, schema, and concise, citation-friendly summaries—while growing first-party data via newsletter and pass sign-ups. We’ll also spotlight returning signature events—Modernism Week and The Club Skirts Dinah Shore—with dedicated content and conversion paths that drive partner referrals and bookings. Together, these efforts keep VisitGreaterPalmSprings.com highly visible across AI, search, and social, sustaining engagement and turning seasonal interest into measurable travel through year-end.
