Destination Marketing

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Visit Greater Palm Springs’ brand campaign “Escape Your Ordinary” successfully continued in November and December after a late October launch. Target markets included our year-round drive/fly markets and seasonal fly markets (Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, New York, Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Austin, Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Washington D.C., Boise, Eugene, Oakland, San Jose, and Salt Lake City.) Our Canada markets included Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg.

For the months of November and December:

Digital advertising amounted to 32.6M impressions
Television advertising generated 4.6B impressions over 469K spots
Out-of-home advertising generated 153M impressions.
The meetings campaign generated 2.8M impressions promoting the overall “The Oasis is Real” messaging.

2024 RECAP

Looking back at 2024, Greater Palm Springs’ advertising efforts generated 30B impressions across all programs, resulting in a 5B impression increase over 2023.

The launch of our new brand campaign, Escape Your Ordinary. This campaign launched across all advertising channels and efforts in October 2024, driving to an updated campaign landing page on our website.
The addition of new targeted digital advertising programs like AdTheorent and Undertone, allowing us to serve rich media and high-impact interactive ad units, reaching consumers with advertising in new and innovative ways.
Expedia "No Days Left Behind" National Brand Campaign - As a featured destination, we were included on the campaign landing page and in social media, PR, digital advertising, and high impact out of home placements at JFK and Moynihan Train Station in New York and Heathrow in London. The campaign generated over 12M digital impressions, 25M out-of-home impressions, and over $5M in gross booking revenue.
After a successful 2023 campaign, we launched a new summer program with VRBO to promote vacation rentals across the destination. This campaign ran from July through September 2024 and resulted in over 1.9K vacation rental nights and over $14.2M in gross booking revenue.
Our annual summer co-op season + summer social campaign took place from May-June with 15 total partners and 10 newly produced spots, as well as a new social media campaign, both created in partnerships with Sonic Gods.
Fulfillment of our three-year Riverside County Grant, which allowed us to provide subsidized deep discounts on advertising program pricing on our co-op efforts to partners. We were also able to utilize the funds to promote our local Benefits of Tourism and Workforce Development campaigns in addition to other efforts in the meetings space.
A new season of our Art & Sol series debuted in Spring 2024, with four new videos highlighting local artists, showcasing our diverse arts and culture in the destination.
We created and deployed a 6-minute sustainability documentary video in partnership with Zinc Media featuring sustainability efforts with the Living Desert Zoo & Gardens and Friends of the Desert Mountains. The documentary debuted on World Tourism Day on June 5 and was promoted by Sustainable Travel International and via their media and PR partners.
We launched an episode of the BBC’s “In Pursuit of Wellness” series, focusing on wellness initiatives in destinations across the world.
Our OTA programs continued to be a major driver of bookings to our destination for both hotels and vacation rentals. Total results for 2024 include:
- Expedia/VRBO: Over 156K hotel room nights and 114K vacation rental nights booked, with a combined total of over $106M in gross bookings across both platforms.
- TripAdvisor: This campaign resulted in over $1.4M in hotel revenue and an economic impact of over $4.3M.
- Travelzoo: Our partner deals page, email blasts, and Destination Showcase page for the year generated over 19.6M impressions and over 111K clicks to our partner page and content across their site.

LOOKING AHEAD

In 2025, we look forward to continuing successful campaigns as well as exploring and launching new efforts to reach prospective travelers.

Some notable goals include:

Evolving our Escape Your Ordinary campaign throughout the year (outside of the summer season) with new photography assets.
Promoting off-peak visitation via an updated multi-channel summer campaign, including the continuation of our summer television co-op season and summer social media campaign.
Increased and expanded digital targeting by ongoing and enhanced use of data platforms such as Arrivalist and Adara.
Creation of a new video series highlighting our destination pillars.
Continued participation in international co-ops via Brand USA and Visit California, as well as exploring expanded options with Finn Partners in the UK and Ireland, including high-impact out-of-home placements as well as expansion into the German market.
Relaunching our Workforce Development campaign with updated creative.

Digital
NEW: To align with our strategic priority of attracting pre-World Cup audiences, we engaged with Expedia on a co-op campaign surrounding the Club Football World Cup as a partner along with other California destinations, allowing us to reach travelers attending nearby matches, with digital advertising linking to high-impact placements on Expedia’s custom landing page.

NEW: Additionally, we launched a new and expanded Expedia Concierge landing page for Greater Palm Springs. This enhanced platform showcases our destination’s unique offerings highlighting our key pillars and diverse content in a storytelling format creating a more engaging experience for consumers.

For January and February:
- Expedia generated 6M impressions inclusive of all campaigns, including our brand campaigns on Expedia and VRBO, as well as our Visit California and Brand USA Co-Op programs. As a result of these efforts, over 39K hotel room nights and 20K vacation rental room nights were booked for a total of $25.4M in revenue.
- The TripAdvisor campaign generated 8M impressions, which resulted in $734K in hotel revenue and a total economic impact of $2M.
- Sojern generated 12.5M impressions which resulted in 1,391 room nights booked and a total economic impact of $17M.
- Our Travelzoo partner promotion campaign continued for January and February as well as a new Destination Showcase article which resulted in 46K impressions and over 2,900 partner clicks.
- Basis programmatic campaigns generated 6.5M impressions. We ran multiple campaigns via this platform, including our Escape Your Ordinary, Oasis of Art, Weather Channel, Vacation Rental, and partner co-op campaigns.
- Nativo’s native advertising platform generated 1.3M impressions, highlighting content and videos for Vacation Rentals and our Escape Your Ordinary campaign.
- Updated digital advertising launched with IGLTA as part of our ongoing advertising efforts across their website and email newsletters, resulting in a total of 46K impressions.
- Content programs ran across key travel sites like Fodors, AFAR, Lonely Planet, Locale, and Dogtrekker to reach consumers with inspiring pillar-specific articles and imagery/videos. These programs resulted in nearly 3M impressions.
- Clicktivated’s interactive video programs supported the Escape Your Ordinary campaign with a clickable video format promoting locations highlighted within the content, and generated 377K impressions.
- We participated in a winter deals campaign with Hopper, a travel planning site whose program in partnership with Visit California began in January. This included promotion of Greater Palm Springs within Visit California’s overall campaign, including banner ads and microsite content. 372K impressions were generated thus far as part of these efforts.
- Our domestic co-op campaigns with Visit California, utilizing our Escape Your Ordinary messaging, continued to run across Expedia, TripAdvisor, Sojern, AdTheorent, and Booking.com. The campaign generated over 14M impressions in January and February alone.
Vacation Rentals

Vacation rentals are incorporated into our overall consumer marketing campaign year-round. This includes television spots, out-of-home, social media, digital video content, and blog content/articles.

In addition, dedicated digital programs drive to the vacation rental landing page on the Visit Greater Palm Springs website. Dedicated STVR advertising ran across Basis, Nativo, TripAdvisor, and Sojern, totaling 12.3M impressions in January and February.

Our VRBO Vacation Rental campaign ran in January and February and generated 402K impressions, over 1,791 vacation rental nights, and $9.8M in revenue.
Television

During the months of January and February, our television campaign amounted to 4B impressions and 470K spots. Television tactics included cable, connected television, KTLA (Los Angeles) and Canadian Broadcast Network. Television markets included our year-round and seasonal drive and fly markets (Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, New York, Dallas, Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha, Washington DC, Boise, Eugene, Oakland, San Jose, and Salt Lake City.) Our Canada markets included Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg.

Partner co-op campaigns supporting the BNP Paribas Open and Galleri Classic also ran in January and February, generating 719M impressions and 11K television spots.
Billboard

For January and February, total billboard impressions amounted to 163M.

Events promoted with billboard support during this timeframe included The Galleri Classic, BNP Paribas Open, Modernism Week, La Quinta Arts Celebration, Taste of Jalisco, Coachella Valley Invitational, Lunar Festival, Palm Desert Food & Wine, Fashion Week El Paseo, and Cathedral City LGBT+ Days.

EXAMPLES OF BILLBOARDS FROM THIS REPORTING PERIOD ARE BELOW.
Meetings

Greater Palm Springs meetings media continued in January and February. Throughout the duration, the “Oasis is Real” campaign targeted meeting professionals with the overall goal of motivating group business bookings.

The meetings advertising earned 1.5M impressions, and included digital display and native advertising, content stories, social media and email blasts via Basis, USAE, Connect, Nativo, and Clicktivated (a successful program from our consumer plan that allows us to create interactive video content, featured on our meetings homepage).
International

Greater Palm Springs’ international media plan targeting the UK/Ireland travelers continued to run digital and social media advertising in January and February, generating XXX impressions and XXX clicks.

International campaigns in partnership with Brand USA also launched in the UK, Mexico, and France, with an additional program beginning in Germany in March/April. Planned Canadian efforts with Brand USA were paused with plans to re-engage for the next planned launch in the fall season.

In response to current policies and the travel environment internationally, advertising efforts in Canada were paused in late February, as well as across social media in the UK. Current efforts are targeted at consumers actively searching for trips to the US and Southern California specifically, ensuring that our welcoming destination is top of mind for travel decision-makers. We will continue to evaluate the current sentiment as well as evolve our messaging for international markets in the coming months to ensure effectiveness.

EXAMPLES OF INTERNATIONAL MARKETING FROM THIS REPORTING PERIOD ARE BELOW.