For the last four years I have been on the client-side of the college recruiting ecosystem, not as the decision-maker but as the parent eventually writing the check. And as the process reaches its conclusion this month I could not help but reflect on the similarities between the college recruiting and destination marketing (particular for meetings and events) ecosystems:

• While the transaction scale is different, both ecosystems are focused ultimately on marketing and selling the promise of a destination experience with some kind of personal return for your investment.
• They are both BIG MONEY industries. In North Carolina alone, higher education had a 2013 economic impact of $63 billion. Tourism’s 2013 North Carolina comparative was $26 billion. Boom!
• With over 17 million enrolled students and almost 5,000 colleges and universities in the US (2005 data), the competition is intense for new students.
• Both understand and have designed their sales and marketing strategy around the importance of developing personal and authentic relationships with prospective clients.

At the same time, while there are considerable similarities, there are a number of elements that I believe destination marketers could learn from their college recruit marketer counterparts:

• Colleges understand that they are first a brand and integrate their brand DNA into everything they do in order to distinguish themselves in a complex, noisy world. Brand strategy is the pursuit of long-term authenticity as opposed to a cyclical campaign logo/tagline approach. Most (not all) also avoid the trap of trying to appeal everybody, which means they have taken the time to understand their essential brand truth as the nucleus of their story.
• College marketers know and compellingly articulate their unique destination experience value proposition at every engagement point. And they start with answering the most important question of all right upfront: “WHY should you go to school here?”. They talk almost exclusively about personal outcomes and legacies not about how many dorm rooms they have or the quality of the equipment in their labs.
• College marketers collect and use prospect data extremely effectively, narrowing their acquisition funnel and tailoring their messaging throughout a student’s four-year high school experience. At each engagement point (e.g. high school college fair, college visit, SAT/ACT test) colleges gathered data about us to develop a precise prospect relationship profile. The result: while in freshman year we received emails and direct mail from hundreds of colleges, by senior year only college programs of interest to my daughter (film school) were contacting us. Those that tried to sell us on attending a college for agriculture clearly looked like they hadn’t done their homework.
• College prospect engagement follow-up was impressive. Personal. Authentic. Compelling. Southern Methodist University did it better than any DMO I have ever seen. Sadly, my undergraduate alma mater – University of British Columbia – failed miserably. No more alumni money for them.
• Colleges have integrated technology as a client engagement tool rather than as a sales tool aligning nicely with the expectations/needs of prospective students. Upon application submission most universities use social media and other personalized digital marketing approaches not to sell but to keep students engaged in the period between application submission and acceptance decision. Florida State University even creates a shareable personalized acceptance video.
• For film schools at least, many colleges use student-produced content to show the type of work being done at their schools. UCLA has posted a portfolio of current student work on their website. The University of Texas (and others) showcases some of the work of recent graduates that was featured in film festivals. Again…it’s about client engagement through relevant content and focusing on compelling outcomes, not hard-selling on university features.
• Not surprisingly colleges use current students and alumni as their ultimate closers. They have figured out that no amount of hard sell on their part is going to convince a student to select a college as part of a slick sales pitch. Instead they make current students and alumni incredibly accessible throughout the entire process. New York University hosts what essentially amounts to a student site inspection weekend (they do not host your transportation or accommodation etc) run primarily by current students with participation by alumni. It was as tightly organized as any destination site inspection I have ever been on. There was no hard sell just opportunities for authentic conversation between prospects and current students/alums about the good, the bad and the ugly of student life.

Finally…of course the destination is a critical part of the final decision. And college marketers know this. Every college we considered integrated elements of their host destination as part of their overall brand story, value proposition and engagement marketing. (UCLA’s recruiting brochure featured destination content as good as any DMO’s. SIDEBAR INSIGHT: Every piece of marketing content we saw used real students/faculty, not stock images or over-staged models.) But rather than positioning the features of the destination as a ‘reason to buy”, the destination was primarily positioned as to how it contributed to the college brand and value proposition for its (prospective) students. The University of Texas does a nice job leveraging SXSW for the benefit of the School of Radio Television and Film.

Some great destination marketing practices are happening outside the DMO. And herein lies a powerful opportunity for BOTH. The trend of the deepening of business relationships between DMOs and their local colleges/universities will pay dividends by developing mutually-compelling stories that enrich their respective brands and businesses.

Proof once again that we’re never too old to go back to school.

This week’s announcement of Marriott’s massive purchase of Starwood to create, by far, the world’s largest lodging company, is generating unprecedented conversation from Wall Street to Main Street and from tradeshow floors to Heavenly Beds.

While not a disruptive force on travel or destination marketing per se, it has all the potential to be a transformative event. Its sheer scale and scope will have a significant impact on many aspects of the travel and destination marketing ecosystem.

Lyle Hall from HLT Advisory in Toronto does a fabulous summary of the various considerations for investors, travelers and communities.

From the standpoint of destination marketers and DMOs, there are several things that are likely to rock those worlds:

• The creation of a dominant hotel enterprise-cartel that manages a significant proportion of a given destination’s lodging strata (e.g. convention room block or beach resort location) could have significant implications on the type and timing of business that DMO leaders are able to attract to the city…and even possibly impact a destination’s brand.
• With meeting planners already citing escalating costs of WIFI, rooms and F&B as barriers to future event growth and attendance, will the possibility of continued price escalation resulting from the buyout raise the bar for destinations to provide even greater community-supplied incentives/subsidies that mitigate costs in order to attract event organizers?
• Will this combination further elevate the appeal of the world’s second largest lodging supplier – Airbnb – positioning sharing economy tourism enterprises as increasingly important destination marketing partners? (See my posting on the Rise of Evolutionary Partnerships.)

While it is still early days in how this will all unfold, the speculation and uncertainty amongst all stakeholders is significant. Suffice it to say that destination marketing leadership will be an essential element in transforming the anxiety around the Marriott takeover into opportunity for many destinations.

Yesterday, SKIFT’s Greg Oates (@gregoates) wrote a very insightful article about what could make meeting destinations attractive to decision-makers in the future. Every destination marketer should grab a cup of coffee and give this article some thought.

Citing a North American study collaboration by DMAI and PCMA’s Convene magazine, Mr. Oates presents the perspective that a destination’s “intellectual capital” is a growing competitive advantage and that it will rival the typical meeting infrastructure elements most often showcased by destination marketers as reasons for planners to pay attention.

While the study suggests fewer than 30% of respondents saw a destination’s intellectual capital as important-very important, it’s definitely trending on association planner radar screens and bears consideration by destination marketers when crafting their pitches.

Where does this trend go from here? I think it depends on how the meeting industry’s age old identity tension (hospitality experience vs. economic development platform) evolves and reconciles. On one hand there continue to be signals (see the 2015 DMAI-Tourism Economics Report) that the meetings industry’s value proposition is increasingly around community economic development. Through the work of meeting industry organizations and the Meetings Mean Business coalition, governments and community leaders are starting to pay attention.

On the other hand, DMOs continue to market their respective meetings value propositions around hospitality elements like the size of their convention centers and the number of Michelin chefs they have on site.

While there are no details about the profile of those respondents that saw intellectual capital as important-very important when making a destination selection, these are the groups that I would want in my community. They are probably looking at the destination through a different lens than hospitality – perhaps for investment purposes or even workforce development. Because their perspective on the destination’s value proposition is different, they are more likely to engage with a broad cross-section of the destination community’s socio-economic stakeholders, bringing the impact of the event well-beyond the venue. And if the destination experience is positive they’ll probably share it with other thought-leaders who have a similar mindset about the strategic role of meetings and events. As a result, their destination legacy from the meeting/event will not only be around traditional hospitality metrics but about how a meeting made a difference for the organization as an enterprise and the destination’s broader community of stakeholders.

And isn’t that what destination marketing success ultimately needs to look like?

Got get ‘em.

Source: If I (Only) Had a Million Dollars – Core Strategies for Small DMOs