How DMOs can use travel data to monitor marketing performance

German National Tourist Board

“Through their insights, ForwardKeys’ analysts helped us to better understand the profile of our visitors, giving us the tools to predict their behaviour and the overall performance of our key long-haul source markets.”

Petra Hedorfer
Chief Executive Officer

Destination Germany

The German National Tourist Board (GNTB) works internationally to promote Germany as a travel destination while also monitoring its marketing performance. The organisation communicates on the appeal of the country to position it as an attractive brand known as ‘Destination Germany’. This involves developing new marketing strategies based on specific themes, events and attractions. To support these activities, the organisation has 32 agencies around the world.

Monitoring marketing performance and key KPIs

GNTB’s business goals are to increase the volume of tourist traffic, boost foreign currency receipts, strengthen Germany’s profile as a business location and position Germany as a diverse and attractive travel destination. Accordingly, the destination has developed KPIs to monitor these goals and track its marketing performance. ForwardKeys was asked to provide GNTB with data on actual visitors so that the tourist board could gain insight into the current situation and develop measurable goals. Regular updates to this data were required to allow GNTB to continuously monitor marketing performance and the defined KPIs.

The importance of shopping tourism

When GNTB first consulted ForwardKeys, its objectives were twofold. First, the destination needed a clear understanding of its source markets and their visitor behaviour. This meant knowing, for example, what their seasonality was, how they travelled to Germany and what cities or regions were most popular among which travel audiences.

Second, the tourist board wanted to monitor marketing performance and gain an understanding of visitors’ booking behaviour. With this information, it would be able to target different visitors at the right moment to promote Germany as a destination.

Establishing the retailer’s needs

ForwardKeys provided GNTB with monthly reports showing the total air capacity to the destination. This provided insight into the total addressable market, segmented by source market. It also showed them trends broken down by source market. Finally, the report informed them who would be arriving and from where. Additionally, GNTB receives source market reports that delve even deeper into the trends of specific visitor groups.

To be able to monitor marketing performance and trends continually, GNTB acquired access to the ForwardKeys Nexus platform. As a result, they are able to track travel trends at all times, which is especially important following an unexpected event – like the Covid-19 pandemic – that might deter tourists from booking trips or lead to cancellations.

The results

Through ForwardKeys’ data, GNTB gained a better understanding of trends among its top source markets. This enabled the tourist board to create more tailored marketing strategies, targeting the right audiences at the right time. Access to real-time travel data showing trends to Germany enabled them to monitor continually and improve their marketing performance as well as adjust their strategy when needed.