Escalent helped us with a key project that forms the cornerstone of our strategy. They helped us lay out our path for growth and assisted us in making informed choices related to our target markets and segments, the associated marketing investments, and underlying synergistic partnerships.
A destination marketing organization (DMO) for a major tourist destination was facing shrinking budgets, fast-evolving markets, and government pressure to enhance tourism. Their budget allocation process was based on dated information and complicated by international politics. They needed an agile and scientific solution to a rigid and outdated budget process.
While reviewing the DMO’s immediate needs, we saw an opening to better understand the levers impacting the overall tourism ecosystem with a market opportunity assessment. We started by building hypotheses through in-depth interviews with 60+ senior DMO stakeholders and board members, including the tourism minister. Then, based on stakeholder inputs, we created a framework to bring together various aspects of the DMO’s business, including the key factors for target market selection, available budgets, and the tourism targets set for the country.
We then used the market opportunity framework for scenario planning, involving over thirty workshops with stakeholders and industry experts. These sessions included:
Our market opportunity framework became a key asset for the DMO. They use it to prioritize markets, justify their annual marketing budget to the tourism minister, and allocate for on-the-ground operations. With it, they have boosted growth by 15% over five years.