American Express Business Insights and the U.S. Travel Association today announced a new tourism spending report series, “Destination Insights.” Offering in-depth analyses of domestic and international inbound travel spending in specific markets in the United States, the quarterly reports – and the spending trends they reveal – are a powerful new marketing resource for travel service providers.
The subscription-based reports, which are available exclusively to U.S. Travel Association members, include thorough information on the origin and allocation of both consumer and business spend, as well as categorical trends, such as changing spend year-over-year by visitors on lodging, restaurants, retail or sports and amusements, among others. They are based on actual, aggregated spend by domestic and international travelers for the quarter prior, and provide valuable intelligence on:
- Differences in trends among leisure and business travelers to a particular city or state;
- Where the visitors come from and what they are spending on when they get there; and
- Other destinations the visitors travel to, and how their spend is changing in those areas.
“With this partnership, we are creating an invaluable resource for U.S. Travel Association members looking for significant insight into real travel spending behavior,” said Beverly Anderson, Vice President at American Express Business Insights. “The timely market data and spending information included in the Destination Insights reports will help travel professionals decide how to allocate marketing dollars and other investments in order to grow their businesses and stay on the pulse of where their customer base is originating and what they’re spending on when they visit.”
The Domestic Destination Insights report for San Francisco, the host city of the U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow, provides a glimpse into the type of data available to subscribers of a report for a given market. In San Francisco:
- Total domestic visitor spending grew 9.9% year over year in Q1 2011, up from a 2.7% year over year increase in Q4 2010.
- Three of the top ten feeder markets of total domestic traveler spend during Q1 2011 were intrastate DMAs: Los Angeles (12%), Sacramento (5%) and San Diego (3%).
- While lodging made up the bulk of inbound domestic travel spend at 64% for Q1 2011, retail accounted for a healthy 14%, and dining 12%.
- The percentage of domestic inbound spend on retail was highest for the intrastate markets of Sacramento (22%), Los Angeles (18%), and San Diego (16%).
For more information about the Destination Insights reports, please visitwww.destinationinsights.org.
