From Book-by-Email to Global Pandemics, Tom Foley Reflects on 20 Years of Destination Travel Trends

Twenty years ago last month, a small team of destination travel leaders rolled out what would become one of the most influential products in destination travel. The brainchild of destination expert, Ralf Garrison, and launched with the help of industry veterans Bill Tomcich, Jesse True, and the team at RRC Associates, this product began with a simple realization: DMOs were flying blind. Ralf ran an association that measured what flowed through the CenRes, Smith Travel Reports provided insights into hotel performance, but these only account for a fraction of a destination’s bookings. Without data from every type of lodging and the ability to look forward, nobody had any idea what visitation was truly going to look like in the coming days, let alone months.

Originally known as MTRiP, this idea of a comprehensive analytics program for an entire destination, paired with the team’s unrelenting commitment to data quality and partnership, quickly became an industry-changing product. After a rebrand as DestiMetrics in 2013 and an acquisition by Inntopia in 2016, this group has seen the destination travel industry ebb and flow in ways few have. We sat down with someone who has been there from the beginning, Tom Foley, to get the story.

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Gregg: A normal twenty year span will always include something noteworthy, but the last twenty years include both a recession and a pandemic that killed a lot of companies. How did DestiMetrics push through?

Tom: I really think back to how we responded to the major shock events of the past twenty years with a lot of pride. On day one our mission was: support the mountain travel industry. On day 7,300 our mission is still: support the mountain travel industry. The Great Recession and the Pandemic were globally defining events that gave us the chance to put up or shut up, so we put up.

Gregg: Give me an example of what that looked like for the destinations you were partnered with.

Tom: Our partnership is about helping destinations navigate changes in travel demand and performance. This was as big of a fluctuation as we’d ever seen so we wanted to make sure the intelligence kept flowing to the decision makers that were now under a lot of pressure. It was clear, especially during the Great Recession when the economy really bottomed out, that DMOs and our other partners were going to struggle financially for a long time. We responded by waiving fees or billing cycles when needed and offering contract extensions as needed.

I’m not trying to wave a flag of altruism here, just saying that it was a chance to prove that we were in it for the industry, and we did.

Early MTRiP, VTRiP, and DestiMetrics logos.

Gregg: Was it similar for the pandemic?

Tom: The Pandemic was similar but different. Yes, it was a massive shock to the markets, but it wasn’t an economic issue (it took 96 months for revenue to recover from the Great Recession) it was a public health issue. We preached the lessons of the Recession, in this case to hold rates so we didn’t have a huge hole to dig out of, and again offered free intelligence and developed new intel that we didn’t charge for, and changed how we think about vulnerability, working as hard to find opportunities as we did to identify threats.

Gregg: Retention for a lot of companies was a huge challenge during the pandemic. What did it look like for your team?

Tom: Many companies struggled to keep their partnerships going through those two big events, but we never lost a partner during either. In fact, we even added some. I think that has a lot to do with how we chose – and choose – to be true partners and friends to the industry, then and now.

Gregg: Aside from the major events, any interesting changes that stand out as you look back?

Tom: As strange as it sounds, the biggest change has been the normalization of online bookings. I was looking at some old surveys we did back in 2005/2006 trying to understand where online bookings were going. Today, of course, the vast majority are booked online and most of those through OTAs, but at the time only about 30% of transactions were booked online. Much of the rest were booked by phone, either through a CenRes or supplier-direct, but what surprised me most was that 15% were booked over email! Can you imagine!

Tom joining a panel at The Assembly in Denver.

Gregg: Wild, I had forgotten that was a thing! Did that shift to online bookings impact the DestiMetrics model?

Tom: One of the great things about how we’re structured is that we get our data directly from the property management system. Any transaction that ends up in that system is reported to us, irrespective of channel, and that’s always been the way we’ve done it.

In the end, it’s meant that there’s been little need for operational change, even as the business landscape has varied so much, mainly because what’s in the PMS is the final word on how a property or property management company is performing.

Gregg: What changes weren’t you ready for initially but have adapted to?

Tom: We’ve always hung our hat on making sure that we’re qualifying the data so that folks know WHY something is happening, not just that it is. As we emerged from the Great Recession, technology made it so that folks were being bombarded by data. In response we’ve had to get even more analytical to better explain what we see in the data, find relationships between indicators (e.g.; macroeconomics and ADR, or snowfall and booking pace), and make that level of understanding an organic part of the data with videos, webinars, white papers, etc. that support our analytics.

Gregg: I love that aspect of DestiMetrics; your work doesn’t end with the data, that’s where it starts.

Tom: Exactly, lots of providers can tell you that there are anomalies, but that adaptation to the market has made us the only group that can truly tell you why it’s happening and how you might deal with it. And we do that proactively, so our partners aren’t caught looking the other way.

Tom speaking at OPMA 2019.

Gregg: You’ve probably analyzed millions of data points and room nights over those 20 years. If you had to distill all of that insight and wisdom down into a nugget of advice for destinations and the people within those destinations, what would it be?

Tom: I’m all for having a variety of data sources, but I think analysis paralysis is a real thing and I sometimes worry about the multitude of data sources out there and the decision making processes that go along with them. Yes, gather what you can, and by all means use multiple sources so you’re making good decisions. But there comes a point when it turns into noise.

Gregg: That’s such a great point, I feel that even in my own tiny data sets.

Tom: I liken it to a one-on-one discussion at a concert where you catch every third word and leave the discussion with the wrong message. Shut out some of the noise so that your data set isn’t a crowded concert hall, but a boardroom, where you can hear the right voices at the right time. And surround yourself, both in-house and otherwise, with people who live and breathe the values of the industry. In an era of increasingly data-driven decision making, don’t let yourself get lost in the numbers.

Gregg: Love it. Any final thoughts or words?

Tom: Working in the mountain travel industry is a real privilege. Yes, everyone says that about their industry, but just look around and ask yourself ‘do they mean it?’. We do; our team does. Like I said, on day one our mission was: support the mountain travel industry. On day 7,300 our mission remains: support the mountain travel industry. Our team is made up of people that live and work in the mountains and have a strong connection to them. The few that aren’t in the mountains still live the outdoor lifestyle with the same zest for adventure. And that doesn’t just go for the DestiMetrics team and our broader BI department, but also for Inntopia.

The relationships are real, not just business. We play, ride, ski, and hang with the people we support, and who support us. It’s about the passion of the industry and the folks that run it.

Learn more about DestiMetrics destination research programs:
https://corp.inntopia.com/intelligence/destimetrics/