Travel Trade Optimism at Virtual Go West Summit 2021

Visit California and 55 state DMOs, hotels and attractions promoted California tourism to the Travel Trade at the 2021 Go West Summit. Trade Shows remain an important touchpoint with the travel trade to deepen personal relationships and gather qualitative insights and feedback that come through most clearly in one-to-one meetings. Overall sentiment from the agents was optimistic, with many seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

California Caucus
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Visit California hosted the virtual California Caucus as part of the Go West Summit Education Week, which took place one week prior to the start of appointments. 52 California delegates registered and 35 were in attendance. Updates on consumer sentiment research, domestic and international market recovery, the in-state and national advertising campaign, the launch of the new CVG, as well as trade partnership opportunities were shared with the audience. 

Pre-Summit Promotions
A series of B2B promotions were deployed weeks prior to the summit that include a full page California STAR ad in Conference Manual, 2 newsletters (one dedicated to highlight the launch of new CVG), 3 social posts, and updated state itineraries available on Go West official website.

Key Statistics

• 149 domestic and international buyers registered. 69 of them are domestic. 
• 55 California industry partners attended the summit.
• Visit California prioritized appointments with domestic operators, with 78% of appointments held with domestic buyers.
• Appointments were 30 minutes each on Zoom over the conference’s four days. Engagement was high — most appointments lasted the full 30 minutes.
• The total number of appointments taken by Visit California: 23 (18 domestic, 5 international)

Key Insights 

• The Domestic travel market is highly competitive and California does not stand out at this point due to state travel restrictions. People now perceive California as more restrictive and conservative (in regards to travel) than many other states. Florida (Orlando and Miami), Southwest regions (New Orleans), New York City and Las Vegas are viewed as more open to tourism and are getting more booking and inquiries from the clients.
• Urban areas are slowly starting to be booked again. Outdoor and “soft” adventure trips remain popular. Road trips and national parks are among the key drivers for consumers to travel to California.
• The domestic consumer booking window is shortening. It ranges from days to two months, and flexibility (free cancellation) remains important for consumer.
• Sustainable travel is becoming more important to the consumer.
• Receptive operators that cater to international travelers are finally seeing some bookings or inquiries leading to summer 2022. They are looking to get businesses from U.K. starting Q3 or Q4 2021 thanks to U.K.’s aggressive vaccination plan. For other key international source markets, many operators think they will come back to the U.S. in spring and summer 2022.
• Operators are interested in our plan to reenter some key international source markets including U.K., Europe (Germany and France), China, Australia and India.
• Many operators attended the Outlook Forum in February. They were happy to see it was free to register this year and they found the content shared in the conference very helpful for them to better understand the overall market situation and how a state DMO works. They are also very excited about the upcoming advertising campaign and they think this could ultimately drive consumers to consider California again, which they hope will help their businesses.