For tourism boards, measuring ROI on digital campaigns remains one of the biggest challenges in destination marketing.
Hotels can track room nights. Airlines track seats sold. But for destinations, where the goal is often to drive broader visitation and visitor spend across an entire region, measuring the direct business impact of a campaign is far less straightforward.
So how do you prove success when the results aren’t tied to a single booking engine?
Here’s how smart destinations are tackling the ROI challenge, and making every marketing dollar count.
1. Define Success in Destination Terms
Start with clarity. Are you trying to boost arrivals from a particular market? Increase length of stay? Promote shoulder-season travel or highlight regional dispersal?
Your definition of success should go beyond clicks. Set measurable KPIs tied to your tourism strategy, whether that’s airport arrivals, foot traffic to specific precincts, or leads referred to local operators.
2. Focus on High-Intent Travellers
Destination marketing isn’t about reach for the sake of reach, it’s about influence.
At Vacaay, we help our tourism partners engage travellers who are actively planning their next trip. These are mid-funnel users—people building itineraries, creating travel lists, and deciding where to go. That’s where destination marketing can make the biggest impact.
The more targeted your campaign, the more likely it is to convert into real visitation.
3. Use UTM Tracking to Bridge the Gap
UTM parameters help you follow the digital breadcrumb trail, tracking which campaigns, audiences, and creatives drive traffic that actually converts.
This data forms the foundation for measuring conversion actions, like referrals to local operators. It also helps attribute downstream conversions, even if they happen days or weeks later.
4. Tie Campaigns to Partner Outcomes
One of the most effective ways to demonstrate ROI is by aligning with your local industry partners—hotels, tour operators, attractions—and tracking the impact campaigns have on them.
Ask partners to report uplift in enquiries, bookings, or website traffic during the campaign period. Vacaay can direct high-intent traffic directly to these stakeholders and track engagement at the partner level.
This type of cooperative measurement gives a fuller picture of campaign impact.
5. Look Beyond Vanity Metrics
Impressions and reach don’t tell the whole story.
Instead, prioritise deeper metrics that reflect traveler intent:
- Engagement rate (saves, shares, itinerary adds)
- Click-through rate to local operators
- Average attention time on your destination content
- Conversions (e.g. booking referrals)
These signals are much more valuable than raw reach, especially for destinations looking to drive real-world results.
6. Embrace the Halo Effect
Not all impact is instant. Travellers may discover your destination through a Vacaay campaign, then book weeks, or even months later, through a different channel, like booking direct with a hotel or OTA.
Don’t discount that influence. Consider running post-campaign surveys to understand traveler decision-making and attribution. And where possible, compare visitation or spend data year-on-year to isolate campaign impact.
7. Make ROI Part of Your Campaign Brief
When you launch a campaign with Vacaay, we’ll help you define clear objectives, implement tracking mechanisms, and report back with meaningful insights, not just ad metrics,. We'll help you identify traveler behaviours that lead to visitation.
The more clearly you define success upfront, the more accurately you can measure it on the back end.
Final Thought
For tourism boards, ROI can feel like a grey area, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools, partners, and approach, you can prove the impact of your campaigns and make smarter decisions that benefit your entire region, and the stakeholders within it.
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