In 2014, destination marketing organizations (DMO) in the United States collectively influenced a record high of 41.5 million room nights booked for future years, growing by 2.4 per cent from 2013. As a result of previous year bookings, DMOs hosted a total of 41.7 million room nights occurred in 2014.

“Nearly 300 cities and towns across the United States rely on DMO sales and marketing efforts to attract events to their destination,” said Michael Gehrisch, President and CEO of DMAI. “Just as individual DMOs know how important it is to quantify their impact locally for their stakeholders, quantifying the total DMO impact on a national level is critical to articulating destination marketing's contribution and commitment to growing the meetings industry.”

Previous research showed that the DMO channel influenced one in five group room nights in their destinations. The share has increased by 2 percentage points over the past two years to 22.5 per cent.

Spearheaded by the DMAI Sales and Marketing Committee, the study was conducted by Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics company, with the collaboration of DMOs’ customer relationship management (CRM) solution providers. The report quantifies the impact of the DMO sales and marketing channel from 2009 through 2014 based on booked room nights for future events, occurred group room nights, and the number of events booked and occurred. The analysis is based on an extensive collection of data from 155 DMOs representing 51.8 per cent of DMOs with sales professionals dedicated to promoting their destinations and 77% of all DMO rooms booked and occurred. An econometric model was developed to project this sample to the remaining markets.