ECM Benchmarking Report – a perfect tool for evaluating a destination marketing strategy

 

 

The ECM Benchmarking Report gives us valuable information about the performance of a city on many levels. The most obvious value of the report is the general overview it provides of city tourism in Europe. The real added value of this report is that it contains numerous possibilities to drill down into detailed data, using the charts and the enclosed data file. This helps us to monitor and identify our closest competitors, as well as the development of source markets in the respective cities. One of the main advantages for us is the possibility to analyse the development of market shares in our source markets. These are key indicators and are indispensable when it comes to evaluating our marketing strategy each year.

 

 

The range is extremely wide – potentially any organisation that acts on an international level or has a stake in the city tourism and an interest in how the competition is performing. Apart from ECM members, the report is utilised by national tourism organizations, international hotel and restaurant chains, universities, and consultants… the list is almost endless.

 

Currently we have 110 cities. The number one requirement to participate is that the city tourism organisation must have reliable statistic data on their particular, especially bednight figures from the commercial accommodation providers. Each convention bureau and tourist office must also have someone working there who is prepared to invest some of their time to enter these data into the TourMIS system (www.tourmis.info). This must be done at least once a year. Since the report presents time series data over a 5 year period, another requirement is that statistical records must go back at least 5 years.

 

I would rather say “promising”. In most cities the bednight figures have attained the ‘before-crises’ level, but we have to be honest and say that in terms of value and turnover the situation is not so good for the majority of cities. Of course, the prices can easily drop from one day to the next, but to bring value back up to 2006/7 levels  is a long-term process. Nowadays the overall economic outlook is still uncertain which makes prediction difficult. Regarding Vienna we have had a very successful year so far, much exceeding our expectations. We will do our level best to maintain this positive trend, but on the other hand things can change quickly.