Live From ESTO: The Latest Consumer Travel Trends

Intro: Recorded live at ESTO in Columbus, Ohio, this is Brand USA Talks Travel. Get ready to take mental notes from the top minds and creative thinkers who are driving innovation in destination marketing, content, research, public relations, policy and more. Now, here's your host, Mark Lapidus. 

Mark Lapidus [0:18]: We're going to talk about consumer trends and travel here, but I'd like to start with something a little bit broader. Any recent consumer trends that you've personally adopted this year yourself? Just consumer trends, not necessarily related to travel. 

Shane Brossard [0:31]: I'd actually like to give you a travel example. So- 

Mark Lapidus [0:33]: All the better. 

Shane Brossard [0:34]: In Wisconsin, we are running a campaign this summer called "Here's to those who Wisconsin." And of course, we kick our campaigns off in early spring and run them in the very high months of travel, June, July. But we've identified a third light for our in-state residents. We've seen in the data that in-state residents are still taking a lot of trips inside of our state further into the summer. And that data point pairs up really identically with some information that Airbnb recently put out last week, which was them seeing short lead times in terms of booking and the date in which the trip actually happens. People are booking trips much more last-minute, and we're jumping all over that. So we have tv ads, billboards, bus wraps, digital, social, native, everything in market right now, just trying to capture those last-minute trips still happening this summer. 

Mark Lapidus [1:20]: Phil. 

Philip Rist [1:21]: Driving. Driving more to local places. It's also travel-related, but no budget for the long trips. So things closer to home. 

Mark Lapidus [1:30]: If you could give one piece of advice to travel industry professionals looking to stay ahead of consumer trends, what would it be? 

Shane Brossard [1:37]: My advice would be to combine data science and performance marketing. I really believe that all marketing decisions should be made with data and research, and be informed by that data and research. But in today's digital landscape, it is so fragmented; you're working with media companies that are placing these millions of dollars on your behalf. I think the performance marketing piece of that is really important, so that you can pull the right levers at the right time to really maximize that ROI. 

Philip Rist [2:00]: I would build on top of that and talk about how understanding that different consumer groups behave differently, not just by age and income, but by interests, family, presence of children, grandchildren. And in the data business, a lot of times people look at just average, and it's recognizing that the average is a benchmark, but it doesn't really represent one person. It's understanding the differences of the different travelers and what they're looking for. 

Mark Lapidus [2:26]: I am delighted to welcome to Brand USA Talks Travel Shane Brossard, Chief Marketing Officer at Travel Wisconsin, and Philip Rist, the EVP for Strategy of Prosper Insights & Analytics. Welcome, gentlemen, to Brand USA Talks Travel. 

Philip Rist [2:38]: Thanks for having us. 

Shane Brossard [2:39]: Yeah, thanks for having us. 

Mark Lapidus [2:40]: We're going to cover consumer travel trends in this podcast episode, but first, I'd like to learn a little bit about your roles. Philip, tell us about Prosper Insights and what you do there. 

Philip Rist [2:49]: Prosper Insights & Analytics conducts an independent scientific study of the American people. And we've been doing it every month for over 22 years. We started right after 9/11, actually, to gauge an understanding of what the American society was going through. And we survey about 8,000 consumers every month at the beginning of the month, and we ask them a lot of questions about future issues. Are you gonna buy a car? Are you gonna travel? Are you gonna buy a house? And then everyday things, like "What are you doing at the grocery store?" And things like that. And we also ask them questions about their fears and motivations and desires. And we put all that together, we make it available to Wall Street, Main Street, anybody who's interested. So we're a syndicated information source. 

Mark Lapidus [3:32]: So you drew up your own research, you're not necessarily being contracted to do it. Is that how it works? 

Philip Rist [3:37]: That's exactly right. We do not take requests. You can't ask us to add a question to the survey. But what we do in our process is, we listen very carefully to all the different stakeholders that deal with the consumer marketplace and have an understanding of what issues are coming up. So we have to keep our survey relevant. 

Mark Lapidus [3:55]: That sounds like fun. 

Philip Rist [3:56]: It is fun. You know, one of the issues we're asking consumers right now are their attitudes towards artificial intelligence, and do they think that the AI will act in their best interest? 

Mark Lapidus [4:07]: And what are they saying? 

Philip Rist [4:08]: There's concerns. 

Mark Lapidus [4:09]: Right, I bet there are. Shane, give us a speech that you deliver at a cocktail party to somebody you just met. 

Shane Brossard [4:14]: Well, I tell people that I have the best job in government. Working for Travel Wisconsin, you know, we're responsible for inspiring people to come visit our great state and spend a lot of money, right? So we can drive that economic impact all across the 72 counties in our state. But just as more importantly, you know, I tell people, like, travel's about making memories. Whether it's with your kids, your loved ones, your friends. That's a fun industry to work in. 

Mark Lapidus [4:35]: Now, did you two know each other already, or did you just meet in this session? 

Philip Rist [4:38]: We met at a Zoom call a couple weeks ago before the session. 

Mark Lapidus [4:42]: Oh, cool. Okay, so you guys just did an ESTO session on how to take advantage of evolving consumer trends. Tell me all about it. 

Philip Rist [4:49]: I guess I was the first one up, sharing some of the insights from the consumer surveys. What we talked about was the high pressure that the American consumer is under right now. 

Mark Lapidus [4:59]: You mean economic pressure. 

Philip Rist [5:00]: Yeah, and I do the analogy that, you know, when the travel industry looks at weather, high pressure is good. It means gentle winds and clear skies. But when the consumer is under pressure, it means that they're making decisions regarding discretionary spending. And so we're talking about credit card interest rates, prices in the grocery store, world conflict, all those types of things puts external forces on folks, and it influences when they decide if they want to go on vacation, or if they have the resources to do it, or where they're going to go. 

Shane Brossard [5:31]: Well, yeah. What I'll layer onto that is, culinary is hot right now in Wisconsin. We're just coming off the heels of Top Chef season 21 being hosted in the state of Wisconsin. And we know, through the research, that delicious destinations are certainly driving decision when it comes to travel. So we've leaned into culinary really, really hard. Some of the data points that we're seeing are that 81% of travelers agree that trying local foods and cuisines is actually what they're looking for when they're deciding on which destination to visit. And pop culture, that has an impact on destination selection as well. When it comes to culinary, we know 70% of millennials say they have been inspired to visit a destination after seeing it on tv. Top Chef in the state of Wisconsin played a big impact in giving us a tremendous stage to not only tell the culinary story, but also tell all the other wonderful stories, like outdoor recreation. 

Mark Lapidus [6:17]: Okay, so we started talking about trends here. And obviously, Phil, you started with a bunch of stuff that are really heavy things, that are strong headwinds, actually, for travel. And I noticed that you pivoted, like most great travel guys, right to the good stuff, for culinary. There has to be a balance of this, right, because we have to actually talk about the good stuff and the bad stuff. 

Philip Rist [6:36]: Yeah. And I mentioned in our session, the reason we survey consumers every month is because things change. As a matter of fact, I said, in Ohio, we have a saying, "If you don't like the weather in Ohio, just wait till tomorrow. It'll change." And the consumers do change. They react and they respond. I saw Shane's presentation about how he targeted travelers nearby, and that actually taps into, especially for the younger groups that have less financial resources, to be able to understand things that are available just down the road, if you will, even though it's in a different state, and discover things that are closer to home. And maybe the economic conditions are, maybe a couple years ago they would have gone down to Cabo or something like that. And, you know, now that things are more expensive in the grocery store, they consider, "Hey, I saw this thing on a tv show. There's some really cool restaurants up there." And so I think it's a good fit for the times, especially with the Millennials and the Gen Z groups. 

Mark Lapidus [7:31]: One of the themes that I'm hearing as I do these podcasts - not just here at ESTO, but recently at Destinations International - is that there's a general feeling that even though travel is expensive for people, it's almost becoming a necessity for people to actually execute travel, to kind of still overcome what happened during the pandemic. It's almost like a course correction. Do you see any of that in your research, Phil? 

Philip Rist [7:55]: We do, with the elderly. And I'm one of them, I'm a baby boomer. The folks that are planning vacation travel right now, in the next six months, 45% of that group is boomers and older, and the next 25% of that group are the Gen Xs. They have the financial wherewithal to take those trips, and they are traveling more internationally than they were last year. So they're taking the resources they have, and they're aligning them with their stage in life. Maybe some of them are retired already, adding experiences to the things they want to do versus buying stuff. 

Mark Lapidus [8:31]: Culinary is certainly a great theme for travel. Are there others that you play off of in Wisconsin? 

Shane Brossard [8:36]: Absolutely. Our outdoor recreation offering in the state is just a phenomenal playground for outdoor enthusiasts. We have, arguably, maybe the most lakes in the nation. We won't go there... 

Mark Lapidus [8:46]: I heard a whole report on that on NPR last week. Really, there was like a whole news story about who has the most, did you hear it? 

Shane Brossard [8:52]: Yeah. 

Mark Lapidus [8:53]: Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating story. 

Shane Brossard [8:55]: We'll just say we have a lot of lakes, and they are great to recreate on. And I would say that is a pillar of what we offer in Wisconsin. We have that culinary scene, but, I mean, if you want to get out on the lakes, if you want to get out on the trails, I mean, Wisconsin's the place to do it. 

Mark Lapidus [9:06]: Phil, I imagine that you do research across age groups. How do you see media being absorbed by these age groups, and how can we best use this to our advantage? Is that all the obvious stuff? Younger people on social media, older people on traditional media, or is there something that we're missing? 

Philip Rist [9:22]: It's exactly what you said. You know, my grandson's 14 years old. He spent the night over our house last night, and he didn't turn the television on at all. 

Mark Lapidus [9:31]: Boo! 

Philip Rist [9:31]: Yeah, exactly. He was on the social media, and then he went downstairs and got onto a multiplayer game with some friends. And so the media is a challenge between the generations. I don't think that's anything new, even if you go back 20 years. You know, my parents, they didn't know what the Internet was. We brought that into the mix. 

Mark Lapidus [9:51]: So tell me in Wisconsin, how you're actually using social media and traditional media combined. 

Shane Brossard [9:56]: Well, we see them working together. We run brand campaigns in each of our markets, and these are traditional channels: television, out of home, online, radio, digital, native. But social is such an important piece, because that's where we can dive deeper in the consumer journey, tell more authentic, real stories. Whether it's working with influencers, or even in the branded content that we put out, we're not looking to hire actors and place them into a polished spot. We're really looking to bring in a girlfriends' group into Madison and let them go out and experience what a normal girlfriends' group would do in town, and tell that story. Have their voice be the voice of our brand, rather than our brand voice, you know, leading that conversation. 

Mark Lapidus [10:33]: How do you decide to allocate the resources? 

Shane Brossard [10:35]: Well, we lean into data and research very much at Travel Wisconsin, we believe that all of our decisions should be informed by it. So we have a thing called the Propensity To Visit model, and it's a predictive model that actually combines several data sources of our data partners that we work with throughout the tourism industry. So Tourism Economics, Longwoods International, Arrivalist. And we combine those datasets to help understand where we should invest the dollars across the upper midwest, and which variation of media plans is going to yield the highest ROI. And that's been a proprietary tool that we've had for the last five years, and feel like it gives us a competitive advantage in the marketplace, especially when we're outspent by all of our competitors. Our motto is, you know, if we can't outspend them, we need to outsmart them. 

Mark Lapidus [11:20]: That's smart. Do you have a research director? 

Shane Brossard [11:22]: You're looking at him. 

Mark Lapidus [11:23]: So you do that too? Chief Marketing Officer and Research Director. 

Shane Brossard [11:26]: Spare time. 

Mark Lapidus [11:26]: "Spare time." You just switch hats. 

Shane Brossard [11:28]: Exactly right. 

Mark Lapidus [11:29]: Do you think you need a full time Research Director? 

Shane Brossard [11:31]: I mean, I think every organization needs research, whether it's internally or externally. We lean on our external partners for guidance, but I think every organization should leverage in-house research and data folks as much as they can. I know it's a luxury sometimes, in organizations that only have a limited amount of positions. 

Mark Lapidus [11:48]: I guess that's the question I'm asking. Is it a luxury today? 

Shane Brossard [11:51]: I think it is. From what I've heard, speaking to peers across the United States. 

Mark Lapidus [11:55]: It's viewed that way at least, right? 

Shane Brossard [11:57]: It is, yeah. And I think the smaller your organization, the smaller your budget, the harder it is to make those decisions of where you're going to invest in positions. And so definitely the smaller destinations - and we're one of those, just in terms of how many people we have - tend to not have all of the people in the positions, right? So I think it is a luxury when you have it, and I know there's some states out there that have a deep bench when it comes to that. 

Mark Lapidus [12:16]: I'd say the challenge is always insights. It's one thing to get the data, but it's another to really kind of interpret it the way that it would be useful. 

Philip Rist [12:23]: It is, but we live in a very interesting time right now where the recent advances, just within the last year and a half with AI, and specifically I'm talking about things like ChatGPT and those types of tools, creates the opportunity for what we call, you know, the citizen data scientist, where you don't need to know all the mechanics of how to build a model with a bunch of different data sources, but you can actually feed different data sources to the AI and ask the AI to read it and render some observations back. I actually did that for my presentation today. 

Mark Lapidus [12:59]: Did you show it in the presentation? 

Philip Rist [13:00]: Well, when we came to the talking points at the end, and recommendations, I had pulled the data first, and then I wrote my speech notes that I had on my cell phone. But when I got done and I was happy with my presentation for the question and answer prep, I went into ChatGPT and I loaded my speech notes in there, and I posed a question. "Please continue your analysis. Look at my speech notes regarding the travel industry, and can you give me three recommendations for an audience of travel executives, of things they should do?" It spit out, in an instant, the recommendations. 

Mark Lapidus [13:35]: So the obvious question is, what are the recommendations? 

Philip Rist [13:38]: Well, I'm not going to read the whole thing. 

Mark Lapidus [13:41]: That's a page and a half. 

Philip Rist [13:41]: It's a page and a half, but it spit this out instantly. And the first one was, well, titled it, said "Action recommendations for travel industry executives." The first one was, "Target high income households with premium offerings," and that was "emphasizing luxury, exclusive access, and unique destinations to cater to the higher spending power and desire for memorable experiences." It said, "Promote international travel for the people that can afford it." And then it said, "Adapt marketing strategies to address economic pressures. Given the high pressures on consumers, such as inflation and uncertainty, travel companies should offer flexible payment plans, discounts, value services to attract price-sensitive travelers." 

Mark Lapidus [14:21]: So, how do you know that was correct? 

Philip Rist [14:22]: It sounded good. 

Mark Lapidus [14:25]: I guess that's the first point, but... 

Philip Rist [14:27]: You have to be careful on what data you feed into the AI. And the way we use it as a company is, we don't want it to go gather things on the Internet, because there's a lot of biased information out there. When we use it, we direct it specifically to the data we want it to look at, and we do it in a staged approach. We'll look at this first, and then look at that first, and then look at this, and then we'll prompt it with very specific questions. What patterns are you seeing in the data? And my point is that these tools are available to everybody. So for someone that has a limited research budget to be able to, if you have access to a bunch of different data, and then you can use these new tools to pull the insights out of it, you can do more, faster. 

Mark Lapidus [15:12]: I was being pitched by an advertising agency pretty recently about how to talk to data, which I thought was cool. What they do is, they construct an AI as a person. It has a name, actually, and then you ask that person questions, and it answers it based on the data that you have fed it. So you're giving it all of your data, and then you're saying, "Hey, Sally, if blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah happened, then what happens?" And then, Sally, as the AI, actually responds to you, and they call it Talk To Your Data. That was a pretty cool idea. Have you seen this anywhere? 

Philip Rist [15:43]: I have not, but it's the approach of directing the artificial intelligence tools to a specific set of data, as opposed to having it go out and find stuff on the Internet, which can lead to hallucinations and bad data and stuff like that. You have to use the tool properly. 

Mark Lapidus [16:00]: What are some of the most common questions you get about research, Phil? 

Philip Rist [16:03]: Understanding the complexities of human behavior. Humans are complex, okay? They have emotions. You know, everybody tries to think that they make decisions rationally. They don't. They're not on the old Star Trek, you know, from my generation, they're not Spock; they're Captain Kirk. They do things that they always shouldn't do, but it's understanding the complexities of, "What do I need to buy at the grocery store? But I want my children to have a good vacation, and how do I balance all of this?" And understanding the emotion related to travel is very important, the memories that travel makes for the families, and understanding how that weighs into how they make decisions in their day-to-day life. 

Mark Lapidus [16:44]: Bouncing off what Phil just said, I'm wondering, Shane, when you get a piece of research back that doesn't necessarily agree with the way that you think, how do you react? Because that is emotional. You do research, and it comes back and it's not what you had hoped it would be. 

Shane Brossard [16:58]: Instantly, I want to dig deeper. I want to dig deeper, I want to try to triangulate with other research to see if there's any trends that we're seeing in the data that can confirm what we think is true or not. I'm a very curious marketer, and I think marketers should be. They should always be curious to understand what the data is telling you, and read it as you see it. Don't put your bias on it, understand what it is and then figure out how to leverage it to accomplish your objectives. 

Mark Lapidus [17:23]: I want to thank you both so much for joining me today. I learned a lot, it was fun, and I hope to see you around more here at ESTO. 

Shane Brossard [17:29]: Yeah, thanks for having us. Really enjoyed it. 

Philip Rist [17:30]: Thank you very much. 

Mark Lapidus [17:31]: Our pleasure. And that's Brand USA Talks Travel, live from Columbus, Ohio at ESTO. More episodes to follow. I'm Mark Lapidus, thanks for listening. 

Outro [17:40]: If you enjoyed this Live From ESTO episode, please share it with your friends in the travel industry. Production and music by Asher Meerovich. Media producer, Nthanze Kariuki, with assistance from Casey D'Ambra. Engineering, Brian Watkins, Kat Pommer, and Antonio Tyler. Art by Mimi Jung. Special thanks to Alexis Adelson, Phil Dickerson, Peter Dodge, and Colleen Mangone. More Live From ESTO episodes coming soon. Safe travels!

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