It’s Time To Equip the Heroes of Our Stories — With Data

This article was originally published as part of the City Nation Place report Place Branding: Solving the measurement challenge.

“Hero” is the word we use for ordinary people who have an outsized impact on the world around them. They are the stars of our stories, films, and comic books not because they are the mightiest or most important, but because they see the journey all the way through to a victorious end.

Likewise, destination heroes make extraordinary contributions to their communities — not by chairing boards or receiving awards — but by using data to move their places into the next era of strategic action.
Transforming data into meaningful next steps requires team members who apply data literacy and strategic planning skills to the unique needs of a place. Places that want to tell better stories — and thrive on the other side of our industry’s digital transformation — must equip this next generation of data-powered heroes.

Close the loop from measurement to action

What would you say is the culmination of your place measurement efforts? Is it a glossy annual report, or a formal presentation given to a room of stakeholders or elected officials?

It’s an all-too-common tale for place organizations to invest time and money into studies analyzing visitor volume, ad effectiveness, or economic impact — only to have the results publicized widely, checked off the list, and then shelved alongside decades of similar reports.

Measurement is a vital step — and a challenging one in an industry that lacks a unified cash register to display the total number of dollars spent or customers served. But as imperfect indicators and vanity metrics make way for new insights based on big data, place organizations have a new opportunity to close the loop.

Real-time, always-accessible data transforms end-of-the-road reporting into the first step on the next strategic journey. In other words, connecting measurement back to the planning phase creates a continuous cycle of data and action that addresses community needs like never before.

Employing this cycle allows place organizations to use data to:

• Align tourism marketing and community development efforts with local values
• Dial demand generation up or down to attract the right kind of visit at the right time
• Focus efforts on the content and channels that actually affect a traveler’s decision to visit
• Communicate opportunities to stakeholders to offer a complete visitor experience

Empower new data heroes

Of course, there’s no fairy godmother to magically transform data into a sparkling new reality. Here is where you must call on your emerging data heroes, equip them for the journey, and support them along the way.
Today’s destination data heroes hail from every corner of the place organization, not just the C-suite or research department. Becoming a data hero requires three basic skills that form the foundation of data literacy.

1. Understanding the data

Understanding data goes far beyond knowing the difference between ADR and RevPar. As big data streams become more common and complex, it’s critical to have a strong grasp on what they are, how they operate, and what they can and cannot do. 

A data hero always approaches the data with their strategy in mind. They know what they want to find out and where to look to find the answer.

2. Confidently communicating the data

A strong data communicator can choose the chart or graph that most clearly conveys the specific information they wish to highlight. They avoid jumping to conclusions and know how to identify contextual relationships between data points to uncover meaningful trends and patterns.

Furthermore, they can employ both visuals and narrative to tell a compelling data story.

3. Making data a routine part of strategic planning

Like annual reporting, strategic planning often gets relegated to once-yearly discussions. In reality, strategic planning should happen almost daily as an integrated part of marketing and management activities.

A data hero uses insights in small decisions — such as adjusting a digital marketing strategy — and large ones — like funding a major capital improvement. Data always has a seat at the table.

Ask new questions

Understanding the vitality of the place economy through a strategic lens requires approaching measurement and metrics differently. Where in the past a place may have pointed to increased visitor volume and website visits as indicators of success, a data hero looks at the big picture.

As they feed day-to-day wins and learnings back into the strategic planning process, data heroes consider everything from the thriving restaurant scene to tax-funded community development as a part of the organization's overall impact.

In today’s data-driven world, it’s time to call in the data heroes — better stories await.

Download the full report by City Nation Place to hear from destinations about how they approach the challenge of measuring impact by leveraging research and data.