Question: How did this all get started? We founded Destination Analysts with the understanding that membership-based associations--convention & visitors bureaus, chambers of commerce and other professional associations—need the same level of high-quality market research and creative marketing services as for-profit enterprises. Our entire team has worked in the trenches, so to speak, of not-for-profit and governmental organizations and we understand intimately the special needs and budget constraints they feel. Let’s face it, the typical bureau or professional association doesn’t have deep pockets. They may have no pockets at all. Yet, they are under constant pressure from their boards and management to create innovative, impactful marketing programs that create results. How can they be expected to do this without resources? That’s where we see Destination Analysts coming into play. We are fully-committed to using new technology and exploring cost-sharing relationships to drive down costs. Good market research is commonly very expensive, prohibitively so for most non-profits. We believe that it doesn’t have to be, and we intend to explore these boundaries and find innovative cost-effective solutions for our clients.

Question: Is that your company’s mission? That’s a big part of it. Our business model revolves entirely around finding low-cost ways to bring our clients’ marketing to new heights. Doing research is great, but if it doesn’t add to the bottom line of your goals, why do it? We specialize in great research products and in helping our clients use them effectively. The second part of this can be just as important as the first. Our entire reason for being is to help our clients succeed, and this is reflected in everything we do. We’re simply not interested in relationships that don’t significantly benefit everyone involved.

Question: Tell me about your research products? We’re equipped to handle any type of custom market research—from qualitative work (focus groups and the like), to hard-core quantitative projects, surveys, economic modeling, etc. We’re very good at this type of work. However, our business plan takes market research for associations in an entirely new direction. Here’s the bottom line. Think about a typical convention & visitors bureau. They speak to basically the same audiences as every other bureau in the country, in the world for that matter. They must effectively attract visitors to their market, service their membership’s needs, convince meeting planners to select their destination, help the travel trade to sell their destination and effectively communicate their messages to the media. We looked at this situation and thought, why must every bureau recreate the market research wheel? Let’s create a customizable online audience measurement tool that will collect exactly the information a bureau needs about each audience, then go out and get many bureaus on board to share the costs of technology, questionnaire development, respondent incentives and data analysis. What might have been a five figure research product can now be done for only a few thousand dollars. In addition, participating bureaus can see how they compare with other destinations, gaining an entirely new level of understanding to their market. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved—better information at a lower cost.

Question: You’re more than just a research company, though? Yes, we absolutely are! We see ourselves as a full-service, research-centric boutique marketing agency. Researchers can’t live in a vacuum. They need to be fully versed in marketing theory and application, and our team brings both skills sets to the table. Our clients have used us in a variety of ways. For example, in our work with the Fiji Visitors Bureau, we set out to help them with an entire online marketing campaign. We built a unique travel website (bulafijinow.com) where visitors could learn about Fiji and also quickly and easily book their travel through the bureau’s partner travel agencies. The website also collected visitor information that allowed us to go back later and survey those who had come to the website and develop return on investment metrics for the bureau. Nothing like this had ever been done before, and it was a huge success for the Fiji bureau.

We also developed an extraordinary email campaign for the bureau, our noted Message in a Bottle campaign. This campaign was amazing, an immediate over-the-top success. Thousands of email addresses were collected (again on bulafijinow.com) and readership rates were extraordinary, in the neighborhood of 35%. In an atmosphere where the typical commercial email is read by 1-2% of the subscriber base, this is extraordinary. Follow-up research suggested that many of our readers visited Fiji and believed that the email campaign was a key factor in their destination decision.

Another example is our work with Jackson Wine Estates. They’re huge player in the wine business and we created for them a unique and highly successful customer acquisition tool, The Ultimate Wine IQ Test. We also are conducting (in conjunction with this) a major national consumer survey to integrate with and support the Ultimate Wine IQ Test. There are many other examples, but the bottom-line is we’re a creative agency that believes in integrating good decision-making, based on sound research, into every aspect of marketing.

About Destination Analysts: Based in San Francisco, California, Destination Analysts (www.destinationanalysts.com) is one of the travel industry’s premier boutique marketing and research consultancies. As a relatively new, but fast growing independent consulting firm, Destination Analysts work has served major travel industry players such as the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, California Tourism, the Fiji Visitors Bureau, the USDA Forest Service, and Mering & Associates. The needs of our clients are carefully analyzed and are the centerpiece of everything we do. David Bratton, founder of Destination Analysts, says it best, "Our entire reason for existing is help our clients thrive, and our goal is always to provide them with affordable and innovative methods to make their marketing soar."