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Hospitality & Tourism · Foundations

Destination Marketing

10 min read 5 practice questions
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On this page 9 sections
  1. In 30 seconds
  2. Why this matters
  3. The college version
  4. Eli explains
  5. Worked example
  6. Key takeaway
  7. Quick check
  8. Study tools
  9. Sources & references

In 30 seconds

Destination marketing means selling a whole place, not a single business. The work usually falls to a destination marketing (or management) organization, or DMO, often called a convention and visitors bureau. Funded largely by hotel occupancy taxes, a DMO builds a destination brand and drives demand for a place it neither owns nor controls, coordinating hotels, attractions, governments, and residents. Increasingly it also manages visitors, not just attracts them.

Why this matters

Almost every hospitality or tourism career intersects a DMO: hotels, restaurants, attractions, and event venues all rely on the shared demand a destination organization generates and the brand it protects. Understanding how DMOs are structured, funded, and held accountable explains why a single hotel's marketing differs from marketing an entire city, and why public money and public trust are involved. The field is also shifting from pure promotion toward stewardship, so learning destination marketing now means learning the tension between filling rooms and protecting the place that fills them, a tension that shapes tourism policy and jobs for decades.

The college version

What a DMO is (and what a CVB is)

Destination marketing is the promotion of a place as a whole, rather than of any one hotel, airline, or restaurant. The organization that does this work is a destination marketing organization or, increasingly, a organization; both share the acronym DMO, and the change in the middle word signals a real change in the job. A DMO promotes a city, region, county, state, nation, or area to potential visitors, and some also manage multiple aspects of tourism within the destination. DMOs can be private, governmental, quasi-governmental, or nonprofit, and most in the United States are nonprofits governed by a board of directors. The older and still common name is the ; CVBs emerged in the twentieth century to promote destinations and typically focus more intently on attracting conventions and meetings. As post-war mass tourism grew and destinations began courting leisure and international travelers, the broader term DMO was coined. A DMO sits at the center of a local tourism economy, coordinating tourism-related stakeholders: local businesses, attractions and events, hotels and event facilities, local government, and community groups.

How DMOs are funded, and why accountability follows

Where a single business funds its own marketing from its own revenue, a DMO markets a shared asset with largely public money. In one industry survey of DMO finances (the 2017 Futures Study reported by Destinations International), about 93 percent of DMO funding came from public sources and roughly 7 percent from private. The dominant public source in the United States is the hotel occupancy tax, also called a lodging or bed tax. It is collected like a sales tax, paid by the overnight visitor staying in hotels, motels, short-term rentals, and other lodging, set as a percentage of the room cost (for example, 2 percent), and usually exempting long stays over thirty days. Some destinations add flat per-night assessments through business improvement districts (BIDs) or tourism promotion areas (TPAs), such as a two- or five-dollar charge on a room bill. Because this money is public, DMOs are held accountable: they publish annual reports, submit to independent audits, and, when governmental, fall under public-records laws. Roughly half of DMOs are partnership-based rather than membership-based, partnering with local businesses without charging a membership fee.

Branding, positioning, and image

Tourism is unusual to market because it is not a physical product a buyer can hold or test before purchase; it is an anticipated experience, imagined from marketing materials, media, and word of mouth. A destination brand is the vehicle for that imagined experience. As tourism scholar Alastair Morrison describes it, a brand is the destination's name and logo, the look and feel of its materials, and its overall in the public mind. Positioning is how a destination decides to make itself unique among competing destinations from the tourist's perspective; image is the mental picture people already hold of a place. A DMO's marketing combines branding, promotional campaigns, public relations, and market research, ideally coordinated so that advertising, social media, sales outreach, and PR deliver one consistent message, an approach called integrated marketing communication. The channels have shifted from the printed visitor guide to the DMO website as the principal platform, supported by e-newsletters, social media, and digital and search advertising that let the DMO track behavior and retarget interested audiences. Crucially, a DMO usually sets the brand in collaboration with its stakeholders, not by decree.

Marketing versus management: the stewardship shift

For decades DMOs measured success by growth: more visitors, more heads in beds, more tourism dollars, achieved mainly through marketing and sales. That model strained some destinations. When too many visitors arrive, the result is , and residents can come to feel crowded out of their own community. In response, many destination organizations have broadened from marketing (generating demand) to management (stewarding the place). Destination marketing generates and shapes demand; destination management also disperses visitors across seasons and lesser-known areas, sets limits where needed, and protects the qualities that make a place worth visiting and living in. Destinations International has argued the 'M' in DMO might better stand for stewardship, defining destination stewardship as the continuous pursuit of a net-positive tourism ecosystem aligned with shared community values. Hawaii is a widely cited case: an island home to about 1.5 million residents hosted a record 10.4 million visitors in 2019, and the Hawai'i Tourism Authority's 2020 plan explicitly shifted its mission from increasing tourism to strategically managing it, introducing reservations and entry caps at popular natural sites. This connects to sustainable tourism, which the sustainable-tourism topic treats in depth; here the point is simply that management now sits alongside marketing.

Marketing a place you do not own

The defining difficulty of destination marketing is that the DMO markets and represents a place, and all the tourism businesses within it, without owning or controlling any of them. A hotel controls its own rooms, rates, and service; a DMO controls none of the airlines, attractions, restaurants, or hotels whose combined experience becomes 'the destination.' It must instead align independent, sometimes competing stakeholders behind one brand and one promise. That alignment is voluntary and imperfect: because many DMOs are partnership-based, businesses that never opted in have little stake in the organization and may not cooperate with collaborative efforts to grow or manage tourism. The DMO's authority is therefore leadership and persuasion rather than command. It advocates to government so officials understand tourism's economic weight, convenes stakeholders and residents in strategic planning, and, when a crisis or an overtourism backlash hits, tries to speak for a destination it can guide but not direct. Understanding this ownership gap explains why so much of a DMO's work is coordination, research, and advocacy rather than advertising alone.

Eli, the EliExplains learning guide

Eli explains

The same idea, in plain words

Explain it like I’m 10

A hotel advertises its own rooms. But who advertises the whole town, so people want to come at all? That job belongs to a group called a DMO, often paid for by a small tax added to hotel bills. The DMO builds the town's reputation, its 'brand,' and tries to get hotels, restaurants, museums, and the city to all tell the same story, even though it doesn't own any of them. Lately these groups do more than pull people in; they also spread visitors out and protect the town so locals still like living there.

Picture it like this

A DMO is like the coach of an all-star team made of players from rival clubs. The coach doesn't own the players and can't bench them, but must get them pointed at the same game plan and make the team look good to fans.

Where the picture stops working

The analogy understates the money and politics: a coach is hired and obeyed, while a DMO usually leads by persuasion, runs on public tax dollars, must answer to residents and government, and can be defunded if officials stop seeing tourism's value, none of which a sports coach faces.

Worked example

Consider what happened when Colorado eliminated its state tourism office in 1993 and reallocated the roughly $12 million marketing budget elsewhere. With no one marketing the destination as a whole, Colorado reportedly lost over $1.4 billion in annual tourism revenue in the two years after the closure and slid from first to seventeenth in popularity as a summer resort destination. The state did not lose its mountains, ski towns, or hotels; those businesses kept marketing themselves. What disappeared was the shared promotion, the destination brand, and the coordinated demand generation that no single hotel had reason to pay for alone. Funding was restored in 2000, and tourism rebounded. The episode shows both what a DMO produces (demand for the place, not for any one business) and why its largely public funding is fragile: when officials underestimate tourism's economic weight, the whole coordinating function can be switched off.

Key takeaway

Destination marketing sells an entire place, not one business: a publicly funded DMO builds a destination brand and drives demand for hotels, attractions, and communities it coordinates but does not own, and it is increasingly asked to manage and steward that place, not just fill it.

Quick check

3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.

Question 1 of 3foundational

What most distinguishes destination marketing from a single hotel marketing itself?

Choose an answer, then check it.
Question 2 of 3intermediate

In the United States, what is the dominant funding source for most destination marketing organizations?

Choose an answer, then check it.
Question 3 of 3intermediate

Which statement best captures the difference between destination marketing and destination management?

Choose an answer, then check it.
Practice all 5

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Practice this lesson
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related

You’ll learn to

  • Define a destination marketing/management organization (DMO) and explain how it differs from a single hospitality business marketing itself.
  • Describe how DMOs are typically funded and why hotel occupancy taxes make public accountability central to their work.
  • Distinguish destination branding, positioning, and image, and explain how they anchor a destination's marketing.
  • Distinguish destination marketing from destination management and explain the shift toward stewardship.
  • Analyze the coordination problem a DMO faces in marketing a place it does not own or control.

Common mistakes

  • Thinking a DMO markets a specific hotel, resort, or attraction.

    A DMO markets the destination as a whole and represents all the tourism businesses in it; individual businesses do their own marketing separately.

  • Assuming a DMO owns or controls the hotels, attractions, and transport it promotes.

    A DMO neither owns nor controls them; it leads by coordination, persuasion, and advocacy, which is why non-participating businesses can undercut its efforts.

  • Believing DMOs are funded like ordinary companies, out of product sales.

    Most U.S. DMO funding is public, dominated by hotel occupancy taxes, which is why DMOs must publish reports, submit to audits, and answer to public-records laws.

  • Treating 'destination marketing' and 'destination management' as the same thing.

    Marketing generates demand; management adds stewardship, visitor dispersal, and limits. The shift from one to the other is a defining trend in the field.

  • Confusing CVB and DMO as fundamentally different organizations.

    They overlap heavily; CVB is the older term with a convention emphasis, while DMO is the broader umbrella term for the same kind of destination organization.

Easily confused

Destination marketing vs. Destination management

Marketing generates and shapes demand for a place through branding and promotion; management stewards the place, dispersing visitors, setting limits, and protecting residents' quality of life.

A single hotel's marketing vs. A DMO's marketing

A hotel markets and controls its own product; a DMO markets a whole destination it does not own, coordinating many independent businesses behind one brand.

Positioning vs. Image

Positioning is the deliberate choice of how a destination makes itself unique among competitors; image is the mental picture travelers already hold, which positioning tries to shape.

Key vocabulary

Destination marketing organization (DMO)
An organization that promotes a whole destination (a city, region, state, or country) to potential visitors; the same acronym is increasingly read as destination management organization.
Convention and visitors bureau (CVB)
The traditional, still-common name for a destination organization; a CVB promotes a destination with a stronger emphasis on attracting conventions and meetings.
Hotel occupancy tax (HOT)
A tax collected like a sales tax on overnight lodging, paid by the visitor as a percentage of the room cost, that is the main public funding source for U.S. DMOs.
Tourism promotion area / business improvement district assessment
A per-night fee (often a flat dollar amount) added to lodging bills within a designated zone to fund destination promotion.
Destination branding
Building a destination's identity, its name, logo, look and feel, and market position, so travelers form a distinct expectation of the place.
Positioning
How a destination decides to make itself unique among competing destinations from the traveler's point of view.
Destination image
The mental picture people already hold of a specific destination, which marketing tries to shape.
Destination management
Stewardship of a destination, coordinating stakeholders, dispersing visitors, and protecting the place, alongside or beyond promotion.
Overtourism
The condition in which visitor numbers exceed what a destination and its residents can comfortably absorb.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC)
Coordinating a DMO's advertising, social media, public relations, and sales outreach so they deliver one consistent message.

Sources & references

  1. Introduction to Hospitality, Chapter 3 (Destination Organizations): 3.1 Introduction and 3.2 Today's Destination Management Organization (DMO) — Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), authors incl. Meagan A. McGuire (Pressbooks)
  2. Destination Stewardship Definition — Destinations International (Jack Johnson, Chief Advocacy Officer)
  3. About Destinations International — Destinations International

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Researched 2026-08-19

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