Sojern Unveils its 2025 State of Destination Marketing Report
Digital marketing platform built for travel, Sojern, has launched its State of Destination Marketing 2025 report for DMOs.
This report was produced through a partnership with Benchmark Research Partners – and supported by Brand USA, Destination Canada, the European Travel Commission, and the Caribbean Tourism Organisation – following on from the 2024 report.
It highlighted current destination marketing trends, with insights from nearly 200 global DMOs, government departments, and affiliated tourism entities.
It found DMOs face challenges such as managing limited resources while showing clear results, rising expectations, and technological change.
The pressure is high to deliver results, and the resulting multichannel campaigns are more technical and complex.
While 60% use clicks as their top metric, 54% struggle to demonstrate clear ROI and 37% identify tracking and attribution as key challenges when managing full-funnel campaigns.
Currently, 83% of respondents focus on programmatic advertising. Programmatic’s trackability, precision, and cost effectiveness enables DMOs to make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Display ads (97%), social media advertising (90%), and search engine marketing (80%) remain the dominant channels in DMOs’ paid media strategy.
“A striking 85% of DMOs are maintaining or increasing digital advertising budgets compared to last year,” said Noreen Henry, chief revenue officer of Sojern.
“As DMOs invest more into their budgets and adopt more sophisticated strategies, they must continue to demonstrate return on that investment, which requires them to leverage advanced tools and data to engage travelers throughout the marketing funnel.”
AI emerged as another trend for destination marketing, with 63% of DMOs using it for content creation.
Only 28% use AI for data analysis, highlighting a massive opportunity to use AI for deeper insights and more effective decision-making. Addressing resource limitations and training gaps will be critical to unlocking AI’s full potential.
While DMOs have traditionally preferred to run seasonal campaigns, the report revealed that 52% are now favoring always-on campaigns over seasonal ones (40%).
Always-on campaigns drive results, with 42% reporting improved brand awareness as the most significant impact an always-on marketing strategy has on overall campaign performance.
DMOs are getting better at crafting campaigns for specific audiences though, as 66% are extensively focusing on outdoor enthusiasts, but only 15% are using advanced personalisation techniques that adjust offerings in real time across channels.
This leaves a opportunity to create more tailored experiences for travelers at every stage of their journey.
For the past four years since the COVID-19 pandemic, DMOs needed to drive bookings and deliver short-term results to enable business to bounce back. Now that the industry has stabilized, DMOs are rebalancing, with campaigns taking a long-term strategic approach.
As a result, brand awareness has become more important, and this shift is clear in how campaigns are being run—now split 50/50 between stage-specific and full-funnel strategies, a big change from 2024 when full-funnel dominated at 70%.
Data is one of the most powerful tools DMOs have, but figuring out how to use it effectively is no easy task.
More than half (51%) of DMOs say data analysis is a major challenge, and 45% struggle to turn that data into actionable strategies.
Still, these hurdles present an opportunity for DMOs to stand out by using data to create campaigns that hit the mark.
The report showed that most DMOs are already leveraging data – 84% for digital marketing insights, 75% for tracking visitor stats, and 69% for market research.
Finally, it found that Co-op marketing continues to grow, particularly in Europe, where the report revealed that participation increased by 16% year-over-year.
By partnering with hotels, attractions, and airlines, DMOs can pool resources, extend campaign reach, and better scale efforts.
While social media remains central, 91% of DMOs are using it for marketing and 99% ranked Facebook and Instagram among its top five channels.
However, it revealed that Connected TV (CTV) and short-form video are gaining traction as emerging formats, offering significant potential for DMOs to create immersive, visually rich campaigns that resonate deeply with travelers.
