State Tourism Offices

Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence

Over time data gets stored in spreadsheets and proprietary databases. Each project inadvertently creates another file squirreled away on a hard drive. This practice doesn’t provide insight for executives nor does it contribute to institutional knowledge. That data should be centralized in Honeycomb. Honeycomb can warehouse aggregate data from multiple sources to provide consistent, efficient reporting. 

Research from Conversion Studies, Target Market Awareness and Surveys are stored in Honeycomb to provide a safe place in the Cloud. This data can be mixed with results from Campaigns and other Marketing efforts to provide Cause and Effect reporting. If you don’t have a booking engine or other means to capture economic impact, then this causal relationship is an important method to justify budget and provide accountability.

Dashboards are used for presentations to Boards and Industry Partners. Your data sources are mapped to the reporting needs. As data is loaded (e.g. website traffic from Google Analytics each night or phone call volume uploaded or impressions from Vocus) the reports and dashboards present the most current information. Reviewing this information each morning will keep you current and provide immediate detection of any issues (e.g. website forms are broken).

Reports

• Lodging Tax Revenue
• Average Nights Per Visit
• Visitation Volume
• Visitation Spending
• Visitor/Welcome Center Volume
• Conversion Study Results

Fulfillment

Getting publications and other materials to inquiries is an important measure of the travelers intent to visit. Honeycomb can manage the logic for bulk request limits (e.g. hold inquiries until we have 250 requests then send first class).

Reports

• Official State Vacation Guide Requests MOM - shows trending for requests over time
• Requests by City/State/Zip/MSA - shows requests for People based on demographics to help determine if target markets are performing and develop an understanding of your target audience
• Requests YOY - compares requests with the previous year(s)
• Requests by Media Placement/Campaign/Content/Keyword - shows what Campaign, Content, Keyword or Media Placement contributed to the Vacation Guide request
• Requests by  Segment - if you append the database with external services (e.g. Claritas) the requests can reveal more about your target audience than just demographics (e.g. my neighbor doesn’t travel, I travel with kids)
• Requests by Interest - shows what interests People have selected which indicates what they care about or how they want to be inspired

Booking Engines

Honeycomb integrates with BookDirect and Inntopia to provide bookings for hospitality through your website. Others can be integrated. This metric is an important way to show support for the local economy. It’s also a strong indicator of the traveler’s intent to visit the state.

Reports

• Reservations - shows the revenue produced from reservations made on the state’s website
• Leads To Hospitality - shows the click thrus from the state’s website (or mobile web) to Industry Partners (note: the Industry Partners must be in Honeycomb to track back click thrus)

Industry Partner Communications

CVBs, hospitality, attractions and restaurants in your state are Industry Partners. Honeycomb’s CRM functionality provides you a way to communicate efficiently and effectively with them. Storing Industry Partner data in Honeycomb lets you serve that information (e.g. business listings) to the web, mobile web, social media or distribution lists. By adding activity to the Industry Partner account like business listings page views and clicks to their website you can show them the STO’s value provided.

Honeycomb can also be used to distribute Leads for group sales, meetings, conventions or Public Relations initiatives. Currently, STOs are using it to drive grass roots support for budget initiatives. 

Reports

• Emails Delivered
• Emails Opened
• Email Click Thrus
• Facebook Likes - for any Facebook pages created just for Industry Partners
• Blog Traffic - traffic to the blog can be pulled from Google Analytics to measure interest and activity

Advertising Management & Measurement

The advertising budget is often lost to other state budget demands. Since it’s often the largest portion of the budget, it’s the first to be attacked. Tourism Offices must prove the advertising budget is providing economic value and used effectively to generate tourism dollars. Honeycomb can assist your staff with managing their advertising spend. It also provides measurement and calculates Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). 

If the Tourism Office chooses to manage the advertising internally, they can do that in Honeycomb. Managing the advertising internally provides many efficiencies and gives control over the spend. In this case, Honeycomb provides accountability for the spend and minimizes time spent organizing data in spreadsheets. It also provides continuity over time as staffing needs change. 

If the Tourism Office chooses to work with an agency that manages advertising externally, those media placements are imported into Honeycomb. Again, this provides continuity as agencies may change. More importantly it provides critical tracking information with other Tourism Office operations; inquiries, fulfillment and email activity. Honeycomb can retrieve impressions from pixel tracking services and ad serving services like DoubleClick. 

Reports

• Total Gross Impressions - shows the trending of impressions over time
• Cost Per Impressions - divides the cost into impressions delivered
• Cost Per Acquisition - divides the traffic from advertising budget spent into the traffic or Leads acquired (Reader Service Lists)
• Cost Per Lead - divides advertising budget spent into the Leads produced
• Cost Per Conversion - divides the cost of the advertising Media Placement into the Conversions that it produced
• Conversions by Keyword - shows the keywords (paid or organic) People searched when they converted and is invaluable for search engine marketing
• Conversions by Campaign - shows what people from an individual Campaign did and weights that value of those to show the total value of a Campaign
• Conversions by Media Placement - shows what a discrete media buy produced and can be broken into ad creative or in aggregate
• Conversions by Content - shows what content produced the conversion; email subject line, link, Facebook posting or specific Ad content

Leisure Travel Marketing

Dashboards are used to provide visual representations of performance for Leisure Travel Marketing. The organization below represents how well marketing performs at each stage of the traveler life cycle. Time demands on staff to prepare these reports in separate systems is significant. Honeycomb can automate almost of these data collections. Some data sources will need to be imported manually. Graphing these each month reveals trends over time. It’s also helpful to see this year compared with last year (YOY). 

Reach & Awareness

This Dashboard has a collection of reports and metrics to present how well the message is getting to market. Beyond this high level presentation your staff may want to analyze specific advertising performance that was addressed in another section of this document.

• Total Ad Impressions
• Cost Per Impression
• Total Ad Equivalency
• Total Newsletter Opt-Ins
• Email Newsletters Delivered
• Total Leads All Sources
• Facebook Likes
• Twitter Followers
• Foursquare Followers

Engagement & Conversion

This Dashboard shows how people are responding to your message.  

• Email Newsletter Opt-In Rate
• Email Open Rates
• Email Click Thru Rates
• Website Traffic By Website
• Pages Per Visit
• Time On Site
• Website Conversion Rates
• Call Center Volume
• Time On Call
• Call Abandonment Rate
• Facebook Interaction Rate

Signals Of Intent To Travel

Even if you have a Booking Engine on your website it’s difficult to prove whether or not a person physically came to the state. This collection of metrics provide greater insight into their intentions by looking at their Behavior.

• Visitor Guide Requests
• Virtual Guide Requests
• Email Newsletter Opt-Ins
• Reservations or Reservation Click Thrus
• Business Listing Click Thrus

Call Center Operations

Honeycomb’s CRM provides an interface to facilitate a Call Center operation. Whether the operations are sourced internally or through a third-party, Call Center staff can follow scripts, integrate with VOIP and execute fulfillment for publications and reservations over the phone. Follow up can be managed through email communications with People who call. If your state is considering adding Group and Meetings sales staff they can utilize this feature and be managed centrally.

Reports

• Gross Call Volume MOM/YOY - how many inbound calls over time
• Time On Call - how long is the call which indicates the intent to travel
• Abandonment Rate - what percentage hang up
• Time To Answer - how long did it take agents to answer
• Request From Calls - how many calls resulted in vacation guide request