Arizona Office of Tourism attracts international audiences
The Arizona Office of Tourism (AOT) uses Visa Destination Insights to drive tourism growth for the state of Arizona.
Challenge
The AOT sought to increase international visitor traffic to Arizona as part of the state’s economic recovery plan.
Rebuilding the state’s international visitor base was a key growth area identified by the AOT when they began planning their recovery strategy after the COVID-19 pandemic. Global travel restrictions during the pandemic had resulted in a significant drop in international visitors to Arizona. While international visitation is returning, Arizona’s numbers are still not back to peak levels (2019).
To help build tailored marketing campaigns that would attract more international visitors, the AOT wanted to gain a better understanding of visitor spend behaviors and preferences across the state. The office’s other data solutions allowed them to see general visitor insights, such as visitor count — but to help their industry partners drive a return to growth, the AOT needed a more granular view into how and where international travelers were spending during their visits.
A powerful partnership
Visa Destination Insights has empowered the AOT to:
- Drill deeper into international visitor spending trends statewide
- Boost ROI of marketing campaigns
— Brittany Augustine, Director of Research, Arizona Office of Tourism
Solution
The AOT uses Visa Destination Insights to gain a closer look into on-the-ground visitor spend
As an easy-to-use web-based platform, Visa Destination Insights makes it feasible for the AOT to understand to what international tourists are most attracted. The rich visitor spend information provided by Visa Destination Insights helps the AOT create data-informed visitor profiles to inform targeting strategies for partners across the state of Arizona — including restaurant, hotel, government and city planning partners.
Post-pandemic, the AOT discovered that Arizona’s international visitors preferred to visit natural landmarks and outdoor activities, like the Grand Canyon, over more populous cities. Using this information, the AOT used Visa Destination Insights to quickly pivot their strategy to invest more dollars into marketing the state’s natural, wide-open spaces, which were significantly more appealing to visitors after the pandemic than before.
The AOT chooses using Visa Destination Insights for its unique offerings:
- Frequently updated data and insights for near real-time¹ tracking vs. annual updates from other sources
- Credible, real-world anonymized data from across Visa’s international card network
- Focused insights into regional and is segment-level spend
Results
Quick recovery
Greater ROI
Increased tourism
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- ¹In some cases.