What Is the Traveler Choosing Instead of Us?

That's the question I wish more DMOs were losing sleep over.

Not "how are we performing against last quarter?" Not "did our campaign beat theirs in engagement?" Not "are our followers growing faster than the destination two hours north of us?"

Those questions have answers. Comfortable, reportable, meeting-friendly answers. And that is exactly the problem.

The Competition We Actually Watch

Here is what happens in most DMO strategy conversations when the word "competition" comes up.

• Someone pulls up a few 'comparable' destination feeds.

• There is some head-nodding about video performance.

• Someone says "their engagement was really strong on that campaign" and someone else says "yeah but our reach was better."

• A benchmark report gets referenced. The conversation moves on.

I am not judging this, it's visible evidence. And also, an unfair pressure on the SMM. Those conversations feel productive because the data is real and the comparisons are tidy, and everyone leaves with something to say in the next meeting.

We have built an entire competitive intelligence practice around destinations. Other destinations.

Nearby destinations, similar destinations, aspirationally comparable destinations. We track what they post and how it performs and whether their new campaign is better than our new campaign. And, let's not forget the quarterly occupancy flex - the big boy stuff you'll use to prove my theory wrong...

The traveler does not care about any of it.

The Decision We Keep Misreading

The traveler is not sitting on their couch conducting a side-by-side analysis of regional destinations.

What they are actually doing is messier and more human than any attribution model can capture.

They are asking themselves a set of questions that have nothing to do with your content calendar. Questions like:

• Do I actually want to go somewhere right now?

• What does a trip feel like this year versus just staying home and finally fixing the backyard?

• Am I a person who does something exciting, or am I a person who rests?

Nearly half of Americans chose a staycation over travel in 2024. Nearly half. And not because another destination outmarketed you. Because the traveler looked inward and found a version of themselves that did not need to go anywhere.

That version of themselves is your competition.

Identity Proximity

This is the concept I keep coming back to, and as far as I can tell no one else is talking about it in quite this way, so I am just going to name it directly.

Identity proximity is the distance between your destination and who the traveler believes they are right now.

Not geographic proximity. Not price proximity. Not even experiential proximity, though that is closer. Identity proximity is about fit.

It is about whether your destination feels like the natural expression of the life this traveler is trying to live in this particular season.

The destinations that keep winning are not always the ones with the biggest budgets or the most sophisticated campaigns. They are the ones that sit closest to the traveler's current self-image. Their values, their aesthetic, the story they are telling themselves about who they are and what they deserve.

That is an uncomfortable idea for a lot of DMOs because it is not something you can easily optimize or A/B test or put in a quarterly report. It requires actually understanding your traveler as a person making identity-laden choices, not just a demographic making logistical ones.

But here is what makes it actionable: once you understand that the competition is not just geographic, the comp set opens up in genuinely interesting ways. You stop asking "who else is targeting our visitor profile" and start asking "what else is competing for our visitor's sense of self." Those are very different questions and they lead to very different strategies.

The Metrics We Hid Behind

Here is a statistic that should bother us more than it does. 58% of organizations are still using follower counts and view totals as their primary proof of social media effectiveness. Because they are available, they are easy to pull, and they do not ask hard questions back.

Vanity metrics are safe. They are reportable. They create the sensation of competing without requiring you to confront whether you are competing for the right thing.

The question that vanity metrics cannot answer is the one that actually matters: in the life your traveler is trying to build right now, where do you fit?

Not where do you fit on a map. Not where do you fit in a media plan. Where do you fit in their story about themselves?

If you cannot answer that, you are not behind on your engagement benchmarks.

You are behind on your entire competitive frame.

What This Means for the Comp Set

The traditional comp set, built on geography and similarity and who-else-is-chasing-our-visitor, was always a shortcut. A useful one in a simpler media environment, but a shortcut nonetheless.

Expanding the comp set does not mean abandoning it. It means asking harder questions alongside the familiar ones. It means being honest that 44% of travelers chose destinations closer to home last year not because a competitor stole them, but because "closer" was doing psychological work, not just logistical work. It means treating the microcation not as a trend to note in a trends report but as a signal about what identity-fit looks like for a significant portion of your potential audience right now.

The traveler chose themselves. The destination that figures out how to be part of that choice, rather than competing against it, is the one that wins the next decade.

That is not a campaign strategy.

It is something bigger.

I'm Jenn Barbee, and I think the most interesting competitive question in destination marketing right now has nothing to do with other destinations.