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Dallas Area Chamber reports $75.8 million in estimated visitor spending; highlights targeted digital campaigns
Summary
The Dallas Area Chamber presented its annual tourism contract report, saying targeted digital advertising and Datafy analytics helped drive higher visitor spending and measurable returns on modest marketing investments.
Lisa Farquharson, representing the Dallas Area Chamber of Commerce, told The Dalles City Council on June 9 that the chamber’s tourism work produced an estimated $75,848,027 in visitor spending for July–April and that targeted digital campaigns returned measurable results.
Farquharson said the chamber focused on “increasing visitor spending, not necessarily the visitors themselves,” relying on edited video segments, geofenced digital ads and Datafy analytics to convert impressions into visits and spending.
The chamber highlighted a KETU video campaign that repurposed nine business segments at a cost of $12,500 this year (compared with roughly $22,250 for original production last year) and said that advertising and tracking yielded roughly 272,000 impressions from that effort. A separate, month-long geofencing campaign produced about 30,000 impressions and — the chamber estimated — $7,200,000 in spending attributed to visitors exposed to that campaign; the chamber reported it spent roughly $5,000 on that specific month-long campaign.
Farquharson said Datafy has tracked 292,753 visitors in the July–April period (noting that Datafy’s counts are a sample rather than total visitors) and that the year-to-date increase of 18,240 visitors generated about $4,722,000 more spending than the same period last year. She told the council the chamber awarded $30,000 in event marketing grants this year, distributing 15 grants of $2,000 each to local businesses.
Councilors asked about marketing geographies and measurement. Farquharson said the chamber targeted Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, the Tri-Cities and parts of Central and Eastern Oregon and refined those targets with Datafy’s geofencing tools. She described the chamber’s emphasis on building an updated image library and cloud storage for photos and video and said the chamber will continue familiarization (“FAM”) tours with Travel Oregon and the Hood River region.
Farquharson closed by calling tourism “a lifeline” for hotels, restaurants and attractions and thanked the council for continued support. The chamber said it is in its second year using Datafy and plans to continue contracting with the vendor.
The presentation preceded other council business; no formal city action on the chamber’s report was required or taken at the meeting.
