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Visitor bureau cites Google/AI, calendar shifts and shortened booking windows for Q3 dip
Summary
Ariana Pernice told council Q3 web sessions and referrals dipped but audience engagement rose; staff blamed administration changes, weather and a late Easter and said the bureau is adjusting KPIs and tactics to account for Google AI and shorter booking windows.
Ariana Pernice, vice president of the Visitor and Convention Bureau for the Hilton Head Island‑Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, presented the fiscal year 2024–25 third‑quarter recap (January–March) at the June 3 council meeting and described mixed results.
Pernice highlighted the "America's Favorite Escape" campaign and placements in outlets such as Southern Living and Good Morning America, but said website sessions and partner referrals showed a small dip compared with the prior year. She attributed the short‑term decline to three factors during the quarter: a new administration, weather events and a late Easter that shifted travel patterns.
Council members questioned the drop in users—one member noted declines of 18% and then 19.2% quarter‑to‑quarter—and asked how the bureau is responding. Pernice said the bureau is working in real time to adapt tactics and to ensure the brand remains "the source of record" for AI and search engines.
Chase, a member of the bureau's research/marketing team, said a major change is how search engines present results: "The first third of the page... is Google's AI summary of everything," which reduces clicks to destination pages. He advised tracking two metrics going forward: how often AI crawls the site (establishing the town as an authoritative source) and referral traffic coming from AI services. He and Pernice said booking windows have shortened and that hotels currently show a narrow booking window (about three weeks earlier in the meeting; staff later said combined average bookings were a little over five days), which affects how the bureau interprets KPIs.
Council members also asked about international visitation and tracking by country. Pernice said privacy laws make geolocation difficult and that the bureau and research partners (College of Charleston) are exploring airport data and other indirect measures to estimate international visitor flows.
Pernice recommended revisiting which KPIs the council tracks to reflect the changing search and booking landscape; council members asked staff for follow‑up details on booking‑window breakdowns and conversion metrics.
