New 2020 DMO Funding Survey published by European Cities Marketing shows severe impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Europe’s urban Destination Management and Marketing Organisations (DMOs). More than ¾ of the DMOs have seen budget reductions – many with more than 50%. ECM calls for decision makers at local, national and EU level to recognise the need for recovery funding if DMOs are to play their crucial role in the rebuilding of Europe’s urban travel and tourism sector.
According to European Cities Marketing, the association of more than 120 urban DMOs in Europe, the new-normal reality could be an omen of a new era where DMOs take a clearer stand on balanced and holistic tourism development in the cities.
The crisis is global and it is needless to say that negative budget impacts like this have not been seen before in the DMO community – not even during the global financial crisis from 2009-2011. Looking closer, the DMOs funding crisis is clearly multi-dimensional. All sources (commercial income, tax revenue, membership contributions etc.) have experienced plummeting incomes. The immediate observation is that few DMOs are left unaffected by the crisis – almost 75% of the 67 DMOs in the survey have had their 2020 budgets reduced and almost a third of these have seen severe reductions of more than 50%.
Published in collaboration with Danish strategy firm Group NAO, the objective of the ECM 2020 DMO Funding Survey, is to assess the current funding situation and the crisis impact on the destination management and marketing organisations and to help both the DMOs but also political decision makers understand the scope and severity of the crisis.
The remaining part of 2020 carries no promise of immediate or easy recovery. The most important thing is therefore DMO’s long-term coordinated efforts to ensure a wider and more resilient tourism in the cities of Europe. Despite this challenging scenario, DMOs are almost in total agreement, that the crisis will lead the land of travel and tourism towards a more sustainable future (89% agrees partly or completely). Also, most of the DMOs feel that the crisis has strengthened their political capital. At the moment, rebuilding tourism is a high political priority in many destinations and the DMOs are showing the relevance when coordinating and operating the recovery efforts.
Over the next months, destinations should focus their energy in innovating and re-purposing their strategies, creating new creative ways of boost funds, developing new sustainable paradigms, sharing ideas and raising their voice together with the DMO community and re-scope their objectives and perspectives.