62: What Are Stuart Butler’s Predictions for Destination Marketing in 2026?
Stu’s News
Instead of a traditional news item, Stu’s News is an invitation:
• Live appearance #1: South Carolina Governor’s Conference — Tuesday, February 10 (in Myrtle Beach, SC)
• Live appearance #2: Destinations International Marcom Summit for Destinations — February 24–26 (they expect to speak on Thursday, February 26)
• Stuart and Adam frame these as chances to bring real discourse to conference stages, pushing beyond “safe” programming and into the tougher conversations the industry needs.
⸻
The 3 predictions for 2026
1) AI won’t kill the DMO website in 2026 (but the era is changing)
Stuart’s headline take: DMO websites won’t be “dead” within 12 months, but “it is the end of the beginning” for the traditional website-driven model.
Key points discussed:
• Humans are the bottleneck: capabilities are racing ahead, but adoption lags.
• Website traffic decline is real, especially organic traffic, but much of what’s lost is low-value “simple Q&A” traffic now answered directly in search experiences.
• DMOs shouldn’t panic, but they also shouldn’t pause preparation: start planting now (lean into conversational commerce and new user journeys).
• Adam reframes it like an investment strategy: even if the website still performs, you diversify before the market shifts.
2) Massive consolidation is coming (vendors and DMOs)
Stuart predicts consolidation on “both sides of the fence”:
Vendor side
• Budget pressure on DMOs squeezes agencies, platforms, and software providers.
• Stuart argues the current ecosystem is too fragmented and consolidation could create more cohesive product suites.
• Adam agrees consolidation is inevitable (especially in SaaS), but worries consolidation could reduce the nimble, high-touch benefits of smaller agencies—and potentially slow innovation if done poorly.
• Both agree: if consolidation happens, it needs to be additive and accelerate innovation, not stall it.
DMO / community side
• Stuart predicts growing consolidation through regional alignment, collaboration, and potentially mergers, driven by two scarcities:
• Money
• Human capital (the workload is expanding faster than staffing can)
• He expects more “radical collaboration” across tourism, economic development, downtown/placemaking, realtor groups, etc.
• Adam strongly agrees tourism and economic development being separate is often a miss, and gives an example from Utah where visitors don’t experience the boundaries between jurisdictions, yet the organizations are structurally split and duplicating efforts.
• Stuart adds Myrtle Beach-area context: consumers don’t differentiate between lines on a map, so alignment matters.
3) Experiences will replace destinations as the primary driver
Stuart’s most provocative concept: 2026 may be “the beginning of the end for the destination”—meaning the brand pull shifts toward experiences, moments, and events.
Highlights:
• Travel decisions increasingly start with a concert, a game, a viral restaurant, or something seen on social media, not “I want to go to X destination.”
• Stuart shares examples of experience-driven demand (viral food spots, status posts, even hate-posts driving curiosity).
• The implication: DMOs may need to re-embrace roles they’ve moved away from, including:
• Experience curation
• Product development influence (helping stakeholders “up their game”)
• Event promotion and/or creation
• Truth-bearing / trust-building as the source of what’s legit and worth doing
• They agree this topic deserves a full standalone episode.
Memorable moments & themes
• “This is not financial advice, this is not legal advice” (Stuart jokingly sets the tone for predictions).
• The “humans are the bottleneck” thread runs throughout the AI conversation.
• “Radical collaboration” is positioned as more important than who gets credit.
• A running joke about needing a new Stu’s News jingle by 2026 (and maybe flying cars too).
What’s next
They tee up several upcoming 2026-focused episodes:
• An episode featuring submitted predictions from industry peers
• Adam’s resolutions/predictions episode
• A future episode with Amir discussing trends not strictly tied to AI