Every DMO knows how to count visitors. Very few can tell you, with a straight face, what those visitors cost to attract, what they spent, and what share of that spend would not have happened without the destination’s marketing. That gap — between activity metrics and actual economic impact — is the single biggest credibility problem this industry has with its stakeholders.

The 2026 State of Destination Marketing Report from Sojern flagged economic impact measurement as the number-one priority for DMOs this year. That finding isn’t surprising. What is surprising is how few organizations have actually changed their board-level reporting to reflect it.

Visitor counts measure presence, not performance

Saying “we had X million visitors” is the tourism equivalent of a SaaS company reporting total sign-ups. It tells you the top of the funnel is moving, but it tells you nothing about whether the business is healthy. Two destinations with identical visitor counts can have wildly different visitor economies — different average spend, different length of stay, different repeat rates, different downstream tax revenue. A metric that can’t distinguish between those two realities shouldn’t be the headline number your board sees each quarter.

The pressure to fix this isn’t coming from inside the DMO world. It’s coming from the stakeholders who write the checks. Hotel partners want to know whether DMO marketing influenced the booking. City councils want to know whether the next tourism funding cycle is an investment or a handout. Tourism Improvement District committees are specifically structured to demand return on assessment. All three expect reporting that visitor counts can’t produce.

What real ROI measurement looks like for a DMO

A credible DMO measurement framework has four layers. First, attribution: the ability to trace a meaningful share of visitor arrivals back to specific marketing touchpoints — not just the last click, but the real path. Second, spend: average visitor spend broken out by segment, length of stay, and purpose of trip, ideally pulled from card spend or mobility data partners like Zartico, Arrivalist, or Destination Analysts. Third, economic impact: modeled total contribution including indirect and induced spending, backed by a credible methodology like Tourism Economics or DI’s Event Impact Calculator. Fourth, counterfactual: some defensible estimate of what would have happened anyway without DMO marketing.

The last layer is the one most DMOs skip, and it’s the one that makes a board presentation credible. If you can’t show incrementality, you’re reporting on the weather.

The cost of getting this wrong

DMOs that can’t answer ROI questions lose budget. The DestinationNEXT Futures Study from Destinations International has tracked this for years: organizations that can credibly tie spend to economic impact retain funding through political and economic cycles. Organizations that can’t, don’t. The pattern is not subtle.

The other cost is strategic. When visitor counts are the headline metric, the entire organization optimizes for visitor counts — which means prioritizing high-volume, low-yield channels and short-haul, low-spend visitors. It’s a race to the bottom of the funnel that destinations regret within five years.

Where to start

If your DMO still opens every board meeting with a visitor volume slide, the first step isn’t buying new technology. It’s reframing the report. Pick one or two economic impact metrics — total visitor spend, attributed spend, or jobs supported — and lead with them for a full year. Keep visitor counts in the appendix. Let the board’s eye move to the number that actually reflects performance.

Then build the measurement stack behind it. Attribution, spend, economic impact modeling, and a counterfactual. None of these are cheap, and none are quick. But none are optional either. The destinations that win the next decade will be the ones whose headline metric can survive a hard question from a skeptical mayor. Visitor counts can’t.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash