Visit Quad Cities Partners with Datafy for the Latest in Tourism Research, Insights & Marketing
January 04, 2022
Quad Cities (January 4, 2022) – Visit Quad Cities, the region's official destination management and marketing organization (DMMO), is taking its tourism research and business intelligence to a whole new level. Through a partnership with Datafy, Visit Quad Cities can track overnight visitation and day-trippers coming into the Quad Cities regional destination which positively impacts the overall visitor economy.
Datafy uses mobile devices and geofencing to gather data on each visitor 16 years or older. Through years of technology optimization and relationship building with multiple data providers, Datafy has developed a revolutionary way for communities to understand their visitation. Datafy’s product has become a vital service to destinations trying to better understand their visitor base and create efficient marketing and promotional campaigns.
Visit Quad Cities is currently tracking visitation from 2018 to present day. The data collected provides visitation numbers, demographics, visitor spending, their interests, length of stay, and where they stay. Additionally, Visit Quad Cities can track year-to-year, month-to-month, and quarterly comparisons to see visitation trends and growth.
“Visit Quad Cities will continue to invest in technology that competitively positions our regional destination and provides value to our stakeholders,” said Dave Herrell, President and CEO, Visit Quad Cities. “Datafy’s insights, research, and intelligence is helping us better understand our visitor profile to communicate to them effectively and efficiently to drive conversion.”
Using Datafy’s technology, Visit Quad Cities has geo-fenced hotels, attractions, meeting and sports facilities, downtowns, the airport, and other visitor destinations to see travel patterns within the regional destination. Visit Quad Cities will continue to scale as part of the strategy and implementation with this new technology.
“We are really excited to work with the Quad Cities team. As the market leader in cutting edge travel-tech, Datafy looks for partners like the Visit Quad Cities team because they are forward thinking innovators,” said Alex Lawrence, CEO of Datafy. “Together we know that the Quad Cities stakeholders will benefit from our new partnership.”
Currently, year-to-year comparisons show that people coming from outside of a 50+ mile radius of the QC but within Iowa and Illinois makes up the region’s most significant percentage of visitation. Visitation from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, and Nebraska represent the highest out-of-state travel numbers.
- Top cities from 2018 to now include Chicago, Ill.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Omaha, Neb.; Dubuque, Iowa; Des Moines, Iowa; Minneapolis, Minn.
- The average trip length was 2.891 days, and the highest visitation is Thursday through Sunday. The annual average of the number of trips was 3,581,327 with 10,283,747 visitor days spent.
- Top interests while visiting the Quad Cities were attractions, casinos, arts/culture/history, camping/RV/trails, craft beer/wine/distillery, golf courses, live music/theatre, and river cruises.
- The top age categories were 45-64 years and 25-44 years.
- Income levels were 27.4% under 50K; 21.8% 100 to 150K; 17.3% 75 to 100K; 17.3% 50 to 75K; 16.2% over 150K
- Education levels were 53% no degree; 41.2% Bachelor’s Degree; 5.7% Graduate Degree. (No degree refers to those without a college degree or who are currently working on degree.)
- Number of people in household: 47% 1-2; 44% 3-5; 9% 6+
In addition to delivering essential visitor data, Datafy also provides an avenue to reach visitors and people like them through targeted mobile advertising. Visit Quad Cities can now break through the clutter and develop effective marketing campaigns based on visitors’ specific interests.
This fall, Visit Quad Cities launched a mobile advertising campaign that targeted former visitors to the QC within a 50 to 300-mile radius. The campaign focused on live music, arts and culture, foodie and craft beer enthusiasts, and outdoor adventures. Through Datafy, each person who received an ad was tracked to determine their interaction with the ad and whether it resulted in a return visit.
Based on that data, Visit Quad Cities confirmed that approximately 5,445 made a trip back to the QC, and 1,850 of those people stayed at a hotel. The visitation by those 5,445 people generated an estimated economic impact of almost $950,000.
In January, a winter campaign is planned to promote outdoor activities and bald eagle watching, along with winter events and QC museums.
Moving forward, Datafy will continue to give Visit Quad Cities a marketing and research edge. It will provide them with the tools to reach repeat visitors and new visitors, discover tourism trends, and monitor the growth of this vital industry in the region.
About Datafy
Led by seasoned tech executives, data scientists, PhDs, and tourism and marketing professionals, Datafy is headquartered in Ogden, Utah. Since the full launch of their core product in 2020, Datafy has seen explosive growth. They are one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the travel and tourism space, with hundreds of DMMO clients from coast to coast. With access to data from 225+ million mobile devices through over 1,000 data partners, Datafy processes 1.6 billion internal data points per day.
About Visit Quad Cities
Founded in 1990, Visit Quad Cities is the official Destination Management and Marketing Organization (DMMO) for the region. Visit Quad Cities is a private 501(c)(6) non-profit engine charged with driving economic opportunity through tourism, building our authentic brand, telling & selling the Quad Cities story, and enhancing Quad Citizens' quality of life and quality of place.
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Media Contact: Charlotte Doehler-Morrison, VP Marketing & Communications, Visit Quad Cities, 309-781-4235 cell