Destination Management Organization

To promote Lancaster City effectively as a destination, the city should designate and fund an official destination marketing organization (DMO) who will be directly responsible for city-centric destination marketing and reputation management, industry stakeholder coordination and alignment, anchor event management and promotion, strategic tourism partnerships, group sales support, destination development planning, city-specific welcome center operations, and performance measurement and accountability reporting.

The DMO should work collaborative with the county’s DMO, Discover Lancaster, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Office of Tourism but focus more narrowly on city-specific promotions, campaigns, demand generation, and visitor experience management.

As the primary entity responsible for promoting and developing tourism inside the city, the new DMO will act as the driving force behind destination branding and marketing, attracting visitors through strategic campaigns, digital marketing, and promotional content creation. Moving forward, this team will play a crucial coordination role by bringing together various stakeholders including local businesses, government departments, and tourism operators to advocate for a cohesive visitor experience and a thriving local tourism economy.

Beyond marketing, the DMO will actively participate in destination development by identifying emerging growth opportunities, supporting infrastructure improvements, and advising on tourism policy. The DMO will also provide essential visitor services through welcome center management. They will also oversee strategic anchor events, facilitate capacity building programs locally, develop strategic services, and manage digital platforms including the destination website, social media accounts, and affiliate page content to enhance the local visitor experience.

The goal of the DMO is to manage the city’s investment in the local economy by driving increased tourism revenue, creating opportunity for more local employment, and attracting new investment in tourism infrastructure. Through these combined efforts, the DMO will effectively serve as the backbone of the city’s tourism industry, working to ensure its sustainable growth and success.

To assess the best operational strategy to address these organizational needs, researchers looked at current service coverage, supplemental program delivery needs, program resourcing, and required skills.

After carefully evaluating the current resource landscape, community feedback and partner capabilities, Eddy Alexander recommends that the City of Lancaster leverage the Bureau of Tourism and Promotions as its official destination marketing organization charged with ongoing citywide branding, marketing, media and influencer relations, visitor experience advocacy, welcome center management, and future destination development and planning. This office is already carrying many of the responsibilities of a destination marketing organization but will need to right size resourcing to make room for anchor components like advertising, public relations, and strategic content development that are not yet being deployed at the level expected for a city of this size.

Bureau leadership should ideally bring tourism experience as well as proven marketing industry and communications experience, media buying and public relations strategy expertise, and an understanding of the unique and collaborative role public service organizations play in promoting entities they do not directly control.

This important function must balance both internal community interests with known best practices in tourism marketing and promotion in order to ensure predictable return on investment and reliable economic impact.

As the central hub for Lancaster City’s tourism strategy, planning, and promotion, the Bureau of Tourism and Promotions will need to be properly resourced to balance internal community interests with established best practices in destination marketing.

As a first step, City Council should officially designate the Bureau of Tourism and Promotions as the official Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) for the City of Lancaster. Then, the Bureau can begin to spearhead the priority efforts required to establish impact at scale:

Funding Sustainability: Develop and confirm a predictable and sustainable funding model and resourcing landscape to support effective marketing and promotion efforts that drive meaningful increases in visitation.
City Tourism Rebrand: Update the city’s tourism brand using a community-informed, industry best practice led process to account for contextually relevant use cases and ongoing competitive placements. The branding process should provide more than just a new logo. It should include a full-scale system for written, verbal, print, and multimedia communications for promoting the city across paid, earned, borrowed, and owned channels and platforms.
Digital Technology Upgrades: Update the Visit Lancaster City digital ecosystem to better align promotional efforts to latest consumer trends. Lancaster City should be prepared to partner with the state on their future infrastructure investments and should itself invest in new technology that allows local business owners access to control the accuracy and timeliness of their own listings and event postings. This will increase accuracy, build collaboration, and align with industry best practices nationwide.
Advertising and Lead Generation: Develop a programmatic lead generation advertising strategy to measurably increase prospective visitor awareness, affinity, and conversions for the community. This should start with a “locals first” audience focus, building awareness and brand affinity for Lancaster City’s tourism assets across Lancaster City and County and then extend into known feeder markets and strategic whitespace as identified in this planning process.
Public Relations: Develop a strategic earned media and influencer outreach program to gain third party amplification of the Lancaster City story. Targeting should align to brand pillars and message house strategy as further defined in the brand development process. Earned media and influencer engagement is a top of the funnel awareness building technique, but channels should be selected and prioritized according to their realistic potential to impact travel to, and spending in, the city.
Destination Development: Strategically partner with Lancaster City planning, recreation, transportation, public works, parking, and public safety teams, the Lancaster Bureau of Tourism and Promotions Advisory Board, Lancaster City Alliance, Discover Lancaster, and the many private businesses and nonprofit organizations who make up the tourism ecosystem locally. Partnerships should drive strategic advancement around key in-progress initiatives (Transportation Plan, Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith Center, Conestoga River Project) as well as new opportunities identified through this planning process (Amtrak Corridor planning and development, Freedom and the Underground Railroad Experience Hub). The goal will be to increase efficacy, reduce duplication of effort, and help the visitor economy grow by elevating hospitality and service standards, increasing marketing skills and digital fluency, and supporting business success while encouraging entrepreneurial development.
Content Marketing: Develop a content strategy that leverages local storytelling to engage more digital traffic, move visitors around the city more equitably, and drive-up average length of stay which will directly support visitor economic impact. This content should be data-informed based on search traffic indicators and should highlight key areas of strategic brand platform focus as directed by the brand strategy guidelines when adopted. To gain efficiency, all content should be developed with a syndication model. This will increase utilization of each new piece, help connect the pre-trip planning process to the local experience, and lower the cost to implement and manage over time.
Group Sales Support: Finally, the DMO should seek to partner with the local hotels and event centers to connect industry leads to group sales, conference planners, and strategic exposure opportunities (like film) for the city and its offerings.

The brand, marketing, and public relations program can be leveraged to help drive up the quality of local visitor experiences. This is achieved through its implementation across wayfinding and directional signage, welcome and engagement points that anchor the visitor journey, a more informed and empowered professional staff presence, and the delivery of accurate and consistent local information.

Over time, the city can begin to engage with organizations like the Mid-Atlantic Tourism Public Relations Alliance (MATPRA), The PA Restaurant Travel and Lodging Alliance, Destinations International (DI) and more to continue to leverage its position as an official city DMO to build more connections and drive impact through enhanced industry collaborations.

Funding:

To succeed, the DMO will require sustainable funding and community collaboration, supported by proven industry best practices.

Based on in-depth competitive analysis Eddy Alexander has established that a budget of $1.8-$2.5M in Year 1, growing to $3.2M by Year 5 is the appropriate target to reduce risk and maximize efficiency with this new program.

The city should seek to secure program funding according to the following schedule:

Year 1: $1.5 – $1.8M
Year 2: $1.6 – $2.1M
Year 3: $2.0 – $2.5M
Year 4: $2.3 – $2.8M
Year 5: $2.5 – $3.2M

These funds should initially be allocated as:

Marketing: 40-45% (Digital 15-20%, Traditional 10-12%, Content 8-10%, Social 5-7%)
Staffing: 25-30% (Leadership 8-10%, Marketing Team 7-8%, Sales Staff 5-6%)
Operations: 15-20% (Welcome Center 5-7%, Technology 4-5%, Analytics 3-4%)
Program Development: 10-15% (Events 4-5%, Partner Programs 3-4%, Education 2-3%)

ROI Targets:

For every $1 million spent, the City of Lancaster should aim to:

Generate $3 million-$4 million in additional tax revenue
Drive 300,000-400,000 website visits
Achieve 5-7% increase in social engagement
Engage 50-75% of the city’s tourism industry partners

This effort would represent some new city spending and may require additional fundraising efforts. To reach these targets, the city can consider the possibility of public-private partnerships, an entertainment tax, and/or a tourism improvement district (TID) designation.

Economic Impact:

As a part of the tourism master planning process, the City of Lancaster studied the amount of visitor traffic coming into the city as well as local hotel capacity and occupancy trends. These market impacts are significant as detailed in the research provided in this report. When maturing the destination marketing program, the City of Lancaster should establish ongoing processes and procedures to measure these same KPIs (key performance indicators) over time.

The Destination Marketing Organization should be especially concerned with a specific set of key performance indicators which can be leveraged to measure performance, efficacy, and impact of the promotions strategy and investment. See page 116.

Critical KPIS

Over the next ten years, the impact and success of the City of Lancaster’s Tourism Master Plan implementation efforts should be routinely and systematically measured by:

Economic Impact

Direct visitor spending
Indirect visitor spending
Sales tax collections
New business licenses

Citizen Satisfaction/Quality of Life

Local Net Promoter Score
Local assets, attraction, and product growth

Reputational Lift

Average length of stay
Repeat visitation
Visitor Net Promoter Score

To do this well, the city’s Destination Marketing Organization should strive to collect and review performance reports that independently benchmark progress against goals. The resources needed to provide this, include:

Market level hotel occupancy and rate reports
Visitor geolocation analysis
Visitor profile and demographic data collection
Local and visitor Net Promoter Score surveying
Business license database and registry updates
Local market credit card spending reports

Many communities choose to retain a market advisory firm or marketing agency of record and bundle these services into that contract as a reoccurring service. However, depending on city resources and staff data processing capabilities and experience, these assessments may also be completed in-house.

Destination Management Best Practices

Build a Strong Organizational Foundation

Establish the Bureau of Tourism and Promotions as the centralized authority for branding, marketing, visitor experience management, and tourism development citywide
Secure initial funding of $1.8 million -$2.5 million to support the first year of this plan, target growth to $3.2 million budget annually by Year 5. Plan to support this program with diverse revenue streams (grants, sponsorships, memberships, and advertising)
Ensure sustainable funding by establishing operational practices to pursuing continuous partnerships with local government, private entities, and state/national grant issuing organizations

Prioritize Integrated Marketing and
Branding Efforts

Develop a unified, community-informed visual identity and messaging platform. Ensure that your brand development program is aligned to be 50% authentic and 50% aspirational in order to leverage it to advance the community towards its stated goals and objectives
Invest in a data-backed, digital-first strategy, allocating 20%+ of the media and technology budget to digital channels to align with traveler consumption patterns and priorities
Create a modern, user-friendly website with advanced UX capabilities and deploy a targeted content strategy that amplifies Lancaster City’s unique stories and experiences across earned, paid, owned, and borrowed distribution channels

Focus on High-Impact Initiatives

Allocate resources strategically:

40-45% for marketing and advertising (digital, traditional, content, social)
25-35% for staffing, ensuring competitive compensation to attract top talent (can include agency or consulting service fees)
10-15% for operations, including technology, welcome center operations, and analytics
10-15% for program development, such as events, grant programs, and industry stakeholder education
Launch signature programs and campaigns to differentiate Lancaster City from regional competitors

Leverage Data to Drive Decisions

Implement robust performance measurement systems, collecting data on visitor demographics, spending patterns, and satisfaction
Establish KPIs as recommended, including economic impact (visitation counts, visitor spending, repeat visitation, average length of stay), citizen satisfaction (Local Net Promoter Score), and visitor reputation (Review Sentiment and Visitor Net Promoter Score)
Use insights from data to optimize marketing campaigns and demonstrate ROI to stakeholders

Foster Stakeholder Collaboration

Actively engage with city planning, economic development, transportation, and private-sector partners to align tourism goals with broader community objectives
Support local businesses and entrepreneurs through grants, cooperative advertising, and industry education
Build a partner network to enhance collaboration and amplify marketing efforts

Establish a Phased Growth Plan

Start-Up Phase: Focus on digital infrastructure, baseline metrics, and stakeholder engagement
Growth Phase: Expand marketing reach, develop signature programs, and increase staff capacity
Maturity Phase: Optimize operations, lead destination development, and innovate visitor experiences

Drive Responsible Economic and Social Impact

Target an ROI of $3-$4 in tax revenue and $200-$300 in visitor spending for every $1 invested
Increase visitation, extend length of stay, and boost repeat visitation through high-quality experiences
Strengthen the local economy by creating opportunities for businesses and supporting quality of life improvements for residents.

Consider Organizational Growth Stage

As a start-up, the DMO should initially focus on establishing funding resources, building digital infrastructure, developing relationships, and formalizing the local partnership network, and establishing baseline performance metrics.
After 2-3 years, the organizations should begin expanding marketing reach and scaling advertising and PR programs for greater impact, developing signature programs, and increasing staff expertise with industry conference attendance and other professional development opportunities.
After 5 years, the DMO should be ready for strategic growth, innovating offerings, optimizing efficiency and leading destination development. Having achieved competitive program budget levels, program leadership can shift focus to developing systems for predictable, repeatable outcomes and performance benchmarks, scaling partnerships, and incentivizing partners to implement best practices that will help them scale performance as well.

Implement Marketing Program

Lancaster City should leverage the following outline provided to manage the new DMO effectively and begin working the 10-year Tourism Action Plan outlined in the Appendix.

As the Bureau of Tourism and Promotions implements this recommended marketing program on behalf of the City of Lancaster, and all its tourism stakeholders, they should prioritize proven program success drivers, including:

Partner Engagement

Regular stakeholder communication
Clear value proposition
Collaborative programs

Sustainable Funding

Diverse revenue streams
Long-term agreements
Regular increases

Data-Backed Decisioning

Strong content creation
Digital first investments

Performance Measurement

Clear metrics
DMO and stakeholder accountability

Staff Development

Competitive compensation
Professional development
Industry certification

Key focus areas for the DMO should include:

Identifying Sustainable Funding and Resourcing

Securing a predictable and sustainable funding model is critical for the DMO to implement effective marketing and promotion strategies at scale. Adequate resourcing will be required to support paid media, public relations, content creation, and other high-impact initiatives. The ultimate long-term solution may involve a combination of city budget allocations, hotel occupancy taxes, and strategic partnerships.

To get started, this report outlines a number of grant opportunities that can help launch the program, demonstrate the office’s value, and build up to a more sustainable long-term model.

Comprehensive Branding and Digital Ecosystem

The DMO should spearhead a community-informed, industry best-practice-led branding process to develop a comprehensive visual identity system and messaging platform. This brand foundation should then be applied across the city’s digital properties, including a modern, user-friendly website, to align promotional efforts with evolving consumer trends.

Initially, the DMO should seek to raise $1.8 million to $2.5 million in sustainable annual income to support a competitive program that meets community expectations, effectively positioning the city as a desirable travel destination in key urban feeder markets. A well-run program at this scale has the potential to raise the local impact of tourism by more than $25 million annually.

Data-Driven Promotion and Storytelling

Leveraging market intelligence and traveler data, the DMO should develop programmatic paid media strategy and targeted earned media/influencer outreach plans. These efforts should be supported by a data-informed content strategy that highlights Lancaster City’s unique stories and experiences to drive visitation, extend length of stay, and increase economic impact.

Stakeholder Collaboration and Alignment

The DMO must work closely with the city’s various planning, transportation, public works, and economic development entities, as well as private sector partners, to ensure cohesive destination management and planning. This collaboration should focus on elevating hospitality standards, enhancing the visitor experience, demonstrating and sharing promotional best practices, encouraging industry collaboration, supporting local businesses and entrepreneurs, and transparently partnering with the community to achieve set performance goals.

Continuous Improvement and Measurement

Establishing key performance indicators and systematic data collection processes will allow the DMO to measure the impact of its initiatives over time. This data-driven approach will inform ongoing refinements to the marketing strategy and help justify continued investment in tourism promotion.

By following these best practices, the Lancaster City Bureau of Tourism and Promotions can evolve into a highly effective destination marketing organization that drives increased visitation, extends average length of stay, and supports enhanced economic impact for the city. With the right blend of strategic vision, stakeholder alignment, and operational execution, Lancaster City can position itself as a premier tourism destination within the Pennsylvania Dutch Country region.

Update the Welcome Center

Using funds recently and generously allocated through the City Revitalization Improvement Zone (CRIZ), the City of Lancaster is making plans to update the Welcome Center in Penn Square. The facility is aging and many of the planned upgrades are required to ensure safety codes and federal compliance standards are met.

However, as a part of this effort, the city should explore developing more than a place for brochures and maps to be distributed, and focus on creating a more modern interpretive center dedicated to inviting visitors to understand the city’s history, culture, and welcoming traditions in greater detail.

By thinking of the Welcome Center as more of a “welcome museum” or “interpretive center” that unlocks the story of the city’s 300 years of welcoming tradition, the facility in Penn Square can become an important destination in its own right and serve as a strategic jumping off point for visitors to begin citywide exploration.

Continuing to leverage Penn Square as the hub for travelers seeking to explore the city is a valuable prospect, and continuing to invite local tour guides and other similarly positioned mobile experience guides to collaborate in a similar way is ideal. However, the city should keep in mind that visitors content consumption behaviors are rapidly evolving and that multiple satellite visitor locations or digital experience hubs may soon be needed at multiple points around the city. Places like South Queen Street, the Lancaster City Amtrak station, local parks, and Bethel AME Church could be ideal locations to consider for digital kiosks, mini-rack centers, or visitor concierge desks that help strategically move visitors around the city.

To further enhance the local visitor experience, the city should continue to build-out strategic itineraries and interaction points that can curate a positive visitor experience. This strategy has already proved effective. The 20 existing itineraries currently available were downloaded more than 24,000 times in 2024 alone. Understanding Lancaster City visitors’ oft-cited desire to embrace the walkability of the city, care should be taken to build itineraries around multiple anchor areas that can enable a ‘park once and explore’ experience. By building out multiple high-value districts in this way, the city can increase the attention they get from each visitor and encourage longer stays with more experiences per trip.

Once this strategy is further defined, the program can be implemented and the city can begin to use it to update wayfinding, build business partner toolkits, and increase experience quality and connectivity with strategic partner training, cross-promotion, and coordination. See wayfinding plan on pg. 156.

All efforts should include print, digital, and interactive visitor touch points – and work together to create an omnichannel brand experience that drives awareness, differentiation, reach, recall, resonance, and affinity over time.

By helping visitors understand where they are going and what they can expect to find when they arrive, the city can then highlight its offerings from a more confident position and lean into the reality that Lancaster City is an important part of the larger Pennsylvania and Dutch Country Roads regional story.

By implementing the following best practices, Lancaster City can achieve sustainable tourism growth and maximize economic impact:

Strategic DMO Framework & Implementation Guide

Executive Summary

This comprehensive destination marketing and development plan provides a strategic framework for establishing and growing a successful tourism program for a city of approximately 60,000 residents. The plan integrates brand development, marketing communications, industry engagement, and professional development to create a sustainable tourism ecosystem that benefits the entire community.

Framework Purpose & Objectives

This outline aims to help the new DMO:

Establish a compelling destination brand that authentically represents the community
Create effective marketing and communications strategies to drive visitation
Develop programs that support and enhance local tourism businesses
Build community engagement and professional development opportunities
Measure and track tourism’s positive impact on the local economy

Strategic Framework

Destination Brand Development & Strategy

Brand Discovery Process

Use this Tourism Master Plan research to confirm understanding of:

Community Values

Stakeholder interviews and focus groups
Community surveys and input sessions
Analysis of existing planning documents
Documentation of community priorities

Visitor Research

Current visitor profiles
Target market analysis
Perception studies
Visitor journey mapping

Competitive Analysis

Review of comparable destinations
Market positioning
Unique selling proposition development
Opportunity identification

Brand Platform Development

Core Value Proposition

Brand essence and positioning
Key differentiators
Brand promise
Experience pillars

Brand Architecture

Brand personality
Voice and tone guidelines
Messaging framework
Target audience personas

Visual Identity System

Logo and design elements
Typography and color palette
Photography style guide
Video guidelines
Asset management protocols

2. Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy

Paid Media Strategy

Annual Planning Framework

Seasonal campaign structure
Media mix optimization
Geographic targeting
Budget allocation model
Performance metrics

Channel Strategy

Digital advertising
Print media
Broadcast opportunities
Out-of-home placements
Emerging platforms

Digital Marketing Program

Website Development

User experience optimization
Content strategy
SEO/SEM implementation
Analytics and tracking
Conversion optimization

Content Marketing

Editorial calendar
Asset development
Distribution strategy
Performance measurement
Content partnerships

Earned Media & Influencer Program

Media Relations

Press kit development
Story mining and pitching
Media hosting program
Measurement framework
Crisis communications

Influencer Partnerships

Partner selection criteria
Campaign structure
Content guidelines
ROI measurement
Long-term relationship building

3. Industry Engagement & Support Programs

Cooperative Marketing Program

Partnership Levels

Participation options
Cost-sharing models
Benefits structure
Integration opportunities
Performance tracking

Tourism Grant Program

Program Structure

Eligibility criteria
Application process
Evaluation framework
Reporting requirements
Impact measurement

Business Support Services

Resource Development

Marketing toolkit
Asset sharing platform
Technical assistance
Industry communications
Partner portal

4. Professional Development Program

Marketing Education Series

Workshop Program

Digital marketing fundamentals
Social media best practices
Content creation
Photography/video skills
Analytics and reporting

Hospitality Training

Certification Program

Customer service excellence
Cultural competency
Accessibility awareness
Service recovery
Crisis management

Tourism Ambassador Program