US DMOs and Meeting Planners, do they really ENGAGE with each other? Customer engagement in the context of event industry

Abstract

Although customer engagement has become a prominent issue in the tourism industry, it has not been defined nor uniformly measured due to a variety of factors. While meeting planners are important customers to DMOs, their engagement with DMOs has rarely been studied. This study tests a model of meeting planners’ engagement in DMOs. The two-step data analysis using 305 meeting planners’ responses supported the proposed hypotheses and confirmed the moderating effect of reputation on meeting planners’ engagement. This study will help DMOs to achieve effective marketing strategies in the event destination industry.

Keywords:

• Customer engagement
• destination management organization
• familiarity
• meeting planners
• reputation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.