ABSTRACT
The National DMOs surveyed did exhibit a high level of awareness and understanding concerning the global marketing and customer engagement potential of new media and there was considerable enthusiasm for moving forward in this area. The progress being made needs to be seen in the context of the potential business benefits to be derived by National DMOs from proactive social media engagement. The key research objective was to update the 2008 benchmark evaluation of Web 2.0/social media adoption levels by leading National DMOs in Europe. To allow direct comparisons with the 2008 study, the same sample of National DMOs was evaluated comprising the 21 major country destinations in Europe in terms of international arrivals. Although some progress had been made since our previous study, the main conclusion of our 2010 benchmark evaluation is that the leading National DMOs in Europe are still not fully engaging with social media.
