Explore St. Louis Gains a Clearer View of Market Performance

From Convention Visibility to Full Market Forecasting

Explore St. Louis had strong visibility into convention center bookings, but needed a broader view of lodging demand across the full market. The team wanted a clearer way to understand what was ahead, identify future periods of opportunity or concern, and align sales, marketing, and stakeholder conversations around trusted forward-looking data.

Tourism Economics partnered with Explore St. Louis on a market-wide lodging forecast that combined macroeconomic indicators, tourism demand drivers, monthly-level projections, and local market context.

To strengthen the forecast, Tourism Economics also made a targeted investment in direct hotelier outreach. Through conversations with local hotel partners, the team gathered qualitative insight that econometric models alone may not fully capture, including shifts in booking behavior, emerging softness in specific months, and broader lodging sentiment across the destination.

Together, the modeling and on-the-ground intelligence gave Explore St. Louis a forecast that was more actionable, more credible with local stakeholders, and better aligned with the way the market actually plans.

The Result

The forecast gave Explore St. Louis a richer understanding of where the lodging market was headed and how to respond proactively.

With monthly projections, the team could identify soft periods and emerging trends with greater confidence. The forecast also clarified the role of group business in overall performance, helping the sales team focus on months where future demand needed additional support.

The insights also informed broader strategic planning, from evaluating leisure marketing investments to aligning resources with anticipated opportunities and challenges. Beyond internal planning, the forecast strengthened Explore St. Louis’s role as a trusted source of market intelligence for hotel partners, stakeholders, and community leaders.

Proven Forecast Accuracy

In the first year of the engagement, Tourism Economics delivered its initial forecast six months before year-end. Despite that extended forecasting horizon, projections averaged just a 1% variance from final full-year results across six key performance metrics.

That level of accuracy gave Explore St. Louis greater confidence in its planning process and strengthened the reliability of hotel tax revenue forecasts, an important input into budgeting and financial decision-making.