Entered by Tourism Kingston

Just as Kingston’s visitor economy was emerging from the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the bumpy years of rising cost of living and inflation that followed (which suppressed tourism’s recovery, including a soft Q1 in 2025), the U.S. leadership – the team’s closest allies and neighbours across the lake – started a trade war. What’s a place to do?

Thankfully, Kingston has a compelling place brand, an insights dashboard, and a savvy in-house team and agency to tackle the challenge. Any good marketer knows that data is critical. The pandemic, along with evolving consumer habits, revealed deficiencies in the team’s visitor insights, which relied on traditional tourism stats from regional and industry sources – they lagged real-time needs, weren’t specific to Kingston, and offered a limited view. To fix this, they built the Destination Insights Dashboard – a one-stop, multi-source data platform to track visitor behaviour, market trends, and economic impact in near real time. The dashboard empowered the team to maintain stakeholder confidence, strengthen Kingston’s competitive positioning, and act nimbly in the turbulence of a trade war.