Leveraging Artifical Intelligence To Increase Our Impact
Leveraging Artifical Intelligence To Increase Our Impact
At Visit Baltimore, business intelligence is not just a support function— it is a strategic engine that informs decisions across marketing, sales, partner engagement and citywide collaborations.
Our Business Intelligence team uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to guide strategic planning and resource allocation. We deliver actionable intelligence to our convention sales team, enabling them to target meetings and events that best align with our city’ s assets and convention center capabilities. Additionally, we supply our hotel partners and stakeholders with seasonal forecasting and trend analysis to help navigate the shifting tourism landscape.
Through strong inter-agency collaboration, our team also sits at the table with city leaders to shape data-driven solutions that support city-wide development and elevate the Baltimore narrative. Whether it’ s uncovering macro-visitor trends or performing deep-dive market segmentation, our focus remains on transforming data into strategy.
Visit Baltimore stays on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, embedding ethical and strategic AI usage into everyday operations. We’ ve built an internal AI cohort composed of cross-departmental leaders who champion the integration of emerging tools across the organization. These include Placer. ai, Fireflies. ai, ChatGPT, Google Notebook LM, Microsoft Copilot and Jasper.
INSIGHTS THAT DRIVE MARKETING STRATEGY
Our approach to marketing is powered by insight, not instinct. For example, over the past four years, we’ ve tracked consistent demand for Visiting Friends and Relatives( VFR) travel— a segment that continues to outperform the national average. According to Longwoods International, 50 % of overnight visitors to Baltimore in 2024 were VFR travelers, compared to 41 % nationally.
In collaboration with Future Partners, we also analyze traveler sentiment data. One key insight: some of Baltimore’ s most critical perception challenges stem from local and regional residents within a 150-mile radius. This data has been instrumental in shaping campaigns that rebuild confidence and pride among city residents and suburban neighbors— a foundational step in increasing regional visitation.
We also integrate multiple intelligence dashboards, including CoStar and Tourism Economics’ Symphony, to layer Smith Travel Research( STR) insights with local event data. This allows us to correlate visitor demand with high-impact events. Since 2023, we’ ve tied peak hotel performance periods directly to events like Preakness, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen concerts.
Placer. ai has been transformative for analyzing visitation patterns across the city. We now track not only volume and frequency of visits but also visitor journey behavior, including where guests go, how long they stay and what types of businesses they interact with. A prime example is the CIAA Basketball Tournament, where our visitation intelligence showed which schools brought the largest alumni presence. That data informed hotel room block allocation and targeted marketing efforts. When analysis revealed that a significant number of CIAA attendees were leaving the city to dine at buffets— impacting local dining revenue— we shared insights with our hotel partners, many of whom pivoted to offer buffet-style dining, successfully recapturing visitors. In 2025, dining accounted for 30 % of visitor spending related to CIAA— a direct result of datainformed strategy.
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