Zartico, creators of the world's only Destination Operating System, recently secured $20 million in Series A funding. Based in Salt Lake City, the company uses data intelligence, analytics and visualizations to help destination tourism organizations make data driven strategic decisions regarding content and operations. According to a recent press release, Zartico has raised a total of $24.5 million to date.
With more than 180 customers nationwide, including Life Utah Elevated, Visit Florida, and Memphis Tourism, Zartico is redefining how Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) operate. By layering proprietary comprehensive data on top of customer data and publicly available data, they are able to offer anonymized geolocation spend and event data for a comprehensive view of visitor behavior and activity.
Wit Tuttell, Director of Visit North Carolina and U.S. Travel 2022 State Tourism Director of the Year, described his experience using Zartico technology stating,
"Working with Zartico, we’ve been able to more effectively target our marketing efforts and increase partnerships to increase jobs throughout the state. After seeing the benefits of making data-driven decisions, we will never go back to the data stone age."
In 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, The U.S. Department of Commerce reported that international visitors spent $233.5 billion touring and experiencing the nation, bringing nearly $640 million a day to the U.S. economy and supporting 9.5 million jobs.
Zartico CEO, Sara Lehman, stated,
"The visitor economy contributes 10% to the global GDP, yet it is one of the last to embrace big data and analytics, relying instead on quarterly and yearly reports that are almost instantly outdated. By layering and analyzing rich datasets, we provide some of the world’s most popular destinations with insight into where their visitors are coming from and the attractions driving the most interest, enabling them to better market, and more importantly, manage their visitor economy more effectively."
Funding was led by Arthur Ventures, with participation from Salt Lake City based Peterson Partners. According to the press release, Zartico anticipates a 70% increase in employee headcount within the next six months and has intentions to increase market presence by acquiring new proprietary data sets and entering new markets, such as sports venues, airports, and municipalities.
For more information on the company and its offerings, check out their blog posts on the five foundations of a contemporary destination organization, designated marketing areas (DMA), and intelligence briefings.
