Market research can often be seen as a luxury or too complicated for smaller tourism businesses and, as such, it can be low down their list of priorities. However, the term ‘market research’ covers a multitude of areas, some of which might be more achievable than others for smaller operators. This article is the first in a coming series outlining methods and approaches to market research a tourism business can use and help them identify where a little effort might mean a big reward.
Before we deal with the detail though, it is perhaps worthwhile reminding ourselves of some really basic rules:
1. Seek only information you can act on.
It might be interesting to learn that the majority of your guests are Hungarians who wear size 9 shoes and think your local area is beautiful. But how much of that information is useful to you? In the (flippant) example above, the fact that the visitors are Hungarian is important (it helps you target marketing or deliver service in the right language) but the rest of the information serves little purpose – it is either irrelevant or its not an area about which you can do anything.
2. If you don’t listen to the answer, don’t ask the question.
If customers are telling you that they think your decor is naff, don’t ignore them because you don’t like what they’re saying. If the evidence suggests that your customers want a change, it’s probably in your interest to listen to them and act on their advice.
3. Always measure marketing activity
If you don’t know whether the marketing is working, why are you doing it? The chances are that some of your marketing works and some doesn’t. Do you know which is which?
4. You are a big influence on how people will respond to market research questions.
Its human nature to a) give the response required by the person asking the questions and b) it is human for the person doing the asking to phrase the question in such a way as to get the answer they are looking for. This is nice in the short-term because you’ll think everything is rosy but it simply means that people are sparing you their true judgment if things aren’t so good. This is also known as ‘lying through their teeth.’ As such, questions need to be put in such an environment that allows customers to feel they can be honest without reprisals. This means, for example, that standing over them as they fill out a questionnaire is probably not the best way to get honest views.
5. Market Research doesn’t need to be expensive
The more you pay, the more reliable and accurate the results will be but sometimes a ‘quick, dirty and often’ approach is going to be far more valuable to the time-stretched B&B owner than a thorough market segmentation exercise of their guests. Market Research isn’t just about gathering huge amounts of numbers and ticks in boxes – it’s about finding out how people respond to certain offers, it’s about how ‘usable’ people find your offering and it’s about managing your band, for example.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Tourism market research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.