Austria’s national visitor statistics success
In a recent interview in this blog, leading tourism attraction owner Freda Rapson of Jacobite explained why she believed joined up destination visitor data should be a research priority for Scotland’s tourism industry. She mentioned how a learning journey to Austria had really opened her eyes to just how valuable nationally collected visitor information could be.
So it was terrific to be able to discuss this very subject with Martin Schobert, from the Austrian National Tourist Office (Österreich Werbung). Martin is Region Manager for Austria and responsible for both research and knowledge transfer. He is also one of regular bloggers at the Austrian National Tourist Office’s corporate blog: Kulinarisch Reisen.
Martin explained the practicalities of the Austrian visitor data system:
“In Austria there is a central register of residents (population) and therefore it is ruled by law that also each visitor has to register when he/she stays at a commercial accommodation. So it is Government requirement to log everybody that arrives in Austria. Each region/city is responsible for collecting this data and they send it to a federal data collection organisation. It is then sent to a national organisation called Statistik Austria and they are our partner organisation.”
The paper based system is all implemented through the accommodation provider and data collection is a governmental regulation. Visitors register on arrival, using a simple form (one per party) and then there is no additional time or resource required. While only one person fills it out, the form records group size and where the visitor came from, and of course, this also ties this back to the specific type and class of accommodation visited.
The official form has four copies, which means that not only does the government and national statistics office have access to the data, but the individual business also has a full and standardised record of all guest data.
Martin adds “it is very easy for us to access this data but it’s a huge and difficult process to organise!”
Yet the data is typically then available just 2 or 3 months later, which strikes me as pretty quick. All the statistics are available online and can be seen for free at TourMIS. It is a system everyone can use.
As Martin explains “it helps benchmarking for destinations and federal provinces but it also means businesses do not have to do this work themselves.” Its no surprise then that Martin says Österreich Werbung is “very glad with the system – and it costs us nothing because it’s a governmental regulation.”
There is also potential for the TourMIS system to be used by other countries. As Marin points out, the data is there and in co-operation with the European travel commission and other bodies, it is a model others can use.
Due to data protection, the personal data is only allowed to be used for marketing purposes by the individual accommodation businesses. These retain their own copy of the personal registration details of their own guests.
But the Austrian National Tourist Office may use the anonymous data for marketing “intelligence” and market research purposes, which given the completeness of the data set, is still powerful stuff.
Going forward, Statistik Austria is looking to include more country of origin references (for example, singling out Dubai from the Arabic countries now they have opened new office there).
Martin adds “the only thing we can’t solve right now is the difference between business and leisure travel – because there is no official need to differentiate on this on the official form. It seems pretty simple, but actually it is difficult to get form amended.”
No doubt this is something the team will overcome, making there data even more powerful and allowing even greater targeting and segmentation of Austria’s national marketing.
Is this something Scotland can do?
To come back to the question Freda Rapson originally posed – if Austria can get this data, why can’t Scotland? – I asked Martin if he thought their system was something Scotland (and indeed other destinations) can emulate.
His answer: “Yes. But it has to be Scotland-wide, because if collection is not obligatory (and ideally organised by the local authorities, because tourism organisations never would be able to afford this registration-process) and nation-wide on the exactly the same criteria, it doesn’t work. The results will not be good enough to compare to each other.” And normally, businesses have to do this research themselves so they do not get this standardisation or quality, which is why Scottish tourism organisations have to make a case for a national system.
Certainly, Austria’s paper based system of national visitor registration clearly works for them and is enhancing both national marketing and the performance of individual businesses.
Is there any reason why the same approach wouldn’t work here? I’d especially love to hear from you if you have first hand experience of visitor data capture systems used by other destinations worldwide.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 3:48 pm and is filed under Destination research, Industry interview, National tourism strategy, Public policy, 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.