Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Archive for the ‘Destination research’ Category

So…we’re all open minded, liberal in outlook and, above all, lacking in prejudice aren’t we? Well, as with many things, the answer isn’t perhaps what you would like it to be and is more complex than it first appears.

The bottom line, in my experience, is that people are prejudiced and you need to be aware of this when marketing your destination.

When I say prejudiced, it should be understood that I don’t mean bigoted or chauvinistic (although there is a part of the market that is). What I mean instead is that we all have preconceived ideas about destinations that mean we unconsciously use these prejudices as filters in our decision processes.

But how do you discover what people’s prejudices are and, more importantly, how can you change them?

Well, the answer is, in the first place, to really get under your potential customer’s skin. And I don’t just mean doing a quick survey but really getting into their way of thinking because a glibly expressed prejudice (”I don’t fancy a holiday in Germany” for example) can actually be just the visible expression of a complex set of ideas.

We’ve just finished an evaluation of a UK wide marketing campaign for an overseas destination and its reminded us of how powerful qualitative research is at revealing the kinds of small preconceptions we all carry that act as barriers in our decision to choose one destination over another.

I’m not going to name the destination and I’m not going to discuss specific results - the clients paid me to deliver the work to them and not broadcast it openly on the internet, so you’ll have to bear with me on that one! But I can use heavily disguised fictitious examples of the kinds of the insights we received to illustrate the points.

Before I do, I do appreciate that a lot of people remain wary of qualitative research – the term ‘focus group’ especially seems to provoke some pretty sceptical reactions. It seems to have connotations of flimsy insight, people telling you want you want to hear, management fads and slightly distasteful associations with unprincipled political processes.

Handled badly this is indeed what you will get for your money. Handled well, however, and you start to gain a richness beyond bare numbers.

So, lets look at some of those disguised examples:

“I like the marketing campaign image of the jet skiing – I just thought the area was rainy and grey but the blue sea makes me realise that it could be a warm beach destination as well!” 

Note that the original intention of the image being discussed in the example above was to convey a more active and sporty image for the destination, not one that was suggestive of the climate. However, it revealed that other people in the target group had the idea that the destination was cold and grey – this was their prejudiced view of the destination.

Now, before we go further, perhaps a little more about prejudice. As I suggested above, prejudice is one very human way of making decisions quickly. I’m not saying that the decision is rational (a suspicion of someone based on skin colour is clearly irrational in a modern person for example) but just because it is an ‘unthinking’ response, it doesn’t mean that it is an irrelevant response. Lets go back to the example above to illustrate that point further.

People who go on holiday with young children know that climate plays a much more important role in the experience than it might for a childless couple. If a destination is too hot, your children need to be protected. If it’s too wet, they need to be entertained. And you can’t just go to the pub/museum/cinema/shops with them – they need appropriate attention for young children. So, reassurance that a destination has a good climate is ticking an unconscious box in the minds of parents, despite the fact that the message contained in the original image was aimed at someone different (hedonistic 20-30 year olds for example).

In our example, the parents’ prejudice expressed as ‘cold and grey’ was a mask for a more complex and rational set of deliberations they employ when making a decision about the right destination to take children to.

“It’s great to experience local culture but a good hotel offers a sense of real sanctuary from all that – there comes a point when you want to shut the door and relax and know you will be safe and unhassled”

Now, a statement expressed in terms like this is probably not one that would not be made in every part of the world, although a variation of it might well be universal. The underlying desire is for security and a sense of ‘circling the wagons’ in order to catch your breath at the end of the day. But would you necessarily express it like that if you were holidaying , say, in North West Scotland? My guess is that it more likely to be something said by someone who expects to experience a vibrant but slightly chaotic culture destination. There are positives in this person’s statement (they think they can interact safely with the local culture) but it should also be recognised that they think there is a slightly wilder element and so need reassurance that they can (literally) shut the door on all that.

So what?

The examples above both demonstrate that certain market segments have preconceived ideas about an area that mean that they quickly discard some options without serious consideration. Understanding the reasons behind these notions means that you can start to answer them head on. In the examples I used above, the person speaking needed reassurance that their discomfort and bother would be minimised, and even though they received this tangentially, the destination’s marketing did tackle their concerns.

The point is, however, that you won’t know what really makes your customer’s tick unless you listen to them. And it’s not just about listening – it’s also about hearing what isn’t being said and what is being said, but in a disguised way.

Quick! Call the police!

There’s probably another blog post altogether in this observation but I’ve often been struck at how the techniques used by the police in interviews and techniques used in a focus group are similar. I’ll stress that I’ve never been interviewed myself by the police but policemen I know have described their interview methods to me and there are a lot of similarities – you’re both interested in peeling away the outer layer of stories to see if there is anything more underneath.

So, if any of you know policemen or women, ask them about ‘softly softly’ interview techniques – they might just come in useful when listening to your customers!

Local destination management and marketing groups face a challenge.

They need to make a strong demonstration of their value and impact in order to attract and retain the participation of local tourism businesses. Yet their outputs are not necessarily easily expressed in terms of direct sales.

National tourism data is rarely expressed in a way that reflects the specific geographic area of interest to the local organisation. Nor do they necessarily get to see the member businesses sales data that arise from their efforts - making straight return on investment calculations challenging.

So, how can local destination marketing and management groups demonstrate value?

Defining success on your terms

Until you really define success, you can’t measure it. But again, at a local destination level, it isn’t always easy.

For the individual tourism business, success is ultimately defined by revenue. No profits, then eventually no business. Occupancy rates, spend per head and customer satisfaction are all useful performance indicators - but cash is king.

At a national level, tourism success is judged by criteria closely allied to government goals and interests. These include economic indicators (such as tourism share of employment and gdp, or growth in revenues). They may also be linked to inward investment, international image and brand perception.

But for local destinations and their marketing groups - from tourism groups, chambers of commerce, to formal destination management organisations - simply defining success can be a lot harder.

This is because the tourism marketing goals of local destinations are not always simply a case of increasing overall visitor numbers. But pinning down that definition of success is critical, because it is what all goals, strategies and demonstration of results ultimately hinge on.

So what form might success take for a local destination?

• increasing or widening the distribution of visitor spend
• shifting the brand position, for example to a more luxury destination
• growing spend, tax revenues or number of bednights per visit
• boosting local employment off peak season
• increasing online visibility of the destination
• regenerating economic or environmental decay
• building a sustainable community tourism model
• increasing visitor participation in events & activities
• improving the competitiveness or attractiveness of the destination, compared to others

There may even be a degree of social enterprise, redistributing the benefits of economies of scale to community businesses.

So, with so many possible options for what success might constitute to a local destination, defining precisely what the goals and objectives are is the first major step towards demonstrating how successfully they’re being achieved.

From there it becomes easier to match those goals to possible performance indicators.

Know where you are now, as well as where you want to be

It is only possible to demonstrate the impact of your efforts if have some kind of starting point to measure from. Ideally that means a proper destination audit, including an honest assessment of the current performance and resources. When doing this kind of research, we tend to look both at the supply side resources, quality, capacity and distribution. We also look at the demand side by speaking to visitors about quality of their experience and where possible examining comment data.

Its also important to define a timed framework of where you want to get next - after all, sometimes success for a destination in simply stopping further decline.

Once you know where you are and the time frame for action, it makes it easier to look at your data sources and pick your benchmarks.

What are your data sources?

Perhaps more than any type of tourism organisation, local groups suffer from lack of ownership of the critical revenue and satisfaction data they need to measure their success. Therefore as I see it, at least two options are open.

1) Do a really good job of convincing local business to share their data with you. This could be by offering more value and analysis from that information than it would have in isolation (ie the whole visit view, rather than a view of one link in the chain).

2) Pick benchmarks that you can control and relate to the data you do have access to. This could involve doing your own periodic surveys, using local tax data, using web analytics data, or as I have described previously - working with something as practical as sewage data!

These are not exclusive, of course - you can do both. But there is no need to let the fact you can’t get sales data be a barrier to measuring your success.

Selecting your measurement criteria

Ultimately, you won’t know if you’re successful or not if you don’t measure consistently.

A handful of key performance indicators, ratios that are benchmarked over time, will reveal your progress.

And these don’t need to be hugely complex. For example, a key performance indicator related to increasing visitor participation in events & activities could be the ratio of non local postcodes amongst total event attendees.

Keeping measures/KPIs strongly aligned to the goals/stated success outcomes also helps to really tighten the focus on what information is going to be needed from others.

If the tourism group then needs to ask member businesses for specific information to help that measurement, or they need to conduct research directly, they will be able to restrict their efforts to just looking at those factors that matter (as opposed to thankless task of trying to measure everything!)

So, to conclude, the key to getting to grips with local tourism success is first to really define what a successful outcome is.

From there, gather relevant supporting evidence to assess whether the goal has been achieved (by gathering your own data or asking local businesses to provide only what is really required). Keep it simple by only measuring and reporting on what really matters to you. Finally, communicate your success back to the area, backed up with tangible data!

How can you convey the real feel of a place online?

Over the last few weeks of conducting web research with real site visitors, I have been reminded that while facts are important online, decisions are made with the heart.

While exploring a series of sites, the users consistently told me “it doesn’t give me a feel of the place”, “its better on facts than feelings”, “I don’t really connect with it emotionally” and “I want to be able to imagine what it is really like”.

Anticipation, imagination, emotional connections - isn’t that a pretty tall order for a humble website?

Not really - after all, we’re talking travel, not concrete, enemas or animal feed.

The Internet is full of travellers already sharing their experiences and feelings about tourism destinations and businesses. Tapping into that (or simply learning from their vocabulary and examples) will help you ensure visitors can’t help but feel their hearts flutter!

So how can you inject a bit of soul and feeling into you site? Here’s a bit of insight I can share from my recent research - and I again thank the participants for their forthrightness!

1. “Show me, don’t make me read”

100 useful words and one useless yellow button and what do you think gets all the attention? People will read when they’re ready, but it is only one way to make an impression and a fairly considered one at that. Irrational excitement and anticipation comes from engaging several senses and igniting imagination. The users I was working with said “show me,” and who could argue that this display of the Northern Lights is better watched than read.

And the same could apply to “let me listen.” (Check out this evocative audio of waves breaking on Pebble Beach, Victoria, Canada and tell me you aren’t moved just a little?)

Text isn’t the only option online and potential travellers want their senses tickled!

2. Using images and multimedia

“TVtrip films your hotel (for free!) and your hotel is then featured on TVtrip.com… You also receive a copy of the video to use on your own website, again for free.”

So tickling senses is all very well, but video, audio, high quality images - that all sounds jolly expensive. And it is true that should you wish, you can quickly blow your annual budget by making stuff look really, really pretty.

But it doesn’t just have to be your content that you use. Before you call the police, I’m not suggesting you steal anything or use any content without permission. Because the fact is your visitors, people in you area, friends and strangers are taking all photos, making videos and uploading them to the web. Flickr and Youtube are some of the most visited properties on the web. You can choose to link to that content, or you can go further and either ask if you can access the content for your site, or invite people to submit it to you directly.

There are also companies like TVTrip who will produce cheap or free multimedia content for you. They make their money on the usual affiliate model, happy in the knowledge that multimedia content has a great uplift on hotel bookings. You can (but of course) see their explanatory video here.

3. Testimony - don’t just take my word for it

I’ve already written about why you shouldn’t be afraid of Tripadvisor and should be brave enough to share your user reviews direct with potential customers. But if that is simply a leap too far, you can still tap into the power of realistic, authentic testimonials.

The wise and delightful Sean de Souza has a great article called Is There Too Much Sugar In Your Testimonials? There’s a danger of on-site testimonials seeming phoney, but a sprinkle of realism and some photos for a personal touch make them far more credible. But nothing beats unbiased, off-site comments - and you can always link direct when you earn these. ExtramileScotland is a great example.

4. Ground the place in relative terms

“So where is it then?… Where is it near?… Where in relation to London?” Pretty obvious questions when you think about it, but you can really convey a sense of place when you ground yourself relative to a better known or more evocative destinations. Not only does this improve your search engine rankings, it allows potential visitors to make a mental map of where you fit in to the wider context of their travels.

5. Cater for multiple perspectives

People like pictures of people like them.

Hence me including this entirely gratuitous photo of travel bloggers.

But what is familiar, engaging and reassuring to some (like white water rafting or travel blogging) is dreary or downright off putting to others.

To build emotional connections for different segments in your target market, it is important to carefully choose a range of people focussed images that broadly reflects these different groups, their interests and tastes. You can probably narrow your key market segments down to between 4 and 7 groups, so there’s no need to go picture crazy.

Are your senses tickled yet?

Hopefully I’ve conveyed to you that web visitors are open to sensory stimulation on multiple levels. And when they find it, the results are typically greater emotional engagement and increased likelihood to buy.

Sadly I failed in my quest to tingle all your main senses, so if anyone knows of a smelly or edible website, please let me know!

It has been said again and again. Your competition is not the business next door. Your competition is not the next town or the next region. Your direct competition is are the other destinations (and other distractions) all over the world that could cause your prospective visitor to never even arrive on your shores, yet alone at your doors.

But sometimes, pictures speak louder than words.

This week at ITB the world’s tourism destinations were on display. An attractive, dizzying whirl of infinite travel possibilities, all chasing a finite visitor spend.

So take a glimpse at your competition.

Which destinations really stood out?

India was again incredibly impressive. I have previously posted here about the Incredible India campaign and I am a big fan of the marketing and strategic efforts being made by India to dramatically grow its inbound tourism. Those efforts were in full flow at ITB and business was clearly being done.

The efforts seem to be paying off - compared to 2006, foreign tourists earnings grew 33.8%, with 2006 having previously registered a growth of 19.2% over 2005 (more facts and figures here). As hosts of the 2010 Commonwealth Games and with an aggressive tourism growth strategy in place, it seems likely that growth will continue.

Poland – not surprisingly given its geographic proximity to Germany, Poland’s presence at ITB was extensive and compelling. With dramatic landscapes, historic buildings and deep culture it represents an interesting potential competitor to Scotland. Poland also now has an extensive expatriate population working across the EU and beyond, who are effectively prospective return visitors (just as the Scottish and Indian Diaspora represent prime targets in their “home” markets).

Euromonitor predicts the hosting of Euro 2012 will be a significant development factor for Poland’s tourism industry: “This third largest sports competition in the world will intensively impact the development of such sectors as hotels, foodservice and transportation. Rough estimates are that about EUR50 billion will be spent in the coming years to ensure that the complete infrastructure is in place for this large event.”

The Faroe Islands – now with a direct flight from London’s Stansted Airport, Faroe is in its own words “bypassing Shetland” where the visitors from London previously used to land. Like Shetland, its remoteness is an attraction, but it comes at the price of high transportation costs (though it does not regard itself as being as expensive as Iceland, for example). Also like Scotland’s Northern Isles, the Faroe Islands lead on the natural environment and historic culture and it is focussing product development on areas like cycling, hiking, seabirds, diving and fishing.

Scandinavia – sited right next to the UK stand (embracing an individual presence for Scotland, Wales, England and London) was the united front of Scandinavia. Featuring Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, the Scandinavian group has some of the strongest destinations for natural beauty, environmental and eco-tourism. Most of the group are experiencing fairly consistent tourism growth.

Like parts of Scotland, some of Scandinavia suffers from extreme seasonality in its tourism, with summer the most popular time to visit. Iceland, according to Euromonitor, has managed to curtail this somewhat in the past few years with strategies to attract convention and incentive travellers as well as those looking for a city break. Evidence suggests it is en route to becoming a major destination.

So, how does a destination compete with the rest of the world?

To get insight into this I’d recommend checking out the Country Brand Index research by FutureBrand. This highly useful and in-depth annual research ranks key tourism destinations according to factors such as assets, reputation, experiences and perceptions.

Australia leads the overall country brand index. India was number 1 for authenticity in the 2006 country brand index, with New Zealand leading in 2007 (all extremely strongly marketed destinations). Sweden topped the environmental rankings in 2007, with Croatia named as rising star. (Poland also appears in the top 10 places on their way to becoming major destinations).

In their 2006 report, FutureBrand explained:

“A country’s ability to be authentic, deliver authentic and communicate authentic is probably one of its biggest destination advantages today.”

“People want to experience the true essence of a different place. This is the magic of a country brand.”

But in such a competitive market, destinations are struggling.

“Within the sea of print collateral, few country brands stand out. In addition to having similar language and tone, many ads and brochures share a similar look and feel. In fear of narrow-casting or focusing on one core asset, many countries go in the reverse direction and link to sweeping and generic words like “truly” or “amazing.” They feature hero shots of sky, beach and other stereotypical images of “paradise” and “culture,” employing a wide palette of bold colors. This attempt to grab consumers and invite them to think about vacationing as the realization of dream, discovery and relaxation has become undifferentiated in a saturated marketplace.”

The destinations I highlighted above have not made this mistake (nor do other leading destinations, including in my opinion Scotland). They have a strong sense of identity and authenticity and they focus on the core values at the heart of the brand.

Many of Euromonitor’s top 150 city destinations worldwide, which account for 27% of the global inbound tourism in terms of arrivals, also demonstrate these same features. This suggests that authenticity and a focus on unique, defining character is a far more potent strategy than attempting to promote a destination as a generalist “something for everyone”.

Do you agree? What country destinations do you think the competition should be aware of?

Authentic, beautiful, current: why Flickr could be the destination marketers dream

I wish that every tourist considering a visit to Scotland could have their taste buds tickled by the Scotland group on Flickr.

Its stunning images, a selection are shown here in its group blog, represent the best visualisations of Scotland - both in terms of traditionally “postcard” imagery, but also of the daily life of a modern country.

Unlike photographs commissioned in advance for print, these images emerge in near real time, reflecting the changes in seasons and highlighting exceptional events and sights. As a result, I believe they reflect the heartbeat of the country.

But its not just tourists who should be paying serious attention to these destination groups on Flickr.

The people contributing photos to the Scotland group (and other destination groups like it) are producing an authetic, passionate commentary about a tourism destination, that is there for the world to read. It’s because of this that I think destination marketers and researchers should be paying more attention to Flickr than they currently are.

Using the example of the Scotland group, it is participative in a way that reinforces the attractiveness of the destination to the visitor. In the discussion threads, the comments and images of residents are combined with the reminiscences of ex-pats, former students and previous visitors. They are interspersed with comments from people expressing anticipation, excitement and desire to visit Scotland.

In a quick analysis of an 85 post discussion thread entitled “Who are you and where are you from?” I found that while around 60% of participants currently live in Scotland, around 10% are from England or elsewhere in the UK and 30% are from outside the UK.

The non-Scotland based members have an opportunity to maintain and even strengthen their bond with the country by sustaining the interaction with the place, despite the distance.

Having removed any personal identifiers, I ran the words in the discussion thread through a tag cloud generator, in order to identify some of the most frequent terms used:

The results are not just about traditional imagery, castles and scenery. Instead very dynamic, emotional terms emerge - living, love, beautiful, family, best, originally. This is a vocabulary that embodies connection and engagement.

And the Scotland group is not some lone exception. I’ve run similar threads from other destination groups through the same process and the themes are the same: “Love, living, enjoy, moved, feels, visit”

This is engagement and it is real. And it’s what potential visitors trust, often to a greater extent than the formal marketing messages a destination produces.

So how do destinations embrace the Flickr effect?

Firstly, I think it is important to recognise critical mass when you see it and not try to go head to head in competition with a force like Flickr. But I also think it can be used far more effectively than it currently is.

For market insight, yes.

But perhaps more importantly as an embodiment of the pulse of a place.

As an example, two weeks ago the city of Inverness where I live celebrated the end of its year of Highland Culture with an almighty fireworks display by the team behind the Sydney Olympics fireworks. Less than an hour after the event, the first very high quality pictures were on Flickr. The picture used by the BBC website was from a local Flickr star.

By the next day a dozen or more people had posted pictures - many of which attracted hundreds of views from people worldwide. I suspect the PR for the destination functioned more effectively in this Flickr context than it did in the traditional offline and online media, where grumbles about costs soured the coverage.

A destination’s marketing team can’t be everywhere, all the time. It can’t afford to constantly produce a high quality, real-time visualisation of what being there is really like. But on a site like Flickr, there are passionate individuals that can and will achieve this. This is an incredible opportunity as long as destinations can find a way to engage with these individuals, rather than expolit them.

Perhaps one answer is a destination endorsed “access all areas” pass for key Flickrites?

More bums on seats in Tahoe

I’m afraid I can’t resist highlighting this fantastic example of working with the data sources that you have.

The Tahoe Daily Tribune reports how clued-up officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District can get a good sense of the number of tourists in their coverage area by literally measuring their outputs.

Yup, they’re making a pretty good estimate of month on month visitor levels by essentially measuring “the sewage flow” that results from the area’s toilets getting flushed.

Above normal volumes of flushing presumably indicates either a swathe of stomach bugs, or more visitor bottoms on toilet seats. And they can cross reference with water use to determine that it is the latter!

The Tahoe Daily Tribune says that officials have noted that: “While the numbers paint a dismal portrait of travel to the South Shore for December, increased sewage flows followed early January storms that dropped feet of snow and spurred travel to the region.

Sewage flows from Jan. 12 and 13, the weekend after the series of storms, jumped above 4 million gallons per day, besting each daily sewage flow seen during the first three weeks in December.”

The article goes on to report that the “information correlates with anecdotal evidence from South Shore business organizations” but that “the Visitors Authority uses a more traditional approach when analyzing the number of people in town by looking at the revenue generated by the transient occupancy tax.”

I love that the smart thinking officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District understand their data and its implications for what it is - quantifiable evidence of people and their associated behaviours.

And even those hard to measure part-day trippers need the loo - making me think that this is a measurement with potential!

Think I’ve gone too easy on the puns? I just have too much respect for the data! But read this great post from the Lake Tahoe Real Estate blog about the same story which crams in every pun and joke that I’ve resisted making - and a whole lot more.

Any other clever destinations out there that are counting their visitors’ outputs?

Come on, tell us, we won’t laugh!

I noticed this interesting article recently on the BBC website about (from a UK perspective) the ‘other’ EU Capital of Culture this year: Stavanger. For those of you not familiar with the Capital of Culture concept, it probably best explained as an opportunity for selected European cities to showcase themselves and raise their profile as visitor destinations and investment opportunities.

The BBC article made me think not so much the differences in ‘artistic’ emphasis between Liverpool and Stavanger as ‘rival’ Capitals of Culture but what those differences say about how a destination responds to its unique set of social and economic circumstances.

To put it simply, Liverpool’s response is one that recognizes the value of tourism in a local economy that’s had a rough time over the last 30 years while Stavanger’s response seems to be one that is preparing the ground for diversification of the local economy in the future.

While Stavanger is a rich economy at the moment, people I spoke to when I did some tourism research work there a few years ago seemed aware that, before the North Sea oil boom (the basis for the present wealth), the area was considerably different. These same people were also aware that North Sea oil was declining as a resource and that the economy would need to diversify in order to pick up some of this slack.

An example of this was in the excellent Oil Museum that acts not only as an educative, cultural and visitor resource but also hosts activities that are looking to retain sector expertise locally and develop value added services in the sector beyond the ‘natural’ lifecycle of the product.

So what is this saying to me from a tourism perspective? Well, it saying that big facts need big solutions but that you often have enough time to respond to them if you read your intelligence correctly.

I noted recently that Vancouver was facing the big issue of an aging population by improving physical access through the excuse of the forthcoming Paralympics. Likewise, I suspect that Stavanger is facing up to a future without the benefit of oil through exploitation of it natural visitor benefits and City of Culture status is a good excuse to get this transition underway.

Both cities are using publicly available data in order to (probably) formulate long-term strategic destination decisions. In Scotland, VisitScotland has led the charge through its formidable scenario planning team to identify future trends, challenges and opportunities and I suspect other countries and regions have done something similar. For many savvy destinations, their prospects are clear enough but the challenge will be in making sure they are not overtaken by future.

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Image courtesy of Stavanger 2008

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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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Five tips to keep costly market research from gathering dust

I have a sneaking suspicion that the more a piece of market research costs, the less likely it is to actually be read.

All around the world, tourism research carefully generated by government bodies, universities, DMOs and private companies is propping up wobbly desks, mopping up spilt coffee and gathering dust in forgotten corners.

Meanwhile killer competitive insights remain undiscovered by those that could turn them into profitable business decisions.

The problem does not so much lie with the quality of the research, nor the competence of those that commissioned it. I believe the biggest make or break factor for the usefulness of any knowledge is how effectively it can be transferred out of the researchers’ brains and into the brains of those who are in a position to act on it.

I recently asked some busy, busy clients how I could better help them consume the research they had paid for. The most common answer (almost unanimous in fact) was to implant it straight into their brains!

Now, I’m not sure those direct-to-brain research implants are quite ready to hit the streets yet (something to do with short-circuiting ipods).

So in the meantime, here are my top tips for ensuring the insight from research gets successfully transferred to those who can actually do something based on it. (Brain image by Cloois on Flickr)

1. Put a human face on it

People trump numbers and charts every time. Finding a way to bring your numbers and analysis back to people is a sure way to get people paying attention.

One of the techniques I use for this is the development of personas (see the simple example in the graphic below). I distil key customer segmentation information and put an appropriate human face on it, based on known characteristics, phrases and behaviours.

The impact is massive, because well-crafted visitor personas are intuitively grasped by people that would otherwise struggle to get their head round research data in other forms.

When you hear businesses in a DMO referring to a visitor segment by name, you know knowledge has been transferred to where it belongs.

But a human face doesn’t just mean complex persona development. Researchers are great at stripping the human element out of the research process until nothing but hard data remains (and there are some good reasons for this).

Yet for effective knowledge transfer, look at getting some of those real words and real people back in.

A real person expressing their own views (whether on video, audio in writing) will have way more impact on an audience than pages of skilfully crafted data interpretation.

The human face is also invaluable in transferring insight to staff members with little customer contact. You should see the look on the face of a member of staff when they understand for the first time the impact of their efforts on a real person’s life.

2. Apply to so what factor (or addressing what’s in it for me?)

Research agencies and academics may not object to research for research’s sake, but the rest of the world tends to ask “so what?” or indeed utter less polite equivalents.

So what?, Why should I care?, What’s in it for me? – fail to address these objections at your peril. I’ve written lots about the “so what?” factor, so I won’t labour it here. But in short, forget the “this is so fascinating” and skip to the “this will make you a lot of money”. Ears will soon prick up.

3. Less is more

It takes way more time to write a short report than it does to write a long one. Tough, because less really is more when it comes to acting on research.

If you need different lengths, styles and formats different internal audiences, take this into account from the start. Just don’t send the CEO the 100 pager and expect it to be read!

If you are commissioning research, think about being specific with your agency about how little you want to see, as well as how much. I’d love a client to challenge me to distil my research findings to a 50 word SMS message!

4. Resonance – or the subtle art of letting people hear their own words

Generally speaking, people like taking part in research. But they become jaded if they are continually asked for their input, yet they see no changes or improvements.

Resonance is the delicate art of letting research participants understand you heard them and their views mattered and is particularly useful in destination, community and internal organisation research. People recognise the echo of their own words and respect that you took them seriously. The outcome tends to be that they then take the research more seriously, improving acceptance and actionability.

5. Keep it simple, keep it pretty

Final tip? Keep it simple, keep it pretty. No, I’m not suggesting you dumb down the ideas, not at all.

Just that for every 5 minutes spent on being the clever old genius you undoubtedly are, you commit 55 minutes to distilling it so it can be clearly understood by others.

And hey what harm can pretty do?

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How the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation is bringing a great visitor city back to life

In Europe, a lot of tourism development work at a regional or city level is concerned with improving the reputation and standing of an area – often from a low base. New Orleans, on the other hand, has had a different set of challenges.

Prior to Hurricane Katrina, it was a vibrant leisure and business tourism destination. It was regularly voted as one of the ‘must visit’ destinations in the US. Many Europeans might now suppose that this scenario is a thing of the past – however, New Orleans is recovering well from the heavyweight blow of the hurricane and, while things are not back to normal, the picture is a lot brighter than many might suppose.

At the Emetrics Summit in Washington DC recently, I was privileged to speak to Jeremy Cooker of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. He described his role with the NOTMC , how the NOTMC operates, what their tourism challenges are post Katrina and how the New Orleans tourism industry is working to overcome them to bring a great visitor city back to life.

What is the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation?

Before going into detail, it might be useful to get an overview of the role of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation and how it runs. The NOTMC is a non-profit organisation that is funded through local taxation (hotel, casino and some transport taxes) as well as receiving some funds through the City Budget. The company deals only with New Orleans although there are obvious synergies with tourism promotion at the state of Louisiana level.

The remit of the NOTMC takes in such aspects as advertising, PR, online promotion and brochures and it does this on a budget of approximately $5 million dollars. Spending on admin has to be below 5% of their income with the remaining 95% to be spent on dedicated expenditures and marketing.

Jeremy’s job title might seem a little odd to some – he is online marketing consultant and hotel liaison - but I think his role is a fascinating industry example of how integrating intelligence from multiple sources provides a solid and successful model of working. And it seems that one of the real keys to making the NOTMC a success is the involvement of key industry players, making this an important part of his role.

Jeremy explained that one of their more important forms of research is monthly meetings with hotel owners, general managers, and revenue managers – people who are also major constituents of NOTMC. He gave the example that at informal meetings, hoteliers were able to give NOTMC an informal heads-up on whether a particular month was looking as though it might under-perform. In this instance, NOTMC can then concentrate its resources to push people into the periods where there is excess capacity.

This shouldn’t be taken as implying that big hotels dominate and smaller operators are muscled aside, as representatives of these are also in touch with NOTMC and the organisation endeavours to keep the balance.

As well as intelligence gathered through regular contact with industry players, Jeremy mentioned that information such as that provided by the STAR reports is invaluable in identifying industry trends.

Jeremy’s role also takes in online marketing and he noted that they have seen a strong performance in this area through targeted use of their own and third party websites. I met Jeremy at the Emetrics Summit, a conference dedicated to measuring and understanding online visitors, and he mentioned that one of their next tasks is to fully utilise the mass of customer data produced through the process of web interactions in order to better connect with their customers.

Additionally, NOTMC is looking to use blogging as away of reaching new markets as well as hearing the voice of the customer. One of the key terms at the Emetrics conference was ‘engagement’ and NOTMC, like many other organisations, is looking to improve how it can engage with what the customer is experiencing and saying at many different levels.

Open for business - New Orleans tourism now

So what are the differences pre and post Katrina in New Orleans tourism? Before the hurricane, New Orleans had a strong leisure market (Q4 2005 was on track to become of the strongest quarters in some time) as well as a thriving convention market. It was a destination that had a strong appeal to the family market as well as broad appeal to other niche markets. Needless to say, some of this has changed.

The convention business suffered badly and this has had a noticeable impact on the local economy. Oddly enough the relief efforts in the area helped to contribute to a small recovery in the first year after the storm in that it provided an influx of ‘guests’ in the form of relief workers into the area.

Two years down the line major tourist areas like the French Quarter, Garden District, Downtown, and Magazine Street are back to their former glory – in fact, some might say those areas have come back stronger than they were before the storm. There are still damaged areas of the city but these tend not to be the main tourism areas. However, the family market has not yet returned but NOTMC is finding some success with the Gay and Lesbian market instead.

Some of you might have preconceptions about what this means new market segment looks like but it might be fairer from a European viewpoint to describe this as an appeal to a ‘metrosexual’ market – people that want to come to experience authentic arts, good food and good music. In New Orleans, the Gay and Lesbian visitors have led the way by responding more strongly to this proposition.

It also helped that festivals such as Mardi Gras already existed as a base upon which to grow this visitor segment and all the signs are that this is a tactic that is working well with visitors staying longer and spending more.

Closer to the ground, Jeremy notes that the industry is still diverse, reflecting the usual range of small, privately owned bed and breakfasts, boutique hotels and large, convention-friendly hotels, who at times may share different viewpoints. NOTMC works closely with all parties to ensure every group is represented equitably and bases most of its marketing actions on sound research.

The message that came through from this conversation was that New Orleans is open for business. The city recently sold out for a convention in early November, and is anticipating very busy first and second quarters in 2008 with events such as the BCS Championship game, the Sugar Bowl, Mardi Gras and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Many people feel a strong affinity for New Orleans and so these probably will drift back in time but Jeremy concluded our conversation by encouraging you all to come to New Orleans – it’s open for business and you can be assured of a warm welcome. For travel planning info on New Orleans, see NewOrleansOnline.com.

All images are used courtesy of NewOrleansOnline.

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