Destination Insight: Tourism Trends

Thanks to NewcastleGateshead Initiative for an interesting day last week focussing on Destination Research.

We began with Abbie McPhie’s presentation on visitor segmentation which was fascinating. Based on further analysis of VisitEngland’s Satisfaction Tracker data, they have highlighted five different types of visitors that destinations can focus on.

For details, click here.

Cathy Long from Supporter Services at English Premier League talked about the importance of football tourism and how stadiums have had to raise their game to meet customer service standards from other parts of the Visitor Economy. Apparently 800,000 overseas visitors go to football matches while staying in Britain, spending £684m – a 15 per cent increase on 2010.

Justin Reid from Trip Advisor showed us how important it is to focus on what you can do at a destination when uploading content to websites. This aspect tends to be rated significantly higher than accommodation or food and led on to discussion on the importance of the visitor experience in a destination. Kim van den Wijngaard from the Amsterdam-based reputation management company Olery continued the subject of visitor reviews talking about the work her company does to bring reviews from different sites together.

The conference finished with a presentation on benchmarking from Kevin Millington at Acorn. The Heritage Cities are just starting to work together to compare their visitor data looking at hotel occupancy, attraction figures, car parks, weather and TIC footfall data.

A worthwhile day with plenty of networking opportunities!

By Jo Edom