Step 4 - Undertake Research

Overview

In this step you gather the information needed to back-up your assertions and to help direct your potential project.

Why is this step important?

In undertaking any tourism project its important to back your plans up with real research. So far you have gathered local opinion, which is very useful but if you really understand what businesses and visitors think and want you can produce a much more effective set of actions.

Research will also allow you to set a baseline so you can measure the impact of your project and will provide a very powerful case for what you do, especially if you want to attract funding for your activities.

Considerations

Always look around at what research is available before you begin, there is no point in reinventing the wheel if another organisation or agency has done the work already. Further it is a good idea to discuss your research needs with your local authority or tourist board, and try and align your research methods with established ones. By doing so you can produce data that is easily comparable with other destinations and wider data sets, and is far more useful as a tool in justifying your activities.

Consider if you want to pay someone to do the research for you, this guarantees in most cases a quick and relatively painless process, although of course you need to be able to meet the costs involved. If you decide to undertake the research yourselves pay particular attention to the resources you have available in time and manpower, and ensure your methods are tailored to what you can realistically achieve. Also be aware that in evaluating your project further down the line you may need to repeat the research, so ensure it is something that can be easily undertaken.

Finally make sure you are aware of Data protection issues if you are collecting personal details, and that with each method you are aware of how to collect representative and un-skewed data.

The process

What research you undertake will depend very much on what you are trying to address, however in most cases you need to know at least:

What you have to offer
What your visitors are doing now
How your destination is perceived from outside
How your businesses are performing

You can collect this data through the following methods:

1. Tourism Product Audit
With this technique you are simply cataloguing what your destination offers to visitors. Typically you would break this down into categories such as; accommodation, paying attractions, food & drink outlets, retail outlets, events, free points of interest, transport, and promoted routes. However you can add as many or as few categories as are relevant to you.
In each case record as much useful information as you need, with accommodation for example you could record; name, owner, contact details, number of rooms/beds, quality grading standard, and type of businesses (hotel, B&B, self-catering etc).

Once complete this allows you to build a comprehensive picture of your destination, identify the strengths in your offer and also spot the areas where you are weaker.

2. Visitor Survey
This method is all about asking visitors how they are using your destination, what they feel about it, and ascertaining what sort of people are visiting you. Nothing beats feedback from your customers after all.

The easiest and most comprehensive way of surveying visitors is with a face-to-face questionnaire. Your regional tourist board may offer a Destination Benchmarking Survey which comprehensively covers everything you need to know and can build a complete profile of who your visitors are, why they come and what they do.

If you plan to do this yourself, take advice on how to develop the questionnaire and be aware that you will generally need 200 responses to get a representative sample. Also be careful of when and where you survey to avoid skewed data (getting all 200 at a single event for example, whilst quick will only capture the type of visitor who comes to that event, it may not be representative of your visitor demographic as a whole).

Once complete this data can help you identify your target markets, refine your plans to include the things visitors are looking for, and provides an important baseline to note the change in visitor behaviour and perception before and after your activities.

3.Mystery Visitor Audit
This technique gains you a critical and objective outsiders view of your destination. It differs from a visitor survey in that only one person completes it on a specific visit. They are specifically looking at the impression experience your destination offers, and can therefore delve more deeply into detail than a visitor survey can.

Again your regional tourist board may well offer a mystery visitor (or Mystery shopper) service that will allow your results to be compared against other destinations in your region. However you may choose to do this yourself, and the key is to find someone not totally familiar with the destination, who can report objectively on what they experience. You will need to provide them with a series of criteria and questions on topics such as; quality and availability of facilities, ease of finding your way around, welcome and helpfulness of staff in various shops or attractions, prices in comparison to larger towns and their general thoughts on the look and feel of a place.

Once complete this gives you a detailed report on how an outsider perceives your place, and how well you match up to visitors expectations. It can also identify real issues that residents may not notice.

4. Business Survey
This method is often overlooked in the rush to find out what your visitors want, however ascertaining what your businesses feel and getting a picture of the local economic health is something that should underpin all tourism projects.

A questionnaire is often the simplest method of collecting the data, although you can often email or post these out rather than conducting a face-face interview, as you have a finite number of respondents you can easily chase up. Questions could include those on; client breakdown, staffing levels, how the business promotes itself to its customers, profitability trends, confidence and willingness to engage with your activities.

The important point here is to explain what you are doing, why you are doing it and what the data will be used for, as businesses are understandably reticent about sharing financial data.

Once complete this offers you a snapshot of the current health of your local economy, and some hard data to back up your justification of the need for a tourism initiative. It is also a good way to engage businesses and spread the word about what you are trying to do.

Once you have undertaken all your research, you need to analyse it. Pull the key trends and correlations out and create a report using those as your headlines.