Analyzing a tourism destination’s historical data can provide a surprising amount of insights for forecasting future months and planning effective marketing strategies.
In particular, profiling the tourists who have visited your destination and those of your competitors is invaluable to design hyper-targeted campaigns. Pinpointing a visitor’s origin and typology (solo, group, couple, business, etc.) and their relevant satisfaction, or Sentiment, across the visitor journey is a best practice to uncover what was most and least appreciated during their experience.
Comparative analyses are vital for a destination to effectively allocate budgets, pinpoint which countries to invest in and adjust strategies according to seasonality and travel trends.
For a real example, we’re comparing the top Mediterranean countries – Italy, Spain and France – with Data Appeal Studio, our all-in-one destination analysis platform.
Where do travelers come from and how does sentiment, their level of satisfaction, fluctuate according to nationality?
Below discover the top source markets and their relevant sentiment for each country from January 1st to December 31st, 2022.
At a glance, the snippet above provides meaningful insights:
- Spain and Italy record higher satisfaction among international visitors than France
- Domestic and foreign visitors are balanced in Spain and France, but Italy welcomes a higher percentage of non-domestic tourists (53%)
- German and UK tourists are in the top 4 markets for all three destinations surveyed
Why should destinations tailor marketing messages and campaigns based on visitor origin and type?
The data above, combined with internal insights, supports destination markets to design international marketing campaigns tailored exactly to the preferences of visitors from each individual country, increasing the likelihood of creating engagement, brand awareness, and ultimately being chosen as their next vacation destination.
- Define the places in your destination most valued by tourists, segmented source market.
Through Semantic Analysis of online reviews and content, Data Appeal Studio helps users investigate which aspects are most and least appreciated by visitors, and leverage this information to develop a tailored message specific to each market - Understand where and why tourists are most dissatisfied with your destination, by source market
Who is dissatisfied with parking availability, the lack of accessibility, Wi-Fi or the quality of hotel service or food? Are your messages clear enough? Are they aimed at the right marketing personas?
Suppose you invested in a campaign targeted at young adults in the UK, yet your destination is mostly composed of families, kid-friendly attractions and a quiet nightlife? - Identify the visitors on your competitor’s radar that you haven’t tapped into to decide whether and how to reach them.
It could be worth it to allocate a portion of your advertising budget on new visitor markets, or expand your communication channels to align with your competitor’s. - Measure the results of your campaigns and their ROI to evaluate and benchmark visitor flows and sentiment scores
For example, if you invested 20% of your advertising budget on promotional activities for the German market – such as magazine articles, billboards and social media marketing – what’s the variation of German travelers into your destination and how does Sentiment fluctuate?
If the amount of content published by Germans in your destination has increased, along with the sentiment, it demonstrates that your promotional efforts have paid off. If the sentiment or content is lower, it’s important to investigate the reason why and review your advertising messages.s
Transform data into concrete actions
Tourism data – from flight and hotel bookings to post-stay reviews – are essential for designing effective destination marketing activities. However, many destinations still do not fully understand the importance of leveraging this data to enhance their marketing strategies.
While data provides invaluable insights, it’s only powerful when translated into concrete actions. This means that destinations must be willing to invest in the technology and resources necessary to collect, analyze and act on data. This will ultimately lead to increased tourism and economic growth for the destination.
Data Appeal Studio, the first, all-in-one destination analysis platform for DMOs, DMCs and tourism organizations, was created to transform data into actionable insights and concrete knowledge.
Thanks to our AI-based algorithms and semantic analysis, destinations of all sizes can detect, assess and benchmark visitor sentiment from billions of reviews and social posts about accommodation properties, food-and-beverage establishments, attractions and more.
Predict visitor flows, forecast hotel reservations and prices, monitor flight bookings and arrivals and events to make data-driven decisions. Sign up for a free demo to check out the features first hand today!
