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If some consumers edged cautiously back into the world of travel over the last couple of years, then 2023 marks the year that others will dive straight back in.

This resurgence in travel is a result of no small effort from travel brands, DMOs, and tourism boards, who have all put significant time and investment into rebuilding consumer confidence and understanding and adapting to new travel patterns and behaviors.

Throughout and beyond this boom, the most effective travel organizations will continue to monitor consumers’ evolving motivations. Evaluating consumer perceptions toward a travel brand or destination is an important component of any marketing strategy. But this becomes even more powerful when you can monitor changes daily and create filters that allow you to see the world through the eyes of an almost unlimited number of traveler segments.

Understanding How and Why People Are Traveling

In the travel and tourism industry, segmentation is an important strategy for developing itineraries, marketing materials, and experiences. Travel brands should consider the various traveler personas and segments that make up an audience to tailor their marketing messages and advertising campaigns to each group.

For example, are your travelers looking to connect with loved ones or are they chasing the bucket list destinations that constantly show up on their social feeds? Perhaps they’re seeking a retreat into nature or looking to travel to improve their health and wellness. Shaping your message to fit a segment is the first step to engaging that audience. 

Along with travel motivations, people also differ in the ways they travel. Some, for example, look to mix business with pleasure with “workcations,” which blend remote work opportunities with leisure travel. Building propositions for each type of traveler can help travel operators prepare for every consumer mindset.

One segment YouGov had recently dived into for a new report is luxury travelers.

Using custom research in 18 markets from YouGov Surveys, the report segments high-income earners to uncover the travel experiences and priorities that can persuade this affluent group to spend more than the average traveler.

YouGov data reveals that the affluent traveler group is not just dominated by older consumers – but that a younger group of 18-34-year-olds also represents a sizeable part of the market. These ’young affluents’ tend to be more engaged with nearly all aspects of travel compared to the average traveler and over-index in recent travel activities. 

This includes younger affluents taking longer vacations, traveling with a wider group of friends/family, working remotely and going on health/wellness retreats. 

Download YouGov’s latest global travel report “Luxury travel post-pandemic” to find out more.

From understanding where a niche audience would travel to domestically or internationally to understanding your destination’s positioning compared to competitors, daily insights into where people want to travel next can help DMOs and tourism boards continuously refine their marketing strategies with up-to-the-minute data in an increasingly fast-paced world.

Let’s look at a few of the top destinations among affluent consumers in the US to get a picture of where they might go on their next vacation.

The latest data from YouGov DestinationIndex, which measures daily consumer perceptions toward travel destinations worldwide, shows that California has the highest Consideration score among US affluents so far this Spring. 

Compared to the beginning of the year, California jumped up six places to overtake Italy as the most considered destination among this audience. In early Spring of this year, 30% of affluent consumers in the US said they would consider a trip to California as their next vacation.

Hawaii has also soared in the rankings, jumping from eighth place at the beginning of the year to second place by early Spring. New York, meanwhile, moved up from fourth to third place among affluent consumers. 

As for international spots, Italy is the top considered destination, followed by Barcelona and Germany. Canada, which held the no. 2 spot at the beginning of the year, has dropped to eighth place in the eyes of affluent consumers. 

It’s clear from the data that consumer perceptions of destinations are constantly shifting and that only the most up-to-the-minute tracking will provide meaningful marketing results. But combining YouGov tools such as Global Travel Profiles and Destination Index is more powerful still and can even help create traveler personas for specific destinations. 

For example, you can find out how a potential traveler to California differs from someone considering a trip to Canada – including where they spend their time on social media, what types of advertising they notice, and what types of travel experience they will prioritize this year. Harnessing these powerful insights, replicable for any of the 30 travel markets and 130 destinations YouGov tracks, can give travel marketers the edge needed to make sure that their brand or destination is at the vanguard of the new travel boom. 

 
Get in touch with YouGov to learn more about research and insights solutions for your destination.

Using human movement data, we looked at five major tourist destinations over the last four years to discover the future of tourism including who today’s travelers are, how they travel, and how destinations can meet their needs.

Discover these U.S. tourism trends and more:

The road to recovery is gradual
Across the 5 destinations we studied, visitation is 33% lower than it was in 2019, which is higher than the last two years.

Length of stay has increased significantly
Visit durations grew across the board with 55% of long-term travelers planning to work during their trip.

Download now to power your marketing & advertising efforts and help your destination win in this new world.

Want precise insights into where your visitors are coming from? Reach out to us today!

Enjoy,
Near Tourism Team

The Towns of Banff and Lake Louise are nestled in Banff National Park, one of the most pristine and beautiful parks in North America. Visitors and residents alike can hike, bike and camp in the summer and ski and snowboard in the winter. Hotels, shopping and fine dining are available all year round.

Tourism is the primary economic driver for these two towns, and residents and the economy were hit incredibly hard by Covid-19. Banff and Lake Louise faced a difficult recovery with imperfect economic conditions due to border closures and travel restrictions, waxing and waning threats of Omicron and other Covid variants, workforce challenges and inflationary pressure. In 2022, Banff Lake Louise Tourism (BLLT) was focused on rebuilding year-round demand in a post-covid environment by working with the destination’s businesses and community.
BLLT began to closely monitor visitor sentiment, knowing that word of mouth is the strongest marketing asset available to destinations. And as BLLT began to navigate the shifting tourism landscape and focus on rebuilding demand, Rove and TCI TravelSat were able to help BLLT capture and measure visitor experiences through online travel ratings and reviews.

TravelSat Pulse gives destinations the ability to aggregate, standardize and monitor visitor ratings and reviews of destination experiences in real-time. This includes 30+ online travel rating and review providers and historical data to trend from day one. BLLT leveraged this data to understand the visitor experience, monitor their reputation and share these insights with partners to ensure the destination is an attractive place to visit year-round.

From January to July 2022, BLLT monitored over 77,000 reviews for 292 different tourism properties across key sectors including accommodations, food and beverage, attractions, and transportation. The overall average rating across all sectors and properties was 8.58 on a 10-point scale. Written reviews were also quantified across key topics such as service, cleanliness etc. producing an overall score of 7.42. They were able to compare these metrics to visitor experience ratings of 2019 setting targets to meet or beat these key performance metrics.

BLLT uses the data to examine visitor experience holistically and by sector by month. They can drill down in granularity to evaluate positive or negative visitor experiences.

The sentiment analysis utilizes Natural Language Processing (NLP) of text reviews, which categorizes the data and extracts insights from 14 multiple native languages. The platform detects the positive and negative sentiment towards hospitality topics and converts the captured sentiment into an easy-to-understand numerical score out of 10.

BLLT can easily see visitor sentiment in a variety of categories such as facilities, food and beverage, service, location, cleanliness, value, and ambiance. These categories can be further examined by topics, to pin-point strengths and weaknesses that the destination can share with its partners and stakeholders.

One area of interest to BLLT was monitoring service levels across the destination to ensure hospitality was ranking consistently positive everywhere. The overall service rating at 8.72 indicates a strong workforce perception overall. Restaurants and bars held slightly higher than the average at 8.84, but attractions businesses underperformed the average at 8.24. BLLT can easily dive deeper into the data and uncover the underlying issue–needing additional staff and training and share these insights with their business members.

While BLLT continues to work to achieve visitor experience ratings equal to pre-Covid levels, Rove seeks to help them ask better questions and leverage rating and review data to identify areas of focus to improve visitor perception and experience. And spoiler alert, the first half of 2022 already indicates overall rating and sentiment are on track with 2019 – well done!  

Interested in learning more about rating and review data?

Rove and TCI will be sharing major insights at the free TTRA webinar on Oct 11, 2022.
For more information on this data product, please contact Jennifer Griswold at: [email protected]

ABOUT ROVE:

Rove is a leading travel & tourism data and analytics company. More than 100 leading tourism organizations & destinations globally rely on our tourism data solutions and industry expertise to navigate change and accelerate tourism economic recovery and growth. Visit ROVE’s Website