If you’re a local council, business or management team looking to drive economic and social growth in your town, tracking visitor data is key to finding out if your initiatives are bringing more people into town – whether these are locals, working commuters or tourists.
By understanding how your town’s unique selling points – independent shops, heritage sites, and event venues or even AONB’s (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty)- are being used by local, regional and national visitors, this can help to analyse the wants and needs of the towns visitors and put plans in place to highlight areas of improvement alongside initiatives to boost tourism numbers.
What is Visitor Data?
Visitor data is information that is collected about people who visit a certain place such as a high street. The high street footfall data can be used to understand who these visitors are, which postcodes they come from, and what they do while they’re in the town – across streets and public spaces such as town squares, retail, car parks and green spaces.
What Insights Does Visitor Data Provide For Towns?
At Place Informatics, we use cost-effective, GPS data points combined with machine learning algorithms to provide actionable location data insights which enable decision making for funding initiatives, commercial agreements, marketing campaigns, public services, events and more.
The technology is advanced enough to be able to separate the local visitors who live in local catchment area – from the tourism visitors, who enter the town on day trips or stay overnight, but originate from outside the immediate area.
Our TownandPlace.AI dashboard offers the following unique insights for towns:
Socio-Demographics & Visitor Postcode Origins
Visitor data allows local councils and businesses to get an insight into the socio-demographics of visitors from an area – such as their age range, gender distribution, income levels and dwelling types.
You can also view postcode origins of visitors which helps you identify areas where there is high visitor footfall from people who live in nearby locations, or even further away. This can be useful if you want to target certain demographics with specific marketing campaigns, or tailored services/products/activities that meet the needs of potential customers.
Daily, Weekly & Monthly Footfall Patterns
Having an understanding of the daily, weekly and monthly footfall patterns is important to identify trends in how often people visit your town — are there any particular days or times when more people are visiting? Knowing these patterns can help businesses plan accordingly. For example, if there is an increase in footfall traffic after 5pm, then they may choose to open longer or hire additional staff for those peak periods. Inversely, if there is a decrease in retail footfall traffic during off-peak hours, offering special discounts or events could help draw more people in during quieter times.
Location Heatmaps & Points Of Interest
Location heatmaps also provide valuable insights into what visitors are doing throughout their visit. Through heatmaps, one can see a visual representation where people spend their time; which points of interest, which could be shops, green spaces, tourist attractions and streets they are frequenting most and how long they spend at each destination. All this information can then be used to assess potential areas of improvement or best place to locate commercial traders. For instance, developing a new nature park around an empty lot, or adding more benches for people to rest during long walks around town.
Visitor Itineraries & Overnight Stays
Visitor itineraries allow you to see exactly how people are moving around during their stay – from town centres to beaches, heritage sites and tourist attractions. Knowing which places are most popular and how visitors travel between each location helps managers and authorities to figure out the needs and wants of the visitors in these areas for maximum impact. Understanding visitor itineraries also has implications for overnight stays since it provides an indication of how many tourists are likely to stay compared with day trippers, and whether there could potentially be demand for certain types of accommodation such as hotels or Airbnb rentals in certain areas.
Competitor Analysis
Analysing how other neighbouring towns perform on metrics such as total visits per month, or average duration spent per visit provides valuable insights into what your town requires more of to stay ahead of the competition. It also gives you an idea of which strategies others have implemented successfully, so you can potentially replicate them within your own town too!
Find Unique Insights Into Your Town Centre with Place Informatics
See how you can drive improvement initiatives through unique insights into your town centre using visitor data. Call 0161 706 1343 or book a walk through of the data available in Calendly here:
