According to a Statista survey regarding Covid-19’s impact on domestic tourism, travel spending amounted to nearly £92 billion in 2019, which drastically dropped to around £34 billion in 2020.
As the tourism industry continues to battle the effects of the pandemic, with predictions of overnight stays and associated spend numbers unable to reach pre-pandemic levels until at least 2025, it’s now more important than ever for destination marketers, AONBs, HAZs and other relevant travel businesses to have a better understanding of tourist behaviour.
Our SaaS dashboards combine billions of GPS data points and machine learning algorithms to provide valuable insights into tourist behaviour both pre and post-pandemic. Let’s take a closer look at what our footfall analytics data can do for you.
Find Out Who Visits Your Destination
Using footfall analytics, you can find out who visits your town, attractions, green spaces and heritage sites etc., including where they come from and their socio-demographic data which provides an indication of age, gender, education levels and spending habits. Isochrone maps can also estimate people’s driving, cycling or walking distance to see which tourist locations are accessible.
This allows you to tailor your marketing offerings to the right audience, while increasing visitor numbers. For example, if most tourists are families, then you could create messages that highlight activities in your area such as child-friendly restaurants, parks, or museums that appeal to children.
Discover Tourist Length of Stay & Itineraries
By monitoring daily, weekly and monthly footfall patterns, you can uncover the average length of stay of tourists visiting – either for overnight stays or a day. Furthermore, understanding the itineraries of people who visit for a day, or choose to stay for a period of time, can help you to find out more about their needs.
Plus, with pre-pandemic data available from 2019, tourist organisations and councils are able to analyse any changes in stay duration since the Covid-19 hit. This will give you valuable insight into whether local and national tourists are staying longer than before, or if there has been a shift towards shorter stays due to travel restrictions, the cost of living or health concerns related to Coronavirus.
It also gives you a better idea of travel itineraries and you can monitor what activities tourists are engaging in during their visit (e.g. shopping trips, city tours, outdoor sports). Such information is critical when it comes to developing new initiatives, more effective marketing campaigns or pricing in order to drive revenues for businesses across the area.
Perform Competitor Analysis
You can also use historical footfall data from 2019 to compare the performance of your own tourism attraction with other similar ones in different areas across the UK, so that you have a good idea of how well your tourist destination has been doing since restrictions were lifted. This comparison is especially useful if you are looking for data to build a case for investment in conservation or urban regeneration projects, or want to demonstrate the value that your tourist attractions have brought to the local economy in other locations.
Back Funding Applications
Finally, the insights gained through analysis of footfall and visitor data will also help strengthen funding applications, providing evidence-based visualisations which demonstrate trends in visitation rates before, during and after the pandemic. By understanding how usage has changed over time due to external factors such as Covid-19 restrictions or economic downturns (e.g. Brexit, strike action and the cost of living), tourism managers are better placed to make decisions about events, investments, and budget allocations.
Arrange a Demo
Despite the changes in visitor behaviour due to Covid-19, which include more people working from home and more online deliveries, there is still an opportunity to stay competitive within your industry. With our combined efforts, we can help strengthen footfall for your tourist location – so why wait? Make sure you get ahead with visitor location behaviour data!
Call Place Informatics on 0161 706 1343, or book a demonstration in Calendly here for a walkthrough of the TourismUK.AI data for your destination:
https://calendly.com/clive-hall/diary-booking
Our next Tourism webinar entitled ‘Understand Tourism Behaviour In Your DMO Using Location Data’ takes place on Thursday 30 March 2023 from 12 – 12.30pm, contact support@placeinformatics.com to book your place.
