What does a travel and tourism conference have to do with sustainability? When Carolyn wanted me to attend the annual Travel and Tourism Research Association (TTRA) Conference, at first, I was a little skeptical. “What does travel and tourism have to do with sustainability?”, I thought. Still, I tried my best to keep an open mind. Initially not much - as an industry tourism is too traumatized Most of the webinars, of course, reflected on the travel and tourism industry’s experience through 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic peaked. Most … [Read more...]
Connecting WA with the Malaysia, Indonesia & Singapore markets
I think some people see our Premium Trends Hub as being in competition with other sources. However, we believe the more people use insight the better that is for us. Your STO can be a great source of insight If you have ever heard our presentation on Champagne Insights for the Cost of Fresh Air, you'll know we are keen for destinations and tourism businesses to work with their State Tourism Organisation. There is so much great information they can provide to support your business planning. So we were delighted when we were invited to … [Read more...]
Is your tourism business ready for a seismic shift in demographics?
Pick your metaphor: Demographic tsunami or seismic shift . Whatever you choose, the largest shifts in demographics we may ever have seen are coming to your key markets. The overlap between demographics and generations that govern most marketing assumptions (e.g. that Millennials are Youth travellers) are changing. Whatever demographics you target, be it Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen Z or Chinas 90s kids, you need to understand what is about to happen. To help you understand the implications, MyTravelResearch.com has worked with PATA to … [Read more...]
Why should businesses conduct tourism research?
One of the great founding narratives of business is that of the millionaire or billionaire who didn’t do any research because they had a great vision. The story is often supported by the Henry Ford quote that if he had asked the customer what they wanted they would have said faster horses. In this article, we will discuss why and how should businesses conduct tourism research. If anything in our ‘post-truth’ world that story has got even stronger: for some people evidence no longer matters. And it is true, that there are occasionally … [Read more...]
Mastering Tourism Marketing
We are as an industry in truly exciting times where we have online marketing opportunities, that will NEVER arise again. Pretty serious stuff. This is all due to the infancy of semantic search - the search engine algorithms that determine what is presented to a traveller why they are searching for holiday ideas. It is a time where you have the opportunity to really strengthen your business or destination brand in a way that you will never be able to do again. How strong and tight your brand is will determine your success. And because we are … [Read more...]
Millennials in Tourism: When Millennials Grow Up
Globally the influence of Millennials in tourism & travel and on marketing has been profound. In the US, Millennials are as large a generation cohort as Baby Boomers. In China, they are a smaller generation numerically thanks to the one-child policy. But as the first generation to benefit from China's astonishing economic growth, 80's children (as they are known) are a wealthy and high-consuming group. The word Millennial has almost become synonymous with youth. But that is about to change. Millennials (Gen Y) were; broadly speaking born … [Read more...]
Is luxury travel really that unique?
I’ve just finished researching a whitepaper on luxury travel ahead of launching our exciting Luxperience MyTravelResearch.com luxury travel research. So I was really delighted when Australian public broadcaster SBS showed a two-part story from the BBC/Tern Television on ‘The Story of Luxury’. It’s one of the nice things about being a researcher is that business and pleasure so often intermingle. The series starts with concepts of luxury from Ancient Greece and then looked at how these evolved both there and in the European Middle Ages. It was … [Read more...]
Let Young People’s Ideas in Tourism Research and Marketing Grow
Bronwyn White of MyTravelResearch.com reflects on the Travel and Tourism Research Association Annual Conference that concluded in Colorado last week. What three insights were your key takeaways from the conference? The digital landscape means there is no excuse for DMOs marketing blindly without an evidence base Many problems and opportunities we face as an industry are similar in each country. I found this, particularly with the Visitor / Welcome Centers stream. I am going to listen more to some of our younger tourism professionals. I … [Read more...]
How To Measure ROI in Travel & Tourism Digital Marketing
Return on Investment or ROI in Travel and tourism digital marketing is one of the biggest mysteries we are facing collectively as an industry today. Our recent Tourism Marketing Plan Blueprint questionnaire confirmed that it is one of the main issues many of us in the travel and tourism industry are struggling with. At MyTravelResearch.com, we advocate evidence-based marketing practice, and ROI in travel certainly comes under this banner. You should not be spending money on marketing where you do not track your spending. Metrics are not … [Read more...]
The Traveller Path To Purchase
Does your brand connect with your potential customer at each stage of the Traveller Path to Purchase? … [Read more...]