Market analysis in the tourism industry? Here’s how the right questions can help you make sound decisions for your business.
If you run a business operating in the tourism industry (or are thinking of starting one), now more than ever amarket analysis is essential to help you make the right decisions for your business.
That’s right, because these have been very difficult months for those in the tourism industry due to the Covid-19 pandemic and severe restrictions on people’s travel. Tourism in recent months has inevitably changed and is changing as never before. An ever-changing context in which having up-to-date data can really make a difference.
It would be foolhardy to dismiss tourism as an industry brought to its knees by Covid-19, especially in a country like Italy that is and remains a favorite tourist destination for people from all over the world. Also, as Albert Einstein said:
“In the midst of difficulties come opportunities.”
Let’s start with the numbers known to all insiders. These tell us that between July and August 2021, Italians who chose to spend vacations in our country broke all records: 23 million in total versus 17 in 2020 and 18 in 2019, that is, the year before the Covid-19 pandemic (according to a survey by Cna Tourism and Commerce).
Tourism itself is one of the sectors most revolutionized by the Web. Review and booking platforms for flights, hotels and restaurants have changed the way people plan their vacations. And it is online that users find out about tourist locations, accommodations and whatnot
That is why market research, when conducted through the use of innovative methods and leveraging the Web as a key resource, in the tourism industry can really help industry players intercept sudden changes in demand.
Not only because it is a highly competitive industry, but because ananalysis of the tourism market through online data is the absolute best tool to adopt before launching new tourism product/service or starting a start-up in this sector.
In this article we will give you 3 important tips related to market analysis, motivating why we make our suggestions and explaining what you should avoid if you want the analysis to be really useful for your business.
1) Market Analysis & Tourism: avoid conducting market research yourself.
Whether you run a tour operator, a travel agency, a hotel, a restaurant, a B&B, a transportation company, or any other business in the tourism industry, the first thing to avoid is just that.
Surely you remember that famous commercial that said, “Do-it-yourself tourist? No Alpitour? Ouch ouch.” Don’t make the same mistake as the tourist lost in the desert….
One of the most counterproductive choices when you need amarket analysis is to not go to a specialized agency (such as Central Marketing Intelligence) but rather to think you can do it yourself to save money.
Did you think that too?
Never was a more daring choice! If you make such a decision perhaps you can save something in the immediate term, yet you must consider that your future earnings will be greatly affected by this choice.
Professional market research is an investment, not an expense for its own sake.
It’s certainly not enough to look here and there on Google, spy on competitors’ social pages or gather superficial information about trends to get complete and truly useful data for your business.
Because these researches fail to focus on reliable specific targets nor can they gather enough of a data base to guide a marketing strategy or-what’s more-the launch of new tourism products/services.
Read also: Why (and how) Market Research Institutes could help you in your marketing activities
Even if you spent weeks hunting for opinions and reviews on major industry platforms or comparing prices of major tourist destinations, you would not have enough data to guide a tourism marketing strategy for the coming season. Here then, our advice is therefore as follows….
2) Contact a company that specializes in market research, such as CMI.
We may seem biased to you. But you should know that many of the best companies have already turned to us because they clearly understood the importance of market analysis.
Among our most important clients, we can name you Tucano, Ace, Pinko, STHIL and many more, who turn to us in order to make wise and informed decisions.
You know better than we do in the tourism industry there is fierce competition, and all it takes is one misstep to blow years of work to smithereens. And that is also why you should turn to amarket research agency.
Are you wondering what we can do for you?
First of all, we manage to listen to that “endless sea that is the web, investigating online platforms such as Booking, Tripadvisor, Edreams but also forums, blogs, specialized online magazines and of course social networks. We do this in a targeted way, collecting only data that is truly functional to your goal.
Thinking of launching a new service?
Do you want to understand what your target customers’ needs and preferences are (and find out what those blessed target customers are)?
Would you like to understand the winning and failing strategies of your competitors?
Do you want to know what the current and especially future market trends are?
Do you need to improve your reputation and understand what you are doing wrong?
For you we can discover this and much more. And we do this by asking the right questions of the web.
As we have written in other articles, to get the right answers we must ask the right questions.
- Questions about your target market
- Questions related to your target customers
- Questions about your brand
- Dedicatedcompetitor analysis questions
Questions that become the parameters that define the landscape in which to obtain answers that can be translated into action. No reports to be locked in a drawer and used perhaps in the future when (certainly) the data collected are no longer valid.
The difference of Central Marketing Intelligence in the tourism industry and beyond is to provide
3) Surveys and interviews for tourism market research? Let it go. Better to analyze Big Data online!
In-depth market research dedicated to a company in the tourism industry (and beyond) cannot rely on outdated methods such as interviews, surveys, and other superficial research methodology.
These systems do not give you a complete picture of the situation. They give you superficial, incomplete and distorted answers because they question excessively small groups of people.
In addition, it may happen that, in the course of these analyses, the right audience is not identified. If so, the answers will be not only superficial but completely or partially wrong.
They could therefore lead you to make decisions that are counterproductive for your hotel, your restaurant business, your travel agency, or whatever business you run/plan to run.
Our method is based on completely different sources than the samples of people used for interviews and surveys. Precisely, we go to query the Web, to mine Big Data online for answers to very specific questions.
For example, when we investigate about the preferences and needs of your target customers, we have the opportunity to know the authentic opinion of thousands of people at once.
A real and never distorted opinion. Because the information we dig up is exactly the traces people leave on the magical world of the Internet.
If you are wondering what sources we use, here are some examples for you:
- Google Trends
- Blogs and forums
- Review sites
- Online newspapers
- Google search results
- Google Ads
- Social network
- (possibly) Amazon
And much more.
We meticulously analyze these sources through the skillful use of software and tools (to which, we remind you, we must ask the right questions!), which return accurate and useful information for your business.
But our market research does not end there: we interpret the data for you, provide explanations of the results, and give you important advice about what strategies to adopt based on what our market analysis tells us.
Trust us: most of your competitors in the tourism industry still use outdated, “do-it-yourself” methods to lose business decisions. If you want to outperform them, this is definitely the right opportunity to get you ahead!
Read also: Statistical sample for market research: here’s when it’s valid and when it’s not.
In conclusion
In the tourism market, demand is constantly changing and supply must adapt quickly to customer needs, otherwise the risk of ending up with a slump in bookings is just around the corner. That is why constant and much more frequent market analysis is necessary in tourism than in other sectors.
Apparently, in one of his speeches, the Dalai Lama said:
“Once a year, go somewhere you’ve never been before.”
Well, if you run a company active in the tourism and hospitality industry, at least once a year, do a market analysis with online data because this will take you far.
Want more information? Contact us now and find out how we can help you achieve your goals in tourism!
