Case Study: Visitor Intercept Surveys | Finger Lakes Region

Understanding visitor profiles including motivations to visit, demographics, and amount spent is critical to a travel and tourism related business. Whether you are an attraction, event, destination, or tourism region, capturing this data directly from visitors is a must-have. It lends incredible insight into tourism behavior and economic impact which can drive marketing messaging, growth areas, strategies, and set your tourism destination up for success.

Without this visitor intercept survey data, you are likely flying blind. You may have access to some secondary or broad market research but nothing that is unique and customized for your specific needs. Working with an intercept survey company can help you get these answers. A visitor intercept survey is easy to set up and the deliverables and analysis you receive can prove invaluable to your organization. There is a reason why you see so many people with tablets collecting feedback at events including places like Disney World.

Learn more about our recent visitor intercept survey project below.

Trying to understand your visitor profile and economic impact visitors have on your area or region? Think about conducting visitor intercept surveys.

Objectives

Drive Research partnered with a travel and tourism consultant to work on a visitor intercept survey for a travel and tourim organization in the Finger Lakes region. The data collected will help to identify visitor profile, conversion statistics, visitor expenditures, seasonality, and comprehensive product perceptions. The market research should be conducted during peak summer and fall tourism season.


Approach

Drive Research designed a short 3 to 5 minute,15-question intercept survey to administer at area attractions in the Finger Lakes Region. These interviews were conducted over the summer and fall seasons (August, September, and October).

On-site interviews leverage in-the-moment feedback by collecting opinions and data from attendees as they visit Finger Lakes attractions. Emails of survey takers were collected during the intercepts so a more in-depth survey can be sent to participants.

It is important to visit a variety of site locations to acquire a breadth of visitors to the Finger Lakes region. Area attractions focused on a variety of locations. Drive Research identified 1 site in each of the 14-counties to administer on-site surveys over the course of 1 day at each location (14 days of fieldwork in total).

Demographics of visitors were weighted to represent and match the overall population of visitors to the Finger Lakes region. Small, medium, and large destination attractions were considered for the fieldwork across 14 counties.

Drive Research utilized the feedback obtained from a kickoff meeting to create a draft survey document in Word. The survey draft incorporated questions from the prior year(s) of surveys at completed in order to track data trends over time.

Once the intercept survey document was finalized, it was programmed into our survey software and tested. Drive Research conducted internal pre-tests with the survey to ensure everything was working correctly. After a successful test drive, fieldwork was ready for a full launch in the Finger Lakes Region.

Drive Research assigned a team of interview representatives to manage fieldwork for the project. The team coordinated locations, paperwork, and any necessary insurance or payments to be on-site at the attractions.

Surveys were administered through tablets with offline capabilities to avoid delays in Wi-Fi or 3G. At a minimum, Drive Research collected over 600 completed surveys from visitors to the Finger Lakes Regions and nearly 1,000 survey responses in total. The incentives were managed by the client but included gift card giveaways.


Outcomes

The data was compiled into an Excel CSV file for the client and travel consultant. The travel consultant partnering with Drive Research for this study created a much larger demand and tourism study for the Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance. This report included secondary data and other forms of primary research to provide the client with a comprehensive view of the visitors to the Finger Lakes Region.


Contact Drive Research

Drive Research is a market research company located in Central New York. Services include both qualitative and quantitative market research expertise including intercept surveys, online surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews (IDIs).

The team has a deep portfolio of experience and project expertise in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York including work for clients like Hazlitt (Red Cat), Casa Larga Vineyards, 3S Gateway (feasibility study near del Lago Casino).

Other travel and tourism market research includes work for the New York State Fair, Syracuse International Film Festival, Downtown Committee of Syracuse, the Central New York Home & Garden Show, MGM Casinos, and Campground Owners of New York (CONY).

Interested in learning more or need a proposal? Contact us.

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