Experienced researchers with expertise across many sectors - from tourism to utilities and food and drink to sustainability
12th March 2024
Making tourism more accessible - survey suggests a real opportunity for Scottish tourism
Last week, VisitScotland reminded us that one in five people across the UK live with a disability or impairment and contribute to a collective spending power of £249 billion per year. The purpose was to remind Scottish tourism businesses of the importance of finding ways to make their businesses as accessible as possible.
But what do we know about this large segment of the population in Scotland - what are the barriers they face when it comes to taking holidays, what are their concerns, and how can Scotland’s tourism industry better address these concerns?
In late January, 56 Degree Insight worked with Dr Carol Sargent from Sargent Group Consulting to design some key questions and incorporated them in our quarterly representative survey of 1,000+ Scots - Scotland’s Viewpoint.
Key findings to emerge show that there are opportunities to not just make accommodation more accessible, but to improve planning, getting around a destination, information on activities and food and drink and show this community they are being listened to, encouraging these households with people living with health conditions and impairments to book holidays in Scotland.
Read more by downloading the detailed infographic, available by clicking the image below
15th February 2024
The latest Scottish Tourism Index suggests some small signs of recovery for domestic tourism in 2024
The January 2024 Scottish Tourism Index provides an overview of how the Scottish home holiday market might look for the year ahead. Some 1,006 Scots were interviewed in late January with the primary purpose of establishing the characteristics of Scots’ holiday-taking attitudes and behaviours. As surveys are undertaken at identical times each year, it provides a directly comparable set of measures year-on-year, ensuring predictions for the year ahead can be fine tuned by comparing against previous surveys results. In the report from the survey (downloadable by clicking on the image below) we provide some contextual analysis of the extent to which the economic situation might continue to dampen and shape holiday demand. We then look back at Scots’ holiday behaviours in 2023 and then forward to 2024 to establish where we may see potential growth as well as continued challenges.
When the Scottish Tourism Index was launched in 2020, the main driver of consumer behaviours was Covid-19. As we emerged from the Pandemic, the economic impacts it left behind along with the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine and Government fiscal policies have meant that the cost of living crisis has replaced Covid as the main determinant of consumer holiday behaviours. Last year, whilst more Scots rediscovered foreign holiday destinations, this was often at the expense of home holidays as smaller family budgets constrained domestic spending on hospitality. At the start of 2024 there is some initial evidence that this spending squeeze may have ‘bottomed out’ and although still likely to constrain what we do in the immediate term, our disposable incomes are beginning to show some signs of recovery - and the home holiday market may start a journey back to recovery..
Read more by downloading the detailed infographic, available by clicking the image below
19th December 2023
What is Scotland’s favourite Christmas TV advertisement of 2023?
Earlier in December, 56 Degree Insight undertook an online survey of 1,002 Scottish residents to uncover their views on the Christmas TV advertisements from the 8 main supermarket chains this year - which one was their favourite?
But we went beyond general preference to see how each performed on a series of typical key campaign evaluation metrics:
VISIBILITY (spontaneous and prompted awareness and recognition),
ENGAGEMENT (likeability, salience, trust, tone, interest, relevance and warmth)
ACTIONS taken - how many were more persuaded to shop at each supermarket,
and how did the ads impact the BRAND APPEAL?