What’s happening in the Tourism Sector?

Tourism research remains the natural home of the 56 Degree Insight team. Jim and Duncan built much of their careers around developing a comprehensive understanding of the tourism industry and providing national tourist boards, destination management organisations and tourism businesses with analysis and insights that have helped them to grow and change direction as visitor needs have evolved.

Never has an understanding of tourist behaviours been more important.  Many economists are forecasting another economic downturn – and the lessons of the 2008-2011 period and its impacts on the tourism landscape teach us that tourism businesses need to be agile and ready to adapt to changing circumstances.  The previous downturn led to a five year ‘staycation’ boost whilst dampening inbound tourism – a very different visitor mix that tourist businesses had to adapt to. Could this happen again – and how will the huge uncertainties around Britain’s planned exit from the EU impact on tourism? Never has it been more important to understand the impacts on tourism behaviours – and at a time when National Tourist Boards, DMOs and businesses themselves have ever shrinking budgets.

And beyond the economic uncertainties, tourism behaviours are constantly evolving.  The Millennial generation brings with it new attitudes to travel which have seen increasing popularity for travellers to enjoy activities seen as more experiential in nature. New brands have emerged and changed the landscape in so many areas – AirB&B and Uber have disrupted the ways in which travellers book and enjoy their accommodation and transport – meaning that the wider industry has had to change to meet these new needs. Indeed, the increase in ‘three generation travel’ has also forced the accommodation sector to adapt its offers to meet these very different lodging requirements.

And of course, tourism is much more than simply holidays and breaks – business tourism, the conference and exhibitions market and even visits to friends and relatives are all evolving in different ways. 

We at 56 Degree Insight can help you to stay on top of these trends and provide your business or organisation with a competitive advantage.

How we can help

Our wealth of experience in this sector, garnered over many years, means we can help tourist boards, DMOs, tour operators and the many tourism businesses, large and small, to flourish.  Changing landscapes offer opportunities as well as risks – we can help you unlock this potential in many ways:

• Measuring, monitoring and helping to identify strategies to improve the experience of your visitors and potential new markets.

• Undertaking surveys of your visitors pre-visit, during the visit and post-visit to really understand the moments that matter in their journey and how you can engender loyalty to ensure return visits.

• Understanding the entire visitor journey – from consideration to planning, booking and the actual trip itself – customer journey mapping.

• Helping destinations to understand their brand and develop it in a way which can provide a competitive advantage.

• advising on and supporting communications development from advertising to online and mobile apps to print.

Tourism clients we have worked with……..

Realising the potential of the Outdoor Tourism sector in Scotland

30 September 2021: There is increasing recognition of the value of the outdoors to the Scottish tourism economy and the role it plays in supporting sustainable economic growth by creating employment, sustaining tourism spend and enhancing the profile of Scotland through the promotion of its natural landscape and scenery. The Outdoors Scotland Tourism Strategy is an initiative led by Wild Scotland and Sail Scotland to champion a collaborative approach for the sector to drive Scotland forward as a leading outdoors tourism destination for sustainable, and environmentally focussed marine, outdoor and wildlife activities. 

During August, 56 Degree Insight along with partner agencies BTS, White Stag Tourism and Lochaber Chamber of Commerce were excited to be commissioned by Wild Scotland and Sail Scotland to develop an Outdoors Tourism Strategy for Scotland. The Project aim is to set in motion the full realisation of the potential of the Scotland’s Outdoor Tourism sector and to identify the way forward and precise actions to support the sectors funding, marketing and development plans.

The 56 Degree Insight role is to explore the potential of Outdoors Tourism amongst potential visitors, and to that end, we have just completed a major survey of over 1,500 consumers across the UK where outdoor activities are the main motivation for a Scottish holiday. Not only will the results from this survey help to scale the size of the potential market for each of 25-30 specific activities, we will also develop profiles for each of these activities – specifically those people with a keen interest in visiting Scotland for that purpose – from their demographics to their interests, holiday attitudes and behaviours and specifically what they would be seeking from such a holiday in Scotland.  

The results will feed into industry consultations and workshops and into the development of a market-driven Outdoors Scotland Strategy and Action Plan to help realise the potential of this sector by identifying key actions for growth and sustainable development.

Further details of the project are available here

Helping the Tourism Industry in their use of Insights

20th January 2021: With many years’ experience in research and insights work across the tourism sector in Scotland and further afield, the 56 Degree Insight team were delighted to be commissioned by VisitAberdeenshire to work with tourism businesses across the region and help demystify data collection and research. The outcome has been the development of a detailed User Manual aimed at tourism businesses to guide operators in their use of Insights. Why gather information about customers ands competitors? How do you do it? What about secondary sources? How do you turn the results obtained into business actions?

We also developed a series of standardised questions for businesses to incorporate in surveys covering a range of topics from visitor profiling, visitor experience to product testing and marketing evaluation.