The trick, and mystique, of business is knowing what a customer is looking for.
It is the difference between hits and misses and can be particularly difficult when the tourists businesses are attempting to attract are from a far-off location with different cultural norms.
This is one of the reasons why the Canadian Tourism Commission regularly publishes updates on 10 key international markets, including Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and the U.K.
Each profile includes a summary providing insights into the market conditions in the country, macro-economic data and traveller forecasts for the coming year.
Digging deeper, the guides give profiles of the kind of travellers from each market and reasons why past visitors from that country came to Canada. In addition, the guides show how Canada stacks up against international competitors in attracting visitors from that nation, motivations for those particular visitors and what barriers discourage them.
These market profile reports draw heavily from CTC’s three major consumer research studies – Global Tourism Watch, Explorer Quotient and Advertising Evaluation Studies.
In reading the reports, businesses can find answers to questions such as: do Australians use a travel agent or book their trips on the web? How much do the Japanese spend when they vacation in Canada? Where in Canada do Americans like to visit, and when? How successful is Canada’s tourism brand in the marketplace?
Combined with the findings from these studies, CTC’s research team has provided further analysis to give the Canadian tourism industry a short but sweet summary of each international market.
Each market profile, housed in the market knowledge section of CTC’s corporate website, is broken into down into four main sections:
Executive summary – A general overview of conditions in each market, ranging from macro-economic data, traveller forecasts and an outlook for the coming year.
Traveller profiles – A look at the characteristics of travellers in each market, including reasons for coming to Canada (such as visiting friends and family), how they get here (such as taking nonstop flights or coming to Canada after a visit to the U.S.).
Competitive environment – How Canada ranks against its international tourism rivals for arrival numbers, air service and marketing performance.
Marketing insights – A summary of traveller profiles, motivators, barriers and trip-planning behaviour at each stage of the path to purchase, as well as insights on how previous visitors share their Canadian experiences with other consumers.
To access the reports, and for more information, visit the CTC’s corporate website at en-corporate.canada.travel
