Market Analysis
...he focus of market analysis section is a thorough examination of your target market, those people that you intend to sell your products or services to. A travel office must seek to find where marketing and promotional programs will be most effective. Markets can be segmented, breaking them up into groups with common chrematistics. Even if you intend on selling a travel-related product only in your own state/province, you're not selling that product to everyone who lives there. You need to know exactly what the travelers who might be interested in buying your product or service are like all over the country and how many of them there are. Travel offices need to make some projections about them, in terms of how much of their products or service they might buy, and how they might be affected by trends in the market. New markets may be identified and studied for potential growth. How old are the travelers and what is their income? Where do they live and what are the popular destinations people want to see? Sources of data frequently used by travel offices when conducting marketing research are: state/provincial and national data on travel-related activities, national/regional surveys, counts of visitors at parks/attractions, surveys conducted with travelers at home and state provincial data on socioeconomic/demographic characteristics of markets. Evaluation Research This research studies how effective objectives, strategies and programs are before and after their implementation. The primary focus of evaluation research is on change. The data collected needs to be related to the evaluation criteria chosen to represent the objective of a particular program the organization is evaluating. The data collected will measure various performance factors, satisfaction levels, compare user and non-user groups, etc. Travel offices use evaluation research is to find an understanding of factors influencing a promotional program’s success, from their recommendations on improvement can be made. Impact and market analysis are components of evaluation research. This helps the travel office evaluate what programs need more attention and which were worthwhile. Advertising typically makes up the largest portion of a travel offices budget. Advertising research is important for identifying the effectiveness of awareness, where the ads should be placed, leads/revenue generated, visitor volume, etc.. The types of advertising evaluation research most frequently conducted by travel offices are: Inquiry tracking analysis (who responded to ad), conversion studies (saw ad and then visited), pre/post studies on impact of travel attitudes and pretests of alternative advertisements. Identification Resources Travel offices seek to research data and describe travel and tourism products by collecting an inventory of travel-related business establishments. These include natural, scenic and cultural attractions...