Research Tools & Methods

Hotel Statistics

What are Hotel Statistics?
On Destination BC’s Snapshot of BC Travel Dashboard and Tourism Industry Dashboard the Research team publishes accommodation statistics (occupancy, ADR and RevPAR) for BC and a number of communities within the province from the supplier STR.

• Hotel occupancy rate is the percentage of hotel rooms occupied during a specific period, omitting rooms not available due to renovations or otherwise unavailable.
• Average daily room rate (ADR) is a statistical unit used to measure a hotel’s pricing scale; the figure is derived by dividing actual total revenue for the period represented by the total number of occupied room nights.
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR) is calculated as the total room revenue, divided by the number of available rooms.

Who can use it?
Hotel accommodators are likely to find the data helpful to compare their own performance to others in their area or nearby areas. DMOs are likely to find this information helpful to understand visitor volume and help predict room revenue projections.

How can BC tourism partners start using Hotel Statistics?
Communities interested in becoming a listed community on the list of communities within one of the dashboards can contact Destination BC at TourismResearch@DestinationBC.ca to express interest and obtain associated costs.

Want to know more details?
The BC Travel Snapshot is updated weekly and only weekly statistics are provided. The Tourism Industry Dashboard data is updated on a monthly basis, and data is available for a rolling 12-month period.

Environics Analytics: PRIZM Segmentation and Mobility Data

What is PRIZM and mobility data?
PRIZM is a segmentation system that categorizes each Canadian and US household into one of 67 or 68 consumer segments. The segmentation tool connects a variety of databases together to gain a deeper understanding of the population to a more granular level.

Mobility data, which is also linked to PRIZM, helps identify if individuals are within a particular area for a specified period. Currently, data is obtained through two tools; the database VisitorView and MobileScapes. VisitorView captures overnight travellers to the province and tourism regions (in additional to all regional districts and a few communities for domestic travellers). This data will soon be available on Destination BC’s Tourism Industry Dashboard. MobileScapes allows custom geofences to be created or uploaded and includes all individuals with the exception of those to live and/or work within the geofence.

What can PRIZM and mobility data do?
Using either PRIZM by itself or in combination with mobility data helps answer the following questions:

1. Who are my visitors? Through uploading visitor’s postal/zip codes and/or identifying overnight visitors/individuals in a defined area using mobility data, PRIZM can help organizations understand who their visitors are, where they are from, and the popular consumer (PRIZM) segments to help attract similar visitors.

2. What do my key visitors look like? As PRIZM links a variety of databases to each segment, users can gain additional ‘views’ of their visitors based on demographic, psychographic, and lifestyle characteristics. These deep insights help profile and describe the visitors so users can strategically create target groups.

3. Where can I find my key visitors? Once users identify who their key visitors are, how to describe them, and how to locate them, they can look at how best to reach and how to create messages that will resonate with them. In addition, by profiling their target visitors, users can then identify where other similar behaving consumers also exist, discovering potentially untapped market opportunities.

Who can use it?
BC tourism partners

How can BC tourism partners start using PRIZM and mobility data?
Interested BC tourism organizations can contact Destination BC at TourismResearch@DestinationBC.ca to express interest in becoming a PRIZM sub-licensee and/or commissioning PRIZM/mobility analysis. Being a sub-licensee requires the annual cost of online tool ENVISION and potential database costs. For commissioned work, Destination BC’s research team will follow up to understand your business objectives and, based on capacity, recommend the most appropriate approach to fulfill the request. If Destination BC’s research team is unable to fulfill the request, they would be able to provide a list of qualified suppliers available to commission work. The cost of running PRIZM/mobility analysis depends on the quantity and quality of data input, as well as the type and complexity of analysis and reporting.

Want to know more details?
For more details on PRIZM and mobility data, please visit Environics Analytics website, the Canadian supplier for the data.

Measuring Net Promoter Score (NPS®)¹

Over the past decade, there have been substantial shifts in the tourism marketplace that have resulted in the growing importance of the delivery of outstanding travel experiences. High satisfaction with travel experiences is critical to achieving increased visitor spending, longer stays, repeat visits and positive word of mouth referrals. And destination advocacy, either face-to-face or through electronic media, is critical in attracting first time visitors to British Columbia.

A key goal of our strategy is for British Columbia to become the most highly recommended destination in North America. The Net Promoter Score or NPS, developed by Frederick Reichheld and Bain & Company in 2002, is a simple metric that can be used to measure the intention to recommend/refer a travel destination, organization or sector and is also an indicator of overall satisfaction with the travel or customer experience. Therefore, Destination BC actively encourages its tourism partners (e.g., businesses, communities, sectors) to measure and increase their NPS. To assist, two summary documents have been created.

The Introduction to the Net Promoter Score is a document that provides an introduction to what the NPS is and how it is currently being used in the tourism industry.

A summary of How to Measure Net Promoter Score in British Columbia Communities provides an overview of the details to consider at project initiation, how to determine the best visitor intercept methodology, discusses survey administrative tools, questionnaire development and how to complete the NPS calculation and recommended data analysis.

[1] Net Promoter and NPS are registered trademarks and net promoter score and net promoter system are trademarks of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems and Fred Reichheld.

BC Community Accommodation Survey

What is the BC Community Accommodation Survey?
The BC Community Accommodation Survey is an online system created by Destination British Columbia to efficiently collect and compile accommodation monthly trending data about community overnight stays including visitor origin, booking type and booking channel.

What can the BC Community Accommodation Survey do?
The BC Community Accommodation Survey was created to provide communities in British Columbia with an affordable way to track and monitor visitor information, encouraging the partnership between the local tourism organization and accommodation operators. Communities and accommodation operators can use the summarized information for business planning purposes, etc. In addition, each participating accommodation property can benchmark their performance against aggregated information about other properties in their community.

Who can use it?
The system is used by Community Destination Management Organizations (CDMOs) and accommodation partners to track accommodation and market performance in their community. CDMOs will need a great working relationship with the accommodation operators in their community and great buy in from their partner properties.

How can BC tourism partners start using the BC Community Accommodation Survey?
Reach out to accommodation operators to assess interest in the program.
Contact TourismResearch@DestinationBC.ca for additional information and to get set up on the platform.

Destination BC offers access to the online system free of charge with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Destination BC and the local tourism organization. The local tourism organization is responsible for:
• Providing feedback and making decisions to support the program.
• Liaising with accommodation operators to ensure a high level of participation and data quality.

Want to know more details?
As the BC Community Accommodation Survey is an online system, the majority of the effort happens prior to using the system. The basic steps include:
• Collect an inventory of all fixed-roof accommodations in the community.
• Establish a strong relationship between the local tourism organization and a representative number of accommodation operators.
• Receive training on how to use the online system from Destination BC.
• Accommodation operators enter their past months’ information in the online system.
• Partners review the monthly summary reports which are automated in the online system.

The system will automatically send accommodation operators a reminder after the end of the month to enter their data from the past month. Operators and CDMOs can then view performance results provided a minimum of three properties entered data (to preserve property confidentiality).CDMOs are responsible for following up directly with properties that forget to input their data. This helps to ensure everyone gets the most out of the program.

BC Tourism Economic Input-Output Model

What is the BC Tourism Economic Input-Output Model?
The BC Tourism Economic Input-Output Model was created in partnership with Pacific Analytics to estimate the economic impact (e.g., GDP, tax revenue, employment, wages) of tourism activities (e.g. festivals, sectors) at the:

• Provincial level
• Tourism regional level
• Regional district level
• Municipal level (case by case basis)

Who can use it?
Tourism partners including tourism businesses and DMOs can access the Input-Output Model through Destination BC.

What can the BC Tourism Economic Input-Output Model do?
This model will provide the tourism industry in British Columbia with a customized and consistent method for estimating the economic impacts of tourism to demonstrate the value of tourism.

Example applications of the model could include determining the economic impact of:
• Festivals and events
• Sector and products
• Attractions

The model can also be used to determine visitor activity and spending or assist with tourism investment decisions.

How can BC tourism partners start using the BC Tourism Economic Input-Output Model?
Contact TourismResearch@DestinationBC.ca for more information, including the BC Tourism Economic Input-Output Model information sheet.

Want to know more details?
There are many different approaches to running the model. The primary way to run the model is with data from participating businesses and visitors. The basic steps include:
1. Determining the scope/parameters of what the economic model will include.
2. Collecting all data for a pre-determined timeframe.
3. Running the model to generate direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts.

Destination BC has a number of pricing structures depending on your business needs. There is no cost to use the base model. However, the model requires significant resources in the planning and collecting stages to identify and fill information gaps, and encourage participation.

Value of Tourism Model

What is the Value of Tourism Model?
The Value of Tourism Model was developed by the Research and Analytics team at Destination BC to provide a conservative and credible estimate of visitor volume (for overnight, day and visiting friends & relatives visitors) and direct tourism expenditures within a community for a specific year. It is derived from the data of commercial accommodation operators (including campgrounds and RV parks), in combination with local, regional, provincial and national tourism indicators.

What can the Value of Tourism Model do?
It allows communities to have a defensible estimate of tourism’s contribution to a community which is central in developing an informed planning approach, strengthening the support of community stakeholders and local government and encouraging an appreciation of tourism’s economic potential.

Who can use it?
BC communities and/or organizations.

Want to know more details?
Contact TourismResearch@DestinationBC.ca for more information and associated required steps.