Some trade areas have relatively consistent patterns of commerce activity year-round. Others fluctuate with annual events and seasonal demand. In popular tourist destinations, a trade area’s demographics can change significantly as the transient population increases and decreases from one month to the next.
As you compare locations and prioritize sites, you can’t overlook the impact of tourism. Even if you’re conducting trade area analysis in an area that isn’t particularly well-known for tourism, annual events and certain times of year can bring an influx of out-of-towners to your store—and it’s vital that you understand how this activity affects your business.
Tourism analysis is the examination of visitor data in a given area, including details like the number of people who come as visitors, where they come from, when they visit, where they go while visiting, and how long they stay.
For retailers, tourism analysis can play a valuable role in site selection. And with Tango, it’s easier than ever to understand the impact seasonal travel has on a location’s viability—leading to more informed, profitable decisions.
How your business can benefit from tourism analysis
Tourism analysis has traditionally been the domain of cities, tourist towns, convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs), and destination marketing organizations (DMOs). Such entities rely on tourism analysis in order to promote a location as a tourism destination and ensure that local infrastructure is sufficient to accommodate guests.
But your business stands to benefit from the same kinds of data about when and where visitors will be present.
If you live in an area where different seasons equate to a change in the customers you receive, then you need to plan for those changes. Tourism analysis can show you not only what seasons of the year additional visitors will be present, but also where they’ll travel throughout the trade area, and even what days of the week and hours of the day they’ll do so.
This knowledge empowers you to better understand how operating costs and profits fluctuate with seasonal demand. Significant tourist activity will likely require you to adjust inventory and coordinate your supply chains around peak seasonal activity. You’ll also have greater staffing needs during the height of tourist seasons. And when you’re ready to open a new location—or move an existing store—tourism analysis data becomes a crucial component to your site selection process.
Additionally, advanced tourism analysis based on mobile data (such as what Tango Predictive Analytics provides) gives you demographic insights as well. You’ll know how many people are present at any given time, as well as who they are, including ages, genders, income ranges, and where they’re coming from. Knowing this, you can more accurately forecast sales by accounting for times when larger populations of your target demographic will pass through the trade area. Depending on your industry, you can also plan to welcome visitors from specific regions, perhaps by stocking products they would want which are otherwise unavailable in your area.
The more data you have access to, the better informed your business decisions will be. And tourism analysis provides a valuable set of data you can use that many businesses overlook—giving you the advantage over your competition.
How to conduct tourism analysis with Tango
Before smartphones, tourism analysis was based primarily on surveys and hotel data. Most of the information collected was self-reported by visitors, manually compiled together, and laboriously sorted into usable information. Today, advances in technology have made tourism analysis not only easier to access, but more accurate, more finely targeted, and more useful than ever.
Tango Predictive Analytics uses mobile data to give you access to all the detailed visitor information you need in an easy-to-use interface.
Ideally, tourism analysis should be baked into your site selection process—and it’ll be most informative once you’ve used GIS mapping[3] to visualize your site selection criteria. You’ll want to see your store in relation to competitors, other branches, notable attractions, traffic flow, and other factors that may impact the opportunity a site represents.
From there, you’ll use Tango’s demographic data to isolate the transient population in the area..[4] Then compare how the behavior of that set of people differs from the resident population. What areas do they frequent? What points of interest or main attractions do they seek out? And how will their movement behavior intersect with your store?
It can also help to view historical activity in addition to real-time activity in an area. Tango can pull that for you from existing mobile data. Look at the seasonal trends that emerge. How long is the peak tourism activity? Does a winter season for tourism exist (such as for skiing), or is summer the only significant tourism season? Do local events draw people from out of town? How much of a difference in activity is there during the off season? And how will this difference affect your business performance throughout the year?
Gain location-based insights with Tango Predictive Analytics
Whether you’re prioritizing new stores, considering closures, or evaluating possible relocations, tourism analysis can have a major impact on your real estate decisions.
Tango Predictive Analytics uses advanced GIS tools and data sets to help you visualize and analyze markets. Tango Predictive Analytics creates stunningly accurate sales forecasts by combining our data, your custom site selection criteria, and machine learning—empowering you to more reliably compare opportunities. With our decades of retail location modeling experience, you’ll be equipped to develop smart location strategies and make the best real estate decisions.
See what our predictive analytics software can do for your organization.