In a world where compromised reviews and market saturation rule the day, how can destination brands stand out to today’s travelers?

Research.

The most valuable way to effectively target the visitors that you seek is to fully and completely understand their motivations and desires. How do potential customers looking for memorable experiences feel about your brand? They are visiting destination websites, searching and hoping to find a place where they – and their loved ones – will feel comfortable.

And the most accurate way to deliver prospects the right content is to learn exactly why those who have already made the decision to buy what you are selling did so. This is vital information that you can use to locate and convince like-minded individuals to follow suit.

The Value of Customer Research for Travel Brands

Your existing and even recent former customers are dying to tell you what they experienced and how they felt both while they were visiting and since they’ve returned home. Just ask them.

This is not necessarily quantitative research and is certainly not a phone survey that follows a transaction: “please stay on the line for a brief customer service survey at the end of this call…” That has become nonsense and provides narrow and slanted feedback with very little value other than to discover problems and dissatisfaction.

What Is the Best Kind of Consumer Research?

There are lots of different ways to research your consumers these days. What I’m talking about is qualitative data that only comes from one-on-one conversations and verbatim responses – a core user study. Utilizing a combination of knowledgeable and skilled interviewers and carefully crafted online surveys, destinations can learn fairly quickly just how customers discovered them, what their booking experience was like, how they felt about their experience prior to and during their stay, their willingness to return, and what they are telling/would tell others.

Well-planned research can draw out valuable experiences and identify language and imagery that resonated with guests. You can get a better understanding of where expectations were met, and where they fell short.

But the questions you ask don’t need to (and shouldn’t) be confined to the experience. They can also be about the consumers themselves. Learning more about what your customers like to do on trips, how they plan, and their mindset when they chose your brand can help you build personas. These fleshed-out personal profiles go beyond demographics and will help your internal team and/or ad agency develop messages that will resonate with new, like-minded prospective visitors and guests.

Your Customers Hold the Key to Your Future

In short, destinations need to learn to “dance with the one that brung ya.”  The idea is that you should be loyal to the people who made you in the first place. Be true to your destination-self. You don’t need different guests, you need more guests.

Use research to talk with them, learn from them, understand them, find more of them, and effectively target them. Then, simply hold the door open. They’re coming.