Understanding what motivates and inspires your customer, how often they take a short break or holiday, their indicative spend, preferred leisure activities and the type of destination (rural or urban) that they are attracted to, means that you can target your customer more effectively. This data however needs to be combined with an age profile, their tendency to holiday alone, as a family, couple or group of like minded individuals in order for market segmentation to take place.
While it is important to know your own customer, Tourism NI and Tourism Ireland carry out extensive research to help you to get to know the customer profiles of different countries across the world.
NI Domestic Market Review
Tourism NI conducted a review of the home market and the report was launched in March 2020. NI Domestic Tourism Strategy.
The Domestic Market Review:
- Examines NI’s overall tourism offering
- Looks at both segmentation and strategy for this market sector
- Provides an understanding of motivations and perceptions
- Examines the importance of getting the tourist volume and value (£) equation right
- Highlights the importance of pitching our communications to encourage NI residents to holiday within NI as opposed to competing destinations of ROI and/or GB (who offer similar product)
- Looks at presentation of the wonderful offering we have, the importance of profiling those hidden gems
- Demonstrates the importance of collaborative working
- Guides on how to build on strengths and how to work on weaknesses
- Advises holistic thinking
- Asks us to nurture local pride in NI and encourage local volunteers to be ambassadors for tourism
- Promotes the importance of using Embrace a Giant Spirit
What segments have been identified?
Natural Quality Seekers 15%, Social Instagrammers 15%, Aspiring Families 30%, Pragmatists 13%, Comfort seekers 13%, and the Short Break Enthusiasts 14%. The first 3 segments account for 60% of the market and therefore the strategy focuses on these segments in particular.
Find out more about the NI and ROI markets from Tourism NI.
Also target markets for GB & international markets.
Photo credit © Northern Ireland Tourist Board