Research is a big part of travel and tourism, but it’s not always easy to bring to life. Early on in my career, I felt the same way. A spreadsheet chock-full of visitor spending, economic impact and visitation numbers can feel like a Scrabble board mid-game: a bunch of pieces that don’t seem to connect yet.
But once you start seeing how those pieces connect, a story starts to appear. That’s when I came to realize that a researcher’s job isn’t just to compile the data but to find the story those numbers are telling.
For DMOs and tourism organizations, that storytelling matters because research rarely has just one audience. The same data may help shape a marketing strategy, support a conversation with a county commissioner, show growth in a board meeting or help a hotelier understand demand. It’s a bit like handing a menu to four people: Everyone is looking at the same options, but each person is deciding what matters to them.
Doing that well means looking past that BIG number, figuring out what’s happening underneath it and knowing which part your audience needs.
Look Beyond the Headline Number
For example, total visitor spending is one of the most asked-about statistics. It’s a number that you can put on a slide in a board meeting and everyone immediately gets it. But spending can only tell you so much. If a destination is trying to decide what to do next, the real meat of the data lies in the trends underneath that number: Who is visiting? When are they coming? How much do they spend? How long are they staying? How are those patterns changing over time?
Those few questions start to explain what total visitor spending can’t on its own. They dig deeper into the data by showing whether visitors are staying longer, spending differently, traveling at different times of the year, or whether a destination is attracting a different mix of travelers than before. That gives destinations something they can actually use, whether that means shifting when they market or who they target.
Same Data, Different Audience
Seeing that pattern is only half the job. The next step is deciding which part of the data (or in this case, which part of the story) matters most to the person right in front of you.
Let’s go back to our total visitor spending example. Say visitors spent $1.2 billion, up 8% from last year. That $1.2 billion looks completely different to a hotelier, a researcher, a board member or a resident. Each person is going to reach for something that matters to them:
- A hotelier wants to know what the data means for demand and forecasts.
- A researcher wants to dig into the raw figures.
- A board member may ask whether the current strategy is working.
- A resident may want to know what that $1.2 billion means for their community.
And for each of these situations, you may pull something different from that $1.2 billion:
- You might show the hotelier what hotel spending was by month and point out the months when rooms tend to fill up or sit empty.
- A researcher may want to go into full research mode and dig into the methodology used, like how many travelers were surveyed.
- A board member would love to see growth against the goal. Maybe spending rose 8% against the 5% target the board set last year.
- Residents may want to know how much of that spending came back in tax revenue and if that supports local infrastructure or the services they use every day.
The same data led us down four different paths, each making the numbers easier to understand when they’re part of a story. And once people understand what the data means for them, it becomes much easier to build a strategy around.
When the Numbers Click
Learning how to tell the right story with data takes practice. The goal isn’t to change what the data means or dress it up as something it’s not. It’s to understand the research well enough to know which part matters the most to whoever you’re talking to.
For me, it’s one of my favorite parts of the job. Seeing the data click in someone’s head, watching their eyes widen as they start to understand it the same way I did early in my career, never gets old.
