Marketing Lancashire has appointed Tourism South East Research to help it increase visitor numbers by 7m over the next 4 years.
It will be the largest Lancashire-wide research project to date and the organisation hopes it will help better inform decisions on product development.
“This will be the most comprehensive and detailed county-wide visitor research for several years and we look forward very much to gaining a greater understanding of our current visitors and to highlighting the opportunities that will help attract new visitors, to our wonderfully diverse county,” said Ruth Connor, chief executive of Marketing Lancashire.
TSE is headed up by Dr Parves Khan, who has specific expertise in “market measurement, customer satisfaction and segmentation, policy and marketing research and demand modelling.”
“In the competitive world, guesswork is not enough. A destination needs to understand who its visitors are, whether their needs and expectations are being met and about wider market trends in order to stay competitive and grow,” she explained.
“At TSE Research we’ve been working with destinations for over 20 years, helping them gather the evidence they need to inform decisions to be made in relation to future visitor management, marketing initiatives and the enhancement of visitor facilities and services”.
The research will include face-to-face visitor surveys across the county; as well as consultations with non-visitors to get their views on Lancashire and why they’ve not visited before. The project will also separate visitors into broad socio-economic groups, key areas of interest and need, in order to better inform the implementation of targeted strategies for growth.
It should be completed by March next year.
