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Tourism

Whether your organisation is a public tourism body, tour operator, travel agent, visitor attraction or destination,  cultural, heritage or arts venue  or registered charity, the need to understand your audiences and partners remains paramount. 

Using the full range of quantitative and qualitative techniques at our disposal, our expertise, research specialisms and sector benchmarks, we tackle issues impacting upon tourism, including: 


Each year we conduct visitor surveys at in excess of 100 visitor destinations and attractions including large, multi-site studies on behalf of The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, English Heritage, Museums Libraries and Archives Council and Heritage Lottery Fund. 

This has enabled us to develop detailed visitor benchmarks covering visitor profile, behaviour and experience ratings from over 200 venues.  Experience benchmarks cover key performance indicators, staff, operations and engagement ratings.  Our benchmarks are updated continually upon completion of each survey and are available by type of venue, region and time period as well as overall.

Some examples of our current experience benchmarks include: 

  • Overall Enjoyment/Appreciation

  • Likelihood to Recommend

  • Overall Catering

  • Friendliness of Staff
  • Website Rating
  • Helping to Build Pride in Local Area
  • Engaging the Emotions
  • Children Can Learn Things Here That Cannot be Learned in the Classroom
  • Quality of Displays

 

Our clients have access to the full range of relevant benchmarks.

For more information please contact Steve Mills (020 7400 0381), Alan Love (020 7400 0380) or Max Clapham (020 7400 0385).

 

Whether you need to understand the economic impact of a visitor destination overall or of a specific exhibition or event, we can offer a solution tailored to your needs.  By adopting industry standard questions to establish economic impact, we can answer the key questions:

  • What economic impact has been generated for my organisation?

  • What economic impact has been generated for the local area?

  • What has been the economic impact generated by those visiting the area from outside?

 

BDRC Continental deliver Economic Impact Assessments that meet Treasury Green Book standards. Our EIAs have recently been used by clients including:

  • The National Gallery – to demonstrate the impact of the Picasso Exhibition

  • Heritage Lottery Fund – to assist with measuring impact of their funding on local communities

  • RHS Show Tatton Park – to illustrate the impact of the event in terms of generating visits to the North West region.

  • Liverpool CC – evaluation of 17 events relating to Liverpool 08 Capital of Culture

 

To find out more please contact Steve Mills (020 7400 0381), Alan Love (020 7400 0380) or Max Clapham (020 7400 0385).

 

Our assessment projects inform one or more of the three principal stages in the lifecycle of an Exhibition or Event.

Front-end evaluation

Our research informs the exhibition or event development stage, designed to gauge audience interest and knowledge about the subject.  The outcomes inform overall goals, but particularly interpretation goals (including how the stories should be told) and desired learning outcomes.

Formative evaluation

Our research is also used to help develop the detailed exhibition components, such as the content and tone of the text, graphics and interactives.  It is also used to guide the communication messages. Often, test designs are presented to the prospective audiences as part of this stage.

Summative evaluation

Following an exhibition or event, we measure its success to understand the extent to which its goals and outcomes were achieved.  Did it deliver as intended?  Summative evaluation may also included an Economic Impact Assessment.

For more information please contact Steve Mills (020 7400 0381), Alan Love (020 7400 0380) or Max Clapham (020 7400 0385).

There is increasing pressure on membership and fundraising across both the public and third sectors.  Our team’s key focus is to help organisations optimise their strategies and schemes.

If you are in the process of developing, overhauling or refining your scheme or strategy, we can talk to you about a suitable tailored solution.  The RHS, British Waterways, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and ZSL have all recently used us to help change their business.

Fundraising Verdict

Fundraising Verdict is a comprehensive research study and report that produced in response to increasing demand among Arts, Culture and Heritage organisations for insight to help them tap into the low and medium level giving market.  It helps organisations maximise returns from their low and mid level fundraising activities among the public.

Membership Retention Optimiser

We offer a Membership Retention Optimiser tool which, through research among members, delivers a user-friendly interactive model, enabling organisations to experiment with a vast range of membership package options and fees to establish the combinations which minimise churn and maximise revenue.  Similar interactive tools are designed to understand how to maximise member acquisition. 

Read our coverage of these issues

Steve Mills has recently written two interesting article for Museums and Heritage Magazine on the subject of fundraising for the sector in the current climate:

The value of good friends in challenging times 

Giant leaps or pixie steps

For more information please contact Steve Mills (020 7400 0381), Alan Love (020 7400 0380) or Max Clapham (020 7400 0385).

Visitor research lies at the heart of our business.  Our experience of conducting visitor surveys at over 100 visitor destinations and attractions every year has enabled us to develop sector benchmarks for our clients for visitor profiles, behaviour and experience and attitudes.  A key contributor to these sector benchmarks is The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions for whom we have conducted the Quality of Service Benchmarking monitor since 1997.

You can select modules to meet your business objectives:

  • Visitor Profiling
  • Marketing and Communications Effectiveness
  • Understanding Visit Behaviour
  • Understanding Visit Opinion 
     

But to really understand your visitors we need to dig a little deeper. We frequently use Advanced Analytics to develop market / visitor segmentations or to really understand the key drivers of a great visit experience.  We also use a range of qualitative techniques including observation, Vox Pops, accompanied interviews and on-site MicroDepths to diagnose specific issues impacting upon your visitors.  And to search way below the surface, BDRC Continental is the UK licensee for the ZMET® qualitative technique.

For more information please contact Steve Mills (020 7400 0381), Alan Love (020 7400 0380) or Max Clapham (020 7400 0385).