En route surveys En route surveys a

En route surveys
En route surveys are surveys of travelling during the course of their journey once in the destination country. Strategic points are selected on key transport routes to stop or approach people, who are then either interviewed or given a questionnaire or other documentation to complete in their own time for return by post. A major problem with this type of survey is how representative the sample might be because of incomplete knowledge of traffic movements within a country.
Destination surveys
Surveys are often conducted at popular tourism destinations or in areas where there are high levels of tourist activity. They typically take the form of personal interviews by teams of interviewers. It is difficult to construct with confidence a representative sample of visitors at a tourism destination because visitors are often dispered over a large area. The golden rule is to spread the sample out as much as possible, hence it is conventional to sample proportionately to the seasonal nature of demand time of year, notably in peak months, and to conduct interviews at a wide range of sites which visitors are likely to frequent, namely attractions and places of interest, accommodation establishments, shopping centres, transport termini and similar.
Surveys of suppliers
One of the issues with demand surveys is their timeliness, in that acquiring, processing and publishing such extensive volumes of information involves a considerable effort, even with modern technologies, so that the results may not appear until a half-year or more has passed. For business users of these statistics this is often too late, although authorities try to counter this by producing rolling monthly and quarterly statistics. Surveys of the suppliers of tourism services are much more immediate and, although partial in coverage, they can be used as indicators to monitor trends. There is a range of indicators for which regular collection from a statistically determined sample of businesses is impracticable but can be collected from panels of businesses organised by tourist boards. Evidence on short-term trends in such indicators is beneficial for marketing and for monitoring the impact of any sudden shocks to the tourism system. International passenger movements are readily available from aviation authorities, while at the destination indicators may include:
accommodation occupancy data;
business confidence surveys;
attendance at visitor attractions;
state of the market indicators such as average revenue achieved per available room, average
key performance indicators collected from best practice forums.