Visitors invited to share their travels and help shape future planning

Visitors arriving at Tasmania’s four main airports and on the Spirits of Tasmania will be invited to download a mobile phone app which will provide Tourism Tasmania with important insights about their travel patterns while travelling in the state.

Tourism Tasmania is partnering with local company, Tourism Research Technology, to invite visitors to download the Tasmanian Visitor Research app. Tourism Research Technology is part of Ionata Digital, the company that partnered with the University of Tasmania to pioneer the Tourist Tracer visitor tracker.

A better understanding of the travel patterns of our visitors is important to inform government and industry planning for future product and infrastructure development. It also helps inform Tourism Tasmania’s marketing efforts to encourage visitors to disperse more widely across the state and invest in our local communities.

Tourism Tasmania currently seeks information through the Tasmanian Visitor Survey (TVS) which provides data on visitor travel preferences and behaviour by measuring what people do in their visits, how much they spend, where they visit and their satisfaction.

However, the TVS is an exit survey and does not report on actual behaviour, specific roads that are travelled on or the direction of travel.

Advances in GPS technology and the growing use of smart phones provides an opportunity to add to the insights provided through the TVS and deliver a more comprehensive overview  of visitor behaviour.

The technology will also allow for questions to be pushed to participants during their trip that will assist in understanding why visitors are choosing to do the things that they do.

Importantly, no personally identifiable information will be collected through the app, it is an opt-in program with participants consenting to share their movements within the state anonymously.

After leaving, participants will receive a link to an online map of their travels in Tasmania which can be shared on social media.

Promotion of the app will commence in the state’s major airports and on board the Spirits of Tasmania from Friday inviting visitors to sign up for the app and participate in the research.

4 July 2019