Welcome to the Northern New York Travel and Tourism Research Center’s Self-Help Center. 

Materials found here are designed to help tourism business owners conduct their own research.

The purpose of market research is to find out about a business’ customers: who they are, what they want from the business, whether what they bought seemed fair for the money they paid.  Small businesses are fortunate to be in direct touch with their customers and market research can take advantage of that and help turn an owner’s hunches or guesstimates into valid and sound estimates.

What Do You Know About Your Customers?

• What do they buy from you?
• How many of your customers are on vacation, business trips or social trips?
• What is the sex, age, and party size of your customers?
• What are their spending patterns and income?
• How long do they stay?
• How frequently do they visit?
• How do they get to your business?
• Where do they come from?
• How did they find out about your business?
• What attracts them to your location?

These are questions you can answer by doing some of your own simple research.

A Few Simple Research Rules

• Your customer is a guest and should be treated as such; don’t make the survey process a negative one.
• Make sure your customers understand that you – as the owner – value their opinions.
• Keep your surveys brief – the less questions the better.
• Multiple choice questions are better than open-ended questions from the customer’s point of view.
• Make sure you question a random sample of customers – do not ask only one gender, age group, or type of buyer.
• A good rule of thumb is that about 100 responses will provide valid information but more than 300 is not necessary for a small business and can be cumbersome to tally.
• Be sure to always thank customers for participating in your research.
• Make sure there is a confidential method for them to return their surveys if you use a written form – give them an envelope to seal it in, provide a locked box on the counter, etc.

Below are links to two example surveys to help you get started.  Each survey should be modified to fit your own personal needs and business type.  Sometimes it can be more useful to ask only a few questions about one specific topic rather than asking many generic visitor questions. 

Example Attractions Visitor Survey                    Example Written Visitor Survey