BCRTS Research Program

COVID-19 Tourism Impact Reports:

• COVID-19 Tourism Impact Reports
• Measuring Canadian Travel Patterns Reports

General Research Programs & Tools

• Visitor Views Reporting for CDMOs & RDMOs
• STAR Hotel Benchmarking for Hotels & RDMOs
• Market Segmentation Reports for Stakeholders and RDMOs
• Custom Research & Reports for Stakeholders, Sectors, CDMOs, & RDMOs.

Each month over 200 businesses throughout BC are polled on a number of topics related to how the pandemic is affecting their businesses; from eligibility and uptake of grant programs, to employment figures to personal challenges. A summary report is developed each month and this is reported back to industry and is also shared directly with the provincial government to inform impacts and changes. This BCRTS project is in partnership with the Tourism Industry Association of BC (TIABC) and the BC Hotel Association (BCHA) and BC Community Destination Marketing Organization (BCDMOA). When businesses tell us they are falling through the cracks, we report it back and request changes such as expansion of the BC Small Business Grant, the creation of new grant programs for the hardest hit sectors and changes to eligibility criteria. It’s an essential way for us to gather and supply realtime information to the provincial government. The reports are available to the public and participation in surveys are vital to this work so we thank all stakeholders who have, and who will, contribute.

Our weekly visitation data comes from the Environics Analytics Weekly Tracker which allows us to view the number of visitors to the province, and to each region, using mobile data. Each region’s data is compared to the province and on a year-over-year basis so we can see the trends by season, impacts from travel restrictions, etc. These documents, titled “Measuring Canadian Travel Patterns” are available for download each week.

What is the STAR Report? For more than 30 years, research company STR collects rooms available, rooms sold, and room revenue from participating hotels which is then fed back (anonymously) to participants in reports to understand our own hotel’s performance. 

The British Columbia Hotel Association and the BC Regional Tourism Secretariat are working together to provide the STAR report to our stakeholders to better understand our performance within our markets. Regional data is provided weekly to each RDMO and participating hotels receive their own reports. 

Powered by the world’s largest hotel data sample, STR delivers confidential data on hotel occupancy, Average Daily Rate (ADR) and Revenue per Available Room (RevPar), for markets such as the tourism regions of BC.

Want to participate? See the Info Sheet or go straight to the sign-up form now. It’s FREE! Or watch a demo video of the FREE hotel benchmarking dashboard you could start accessing right away.

Regional STATS the Weekend of February 17-18, 2023:

STR Destination Report BC Regions: December 2021 – October 2022

Visitor View is the visitation and segmentation report generated monthly for each region and the province using Environics Analytics’ Envision platform.  It allows us to compare domestic visitation over the years of 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 using mobile technology.  The visitation by month at the unique visitor level, the trip level, and the overnight stay level allow the regions to understand where their visitors are coming from and the kinds of trips being made by Canadians to each region.  Additionally, market segmentation data by month is generated using Environics Analytics’ PRIZM segmentation and Destination Canada’s Explorer Quotient (EQ) segmentation systems.  This means that each region understands their visitors’ demographics, values, interests, media usage, and more.  This information is useful for regions, CDMOs, businesses to understand the kinds of activities to develop and market, as well as the type of language to use in marketing, and the areas to target to attract new or different audiences. Each region provides this information on its website.

Report Examples

• 2022 BC Monthly Visitor Highlights
• 2021 BC Year in Review Visitor Highlights
• 2021 BC Monthly Visitor Highlights
• 2020 BC Year in Review Visitor Highlights 

The program allows us to understand the whole picture of the BC and Alberta markets – BC’s two primary domestic markets – and is available to all stakeholders on request.  You can find the information in the Visitor View summaries above, or request further info from your Regional DMO. 

Why would you need this? If you want to understand who is currently coming to your region, what the top visitor origin cities are, what the demographics of the visitors are (are they Families? Couples? Empty-nesters? What is their household income?), what kinds of activities they like to do, what social media channels they are using, and more, the Market Data provides this info. 

If you want to know about the top market segments of BC and where to find the people that align with your values as a business, where those that are interested in arts & culture, or hiking or kayaking, etc., the BC and Alberta Market Data provides that information and can help you in your planning and strategies for targeting new markets. Providing access to market data is a goal of the BCRTS partnership, to ensure all stakeholders have information at their fingertips.

Report Example

• 2021 BC Monthly Visitor Highlights Q1

If you want to go further and understand your customers or visitors to your community specifically, you can get custom research done by BCRTS’s data partner, Symphony Tourism Services. The program is subsidized by BCRTS’s coverage of the data licenses and therefore the costs are reasonable. Inquire via your Regional DMO.  Read more about custom research available and examples of projects that have been completed.

Types of Custom Research

• Postal Code Analysis
• Mobile Visitor Analysis
• Sector Analysis