Research and Insights
Timely and relevant tourism research information is important to marketing strategy, partners and tourism businesses operating in today’s competitive travel market.
Destination Ontario conducts primary, proprietary tourism-related research and has access to third-party research. It is our goal to provide reports with actionable insights that enable the industry to market their products more effectively.
Segmentation
Audience Research by Tourism Product
This research was commissioned by Destination Ontario in partnership with Environics Analytics in the fall of 2021. It analyzed mobility data from consumers over 2 years ending 2020 and covered 128 Points of Interest locations across 15 Ontario tourism product categories. Insights are broken down in terms of local/non-local audiences visiting either major/community attractions.
These reports can help Ontario tourism operators and partners with:
- Geotargeting the right audience with the right tourism products and experiences
- Identifying the platforms and advertising channels to reach that audience
- Understanding the location, behaviours, and life stage information for optimizing your advertising campaigns to the right target audience.
The product categories are as follows:
- Attractions & Theme Parks
- Spas & Retreats
- Resorts
- ATV
- Angling
- Francophone Experiences
- Major & Minor League SportsArt
- Galleries
- Theatre & Film
- Museums, Heritage Sites, Science & Education
- Opera, Ballet & Symphony
- Foodie Destinations, Food Trails & Festivals
- Breweries, Cideries & Distilleries
- Farmers’ Markets
- Wine Regions
To access the reports, please contact the Data and Insights team at DO.research@ontario.ca
This research was originally released through Destination Ontario’s Presents webinar series, and you can find our next upcoming webinars by reaching out to our partnership team at: do.partnerships@ontario.ca
2021 Research Report: Ontario Consumer Travel Intention and Motivator Survey
This report was commissioned by Destination Ontario and prepared by Forum Research on March 31, 2021. It is based on a province-wide online panel survey with a random sample size of 3,242. The sample is representative of the Ontario population by age, gender, region and multicultural background. The report drills down into the “travel within Ontario” market and summarizes the characteristics of Ontario’s highest revenue-generating segments. It also shows how each segment differs from the others in terms of demographics, travel motivations, attitudes to travel and to Ontario as a destination, specific planned activities (product), travel behaviour, and information sources/media consumption.
The report also provides a roadmap of how to target each of these travel segments, and match Ontario’s tourism products to them.
This report can help with:
- Identifying motivators and understanding behaviours of consumer segments that are planning to travel within Ontario
- Identifying vacation motivators (e.g., want a family vs couple retreat trip)
- Identifying barriers to Ontario travel and how to overcome them
- Identifying Ontarians’ travel motivators for outside of Ontario to help determine product/content that could be used to meet that need with an experience or destination that’s actually in Ontario
To access the report, please contact the Data and Insights team at DO.research@ontario.ca
Destination Canada Traveller Segment Profiles
Destination Canada has made available traveller segment profiles for your use. Known as Destination Canada’s Explorer Quotient (EQ®) Toolkit, it provides tourism businesses with valuable insights into why and how different people from various geographic markets like to travel. To learn about Explorer Quotient and how to implement the program, visit DestinationCanada.com.
Destination Ontario Overseas Market Profiles
Destination Ontario has made available market profiles of visitors from Ontario’s key overseas markets for your use: Australia, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. These profiles contain information about visits, visitor spending, economic impact, and trip characteristics by market.
Market Profile Australia
Impact of Tourism in Ontario
As a major economic driver, tourism receipts generated $34.8 billion of total GDP and accounted for 4.2% of Ontario’s GDP in 2017. Tourism receipts generated 401,206 jobs in Ontario that accounted for 5.5% of total provincial employment.
Visitation and Spend
The economic impact of tourism, tourism related employment, hotel occupancy and border crossing statistics help all tourism partners understand the importance of tourism in Ontario’s economy and the tourism industry’s current performance.
Visitation, visitor spending, hotel performance and the number of tourism related businesses on a provincial level and by each of the 13 Tourism Regions can be viewed on the Ministry’s Regional Tourism Profiles webpage.
Additional information on the economic impact of tourism, based on the Travel Survey of Residents of Canada and the International Travel Survey conducted by Statistics Canada, includes inbound and outbound visitor volumes and expenditures by key markets.
Border Crossings
Border crossings for U.S. and key overseas markets are the latest available indicators of tourism performance and market trends. Border crossing statistics are updated monthly.
Research Reports
To understand the consumer mindset and to inform marketing strategies, Destination Ontario has access to various economic and consumer attitude and behaviour research studies.
Global Tourism Watch Research
Global Tourism Watch provides primary consumer-based research on Canada and 10 markets around the world that include Australia, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, United Kingdom and United States. This work is led by Destination Canada and Destination Ontario is a contributing partner to the ongoing research study.
The research objectives are to:
- monitor awareness, travel intentions, and other travel indicators for Canada
- assess perceptions of Canada and track brand performance against key competitors
- identify general travel experience interest
- assess Canada’s competitive positioning on key products and identify growth opportunities;
- identify motivators and barriers for travel to Canada
- explore the role of advocacy in the tourism context
To learn more about this global research study and to access the reports, visit Destination Canada’s Global Tourism Watch page.
Contact
Destination Ontario’s research and insights team can assist with requests related to research studies and marketing and marketing technology items.
Please contact the research and insights team at: destinationontario@ontario.ca
Last updated: January 29, 2024