Destination Personality Ireland: a new frontier for destination marketing

A few months ago, we were announcing our research project with Tourism Ireland about the Destination Personality Ireland. The time has now come to let you know what we exactly have measured.

What was the project about?

We wanted to understand how Italians travelling to Ireland perceive their destination before and after their visitor experience. To do so, we combined marketing/economics and psychological studies. The research was ran between the 1st of June and the 31st of August.

A collaboration with airports and industry partners was orchestrated across Italy and Ireland, collecting the opinions of about 2.000 subjects.

Our methodology

In order to collect exhaustive and reliable data in a limited period of time, a collaboration with four major Italian airports was set.

Three different collection techniques were applied:

Digital, assisted: the interviewer was equipped with a tablet.

Digital, self reliant: links and QR codes on business cards.

Paper: traditional questionnaires collected by the interviewer.

In order to raise participation, two industry partners were involved: Irish Day Tours and Musement provided discount codes on their tours and activities to all the contributors.

Objects of study

As you know now, the aim of the research was to profile Italian travellers who visited Ireland in the months of July and August 2016, measuring both their expectations and experience.

At the same time, a profile of the destinations themselves was traced, in order to draw a picture of the main traits that travellers associate to the locations. The research took into consideration four macro-areas:

Dublin

Wild Atlantic Way

Ireland’s Ancient East

Northern Ireland

Several sub-categories were identified inside the main four, and visitors got asked what was the one they perceived as the most relevant for their trip.

Our measurements

We have measured five different types of data:

Traveller’s profile

Travel behavior

Travel motivation

Emotional profile of the destination

Destination Personality

To learn more about it, check out our infographic below or contact us.

And stay tuned, the article about our main findings is coming soon !