INSIGHTS
Consistent customer service and offering additional service hours at shops for visitors is ever more important in an era of‘ word of mouth’ social media marketing.
Fernie Alpine Resort is Fernie’ s core attraction in the winter. Given the proximity to many other ski areas the competition for visitors is very high therefore continuing to improve the experience is important.
Attracting a higher yield visitor will need both investments in product / services as well as targeted marketing at this demographic. Much may be learned from existing operators such as Island Lake Catskiing, high-end accommodators and fly-fishing companies.
Leading industry practice is for destination marketing organizations to be the primary visitor contact before trips, during trips and post trip
Continuing to keep the visitor experience as a central tenant will help with collaboration among tourism organizations.
SITUATION ANALYSIS & KEY INSIGHTS
TOURISM SENTIMENT INDEX
DestinationThink! was contracted by Tourism Fernie to produce three annual reports from 2017 – 2019 called the Tourism Sentiment Index. Each report provides a comprehensive analysis of what people are saying about Fernie online. Insights from this data help guide strategic planning, marketing and destination development to enable our community to shape the way people talk about Fernie in the future.
More than 500,000 different sources were included in the analysis, including online media sites, forums, reviews and social media networks( Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube and Trip Advisor).
The Tourism Sentiment Index is a measure of a destination’ s ability to generate positive word of mouth about its tourism offering. It is an aggregate score( NPS System) that focuses solely on online conversations that reference or affect a potential traveller’ s perceptions of a destination’ s tourism offering. To do this DestinationThink! starts by collecting all the conversations around your destination and then filter to those conversations that are driven by Fernie’ s tourism experiences or products. To provide further context for the results, five comparative destinations were included in the analysis: Rossland, Whitefish, Golden, Revelstoke and Canmore.
Below are a few highlights from the reports. The full report is available from Tourism Fernie by request.
• Over 34,000 online conversations actively promoted Fernie experiences each year. Of all the conversations online being driven by Fernie’ s tourism experiences in 2019, 73 % were identified as‘ Destination Promoter’, 24 % were identified as‘ Destination Passive’ and only 3 % as‘ Destination Detractor’. Overall this positions Fernie with a Tourism Sentiment Index( TSI) Score of 70, up 13 points since 2017.
• In comparison to our competitor destinations, identified as Whitefish, Revelstoke, Golden, Canmore and Rossland for this report, our TSI Score is the highest.
• Destination Promoter: Those who actively recommend and speak positively to others about Fernie.
• Destination Passive: Those who speak from an indifferent point of view to others about Fernie.
• Destination Detractor: Those who actively discourage or speak negatively to others about Fernie.
• The following tourism assets, in order, are where Fernie excels in generating positive perceptions of the destination’ s tourism offering:
• Biking | Hiking | River Activities | Culinary, Breweries & Pubs Skiing & Snowboarding | Snowmobiling | Nature viewing | Festival & Events | Fishing | Camping | Snowshoeing | Spa | Weddings