Developing Traveler Personas for Marketing Success

Persona-based marketing is a markedly fruitful tactic for increasing conversion/visitation in the short-term, and increasing the strength of the destination brand in the longer term. Destination Analysts provides our clients the critical foundation to implement this tactic by identifying the traveler segments and their personas that represent the most potential for visitation–and who support the evolution of the brand.

We design research which identifies:

                • The traveler personas that demonstrate the most interest in the experiences offered in the destination
                • The incidence of these traveler personas in key geographic markets
                • The details of the travel and destination decision-making journeys for these personas, including the resources used along the way
                • The travel values, motivations, and habits of traveler segments
                • The experiences sought in travel, and specifically within the destination
                • Primary destination drivers—both in general and specifically for the destination, exploring both emotional and experience based, as well as attraction and activity based drivers
                • The destination’s current brand pillars as general destination motivators and as relative drivers of interest in the destination
                • The aspects of the destination brand that should be prioritized in marketing messages to best motivate visitation—illuminating differences between personas
                • The destinations that own certain brand pillars for each traveler persona, the other states/regions/cities/towns that are most competitive to the destination by traveler persona and why
                • Travel barriers and deterrents against visiting
An example of a partial persona summary is shown below (note that Destination Analysts’ final deliverable is custom and far more extensive).

For an example of our audience identification and personas research, please see Client Successes — Audience Identification & Personas Research.