Visitor Demand Toolbox

Last updated: September 2008

Introduction and Scope

Effective tourism planning by local authorities, RTOs and businesses requires an understanding of visitor numbers and visitors’ use of infrastructure and facilities. This section provides tools for you to check what you know about visitors to your region, and find out how to obtain data about current and future visitor numbers.

Why use this Toolbox?

Understanding visitor demand will provide you with essential data to plan for future tourism infrastructure needs and develop destination management strategies.

An essential starting point in understanding the needs of visitors is to have a clear definition of what is meant by the visitor industry. In general terms the visitor industry is understood to include international and domestic overnight and day excursionists. These three categories can be further refined as shown below:

International – overnight, day trips;
Domestic – overnight, day trips;
Local – day trips.

Without visitors there wouldn’t be a tourism industry. It is critical that you understand the characteristics and behaviour of visitors to your area, so that you are able to address issues that exist or may arise in the future. As well as the traditional visitors who visit tourism attractions and undertake activities (eg tramping, kayaking), the visitor market also includes families going to another city for a day to attend a sporting event, people attending conferences and those visiting relations. The definition of ‘visitor’ is very broad.

The diagram, “Visitor Demand Model for a Destination”, indicates the demand components and helps you to answer the questions of who comes, why they come, what services they utilise, how long they stay, their level of satisfaction with their visit and the economic benefit generated.

By completing the checklist about visitor characteristics and behaviour, you can confirm what information you already have, what you need and what you are unsure about.