Northumberland Tourism Limited

In 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 evaluation studies were conducted in order to establish the proportion of people who had booked a holiday or short break as a result of having the Visit Northumberland/Visit Hadrian’s Wall Country Holiday and Short Breaks Guide. A further objective was to conduct an appraisal of the usefulness of the brochure. It was anticipated that insight gathered from this exercise could be used to inform future brochure design. Selected relevant findings were also used to inform advertisers in the brochure in order to increase their response rate and return on investment. The research survey was conducted using the recipients’ preferred method of contact using data from the Visit Northumberland contact database. We hosted both an online and a telephone survey. The questionnaire was designed to take approximately 10 minutes and sought to elicit the following information from respondents:

• Where did they find out about the brochure?
• Did they subsequently book a holiday or short break?
• If not, why not?
• What were the barriers (if any) to booking?
• For booked holidays, where, when, how long?
• Establish propensity of existing customers to rebook in the next year.
• Establish propensity to book in the next year from non-customers.
• Navigating the brochure?
• Impact of structure, adverts, maps and images.
• Gaining an understanding of how the messages within the brochure were communicated and understood.