surveys help build marketing strategy

Since 2007, California University of Pennsylvania's Tourism Research Center has interviewed visitors throughout Adams County. Their team of researchers is then able to analyze and provide an insight about the people who visit our community.
 
This information is extremely valuable to Destination Gettysburg as the organization builds its marketing strategy every year.
 
The Tourism Research Center recently released its 2016 survey results, and has enabled the marketing team at Destination Gettysburg to compile a snapshot of our visitors last year.
 
Among the findings:

• The typical visitor to Gettysburg is split nearly 50/50 in terms of gender.
• Most visitors originate from Pennsylvania. Other states highly represented in the surveys included Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio.
• The average age of those surveyed is 52 years old, which decreased by once year since 2015 - an effect, we believe, of Destination Gettysburg's attempts to attract younger visitors.
• Slightly more than half of visitors surveyed indicated they had traveled to Gettysburg before.
• The majority of visitors are here for leisure, more so than business travel or to visit friends and family.
• A high percentage (81%) indicated that Gettysburg was their primary destination, but others said they were also traveling to Washington, D.C., and other Pennsylvania destinations.
• Visitors surveyed reported spending and average of $323.71 during their trip, up from an average of $262.64 in 2015.

 One of the most important barometers for tourism research and economic data is overnight stays.

• Half of those surveyed indicated they were staying more than one night, which is up dramatically over 2015.
• The most common length of stay is two nights.
• Because the percentage of overnight stays is up, the number of daytrips is down by 24.3 percent.

 Destination Gettysburg uses this research to best determine the markets and the audiences of which to market.
 
>> Full Report of California University of Pennsylvania's Research

---