Tourists streams in the United Kingdom

It’s pleasant to be a tourist in the UK. Everything around you is in English: signs, menus and information. If you need to find out how to get to some interesting places you can go to an information point, look on the Internet or just ask passerby.

But if you’re not a local, you probably will not be able to get on one of the most unusual and interesting attractions in the UK: a hot air balloon flight.

A hot air balloon flight is an incredible experience, despite the restrictions present. We believe that this experience should be available for everybody.

The aim of this research is to research how hot-air balloon companies could make their service more accessible.

Adapted from data from the Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.1.0 // www.ons.gov.uk

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Any service is meaningless without consumers. We decided to focus, therefore, on these potential consumers. Some key questions are: who are they, where are they from, how can companies attract their attention and what types of communications channels should be used.

An analysis of the top 20 results on Google showed that hot-air balloon companies focus on local customers: § 90% of sites use booking with vouchers, which are usually sent by post. This system is only convenient for gifting purposes and inconvenient for tourists interested in the experience. § All sites are only in English. § Most of the sites require a good knowledge of local geographical names.

The focus on local customers is now obvious: it is inconvenient and potentially im-possible for uninformed tourists to even book tickets!

How can we fix this situation? Let’s consider overseas tourists as potential targetcustomers.

NoteHot-air balloon companies have enough information about local consumers. They know the geographic and temporal distribution of consumers, their age, gender, internet usage, presence in social networks, payment preferences and other charac-teristics.

General streams of overseas tourists to the UKEuropean tourists provide the greatest source of tourism revenue, though US tourists are also important. If we analyse each country individually, we will see that American tourists are first place in terms of money spent per capita.

Fig. 1 Top 10 coutries by spending their residents on visits to the UK (2011)

Fig. 2 Residents of the EU in whole tourist’s spendings on visits to the UK (2011)

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European tourists deserve special attention, not only because closeness to the UK. But also because they come to the UK more and more often (fig 3). Therefore they spend more and more money. Meanwhile, the number of visits and spending Ameri-can tourists remain approximately at the same level.

Fig. 3 Overseas residents visits to the UK: Visits per year Earnings at current prices

NoteFig. 3 confirm approximate equality between distributionof money spent by tourists, and frequency of their visits.

Main flow of tourists to the UK is from the EU and the USA

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General streams of tourists in the WorldChina plays a special role in the world tourists flows. Aggregate stream of Chinese tourists is twice bigger than the flow of American tourists (fig. 4). Despite of the fact that Chinese tourists don’t spend much money yet, there is a trend of rapid and

UK may attract much more tourists (largely due to the tourists from China)

stable increase in their travelling expenditures (fig. 5). Stream of tourists from China to UK is barely noticeable today (fig. 1, fig. 3) despite its potential.

It is obvious that UK have has a serious potential to increase the tourists inflow (there are three times more tour-ists in neighboring France.

0   20   40   60   80   100  

Netherlands  

France  

Canada  

Italy  

Russian  Federation  

Poland  

China  

United  Kingdom  

United  States  

Hong  Kong  SAR,  China  

millions  

Fig. 4 Top 10 countries on number of inter-national outbound tourists departures

Fig. 5 Expenditures of top 10 international outbound visitors in other countries

0  

20  

40  

60  

80  

100  

120  

1995   1996   1997   1998   1999   2000   2001   2002   2003   2004   2005   2006   2007   2008   2009   2010  

$billion

 United  States   Germany   United  Kingdom   France   Japan   Canada   Italy   Russian  Federation   Spain   China  

Fig. 6 Top 10 countries on number of inter-national inbound tourists arrivals

0   20   40   60   80  

Russian  Federation  

Malaysia  

Germany  

Turkey  

United  Kingdom  

Italy  

Spain  

China  

United  States  

France  

millions  

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Seasonal variations of tourist streamsThe travel industry traditionally has a seasonal pattern: a large flow of customers in the summer and a small stream of customers in the winter. This is true for all coun-tries, but with slight differences.

The variation of tourists is determined by the formula: ,

where «max» is maximum spending by overseas residents on visits to the UK,and «min» is minimum spending by overseas residents on visits to the UK.

Fig. 7 Spending by overseas residents on visits to the UK by country of residence (2011)

Tourists from Germany, Norway and Australia are especially variable dependent on the time of year (almost 2 times higher in summer than in winter).

Tourists from France and the Irish Republic react less strongly to the seasons .

The total spending variation of European tourists (0.69) is one-third less than the vari-ation of the flow of tourists from the United States (0.92).

max - minmin

The flow of tourists from each EU country varies individually, but the total flow from EU countries is relatively stable

USA  

USA  

USA  

USA  

Germany  

Germany  

France  

Australia  Irish  Republic  

0  

100  

200  

300  

400  

500  

600  

700  

800  

900  

Q1   Q2   Q3   Q4  

£million

 

USA  

Germany  

France  

Australia  

Irish  Republic  

Spain  

Italy  

Netherlands  

Norway  

Canada  

0   0,5   1   1,5   2  

(max-­‐min)/min  

Fig. 8 Value fluctuations of spending by overseas resi-dents on visits to the UK by country of residence (2011)

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Distribution of tourist flow by the UKThe population of the UK is distributed unevenly across the country. Overseas tour-ists repeat this pattern: the vast majority of tourists go to England (90%).

This ratio shifts within England. The majority of tourists travelling to England go to London (60%), although the population of London is only a fifth of the rest of Eng-land.

Fig. 9 The population of the UK

Fig. 10 Spending by overseas resi-dents in regions of the UK (2011)

Thus, the main point of attraction for tourists is London. But not just in its administra-tive boundaries. The suburbs of London are easily accessible to tourists as well. For example, approximately 700 000 overseas tourists visit Stonehenge each year (about 80 miles from London).

Fig. 11 Eighty-mile area around London

London, and its surrounding eighty miles of suburbs, is the area of the largest concentration of overseas tourist in UK

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Types of overseas tourists in the UKSo, we have two basic types of overseas tourists: § Visitors primarily to London: they tend to follow the standard tourist routes in and around London, without much thought. § Visitors to the UK: they choose a deliberate route and study local attractions.

The internet is a very important channel of communication, regardless of the type of tourist. Data from Deloitte shows that 86% of overseas and 91% of domestic travel transactions in the UK are now «digitally influenced».

This means that, even if the final purchase wasn’t made online, almost nine in ten travel purchases are influenced in some way by digital channels such as websites, social media, peer reviews and smartphone or tablet apps.

Data from TravelDailyNews shows that 45% of British and 53% of European respond-ents have used a mobile device to research their trip while in-destination.

Location Peculiarity of touristsWays of tourists informing Solution of the problem gathering

a complete set of passengersType of tourist

serviceOffline

London

Other UK

§ High concentration of tourists

§ Knowledge of local attractions§ Low competition with other local attractions

§ Major airports§ Major museums§ Subway§ Tourist information points

§ Major airports

§ Review websites§ Local tourist sites and their versions for mobile devices§ Advertising in mobile appli cations (iOS, Android)§ Simplified interface booking

Mass service

Exclusive service

Online

§ To reduce tourists time gathering because of the high concentration of tourists§ Partnership with travel agencies

§ To save running time of gathering a complete set of passengers because of their preliminary informing§ Partnership with travel agencies

NoteThe importance of social networks is not evident despite the role of the internet.

There are not well-established methods of working with social networks. Estimates of social networks influence on tourists plans are varies from 1% to 60%.Therefore it is not necessary to invest a lot of money in social networks.

Simultaneously, companies may monitor social networks for research purposes. For example, they can find people planning a trip to the UK and offer them their own services.

Fig. 9 Characteristics of overseas tourists in the UK

Brain Storm AnalyticsBSAnalytics.com

Thus, overseas tourists are unfamil iar with the United Kingdom outside of London. This is potential ly a signif i-cant market for tourism (including hotair balloon fl ights).