Assessing Online Needs for the Canadian Tourism Commission

The Problem

The Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) saw an opportunity to market Canada through an online strategy as a premier destination for business events for US-based Meetings, Conventions and Incentive travel planners (MC&IT). To ensure that the online strategy was appropriate, the CTC wanted to get feedback from the potential users of a Web site designed specifically for this market. The CTC also wanted to use this as an opportunity to test the integrity of its internal database of US-based MC&IT planners.

Phase 5's Approach

We worked with the CTC to design an approach that incorporated testing of the internal database into the process of assessing the online needs of MC&IT planners.

Phase 5 recommended conducting an online survey with MC&IT planners from the US. To encourage response and test the database, Phase 5 sent email invitations that included a direct link to the online survey to all contacts in the database. The survey was designed to develop a profile of potential users and to measure their interest in specific content features and options. Respondents were presented with a choice of options and were asked to rank the importance they placed on including these options in a Web site designed for meeting planners.

Results

In addition to providing the CTC with a measurement of the accuracy of its internal database, we were able to provide them with a list of the most critical Web site content elements and features for MC&IT planners. The email deployment revealed that just over two-thirds of the email addresses in the database were accurate. It was clear that interest was indeed quite high for a proposed Canadian Web site for MC&IT planners. Our research also helped to identify a prioritized list of key elements that should be included in the site, providing a base on which to build the online strategy.

Going Forward

We do more than simply provide you with the results of the research, we take the extra step of identifying the strategies that will take you forward. We presented the CTC with findings that suggested a positive environment for their proposed online strategy for MC&IT planners. We recommended that the results from the research were quite promising when considering promoting Canada as a destination. In addition, we were able to recommend the most critical content elements and features to include in a Web site designed for this target market. In light of the fact that the CTC wished to launch its internal database to industry partners, the findings also suggested that work was first required to increase the accuracy of the database's content.