Importance of Visitor Experience

Research shows visitor satisfaction is a key indicator of success. With over 400 million TripAdvisor users and 30 million reviews in 2024, the visitor experience greatly influences reputation and competitiveness. Destination marketing organizations must ensure experiences for visitors and residents are authentic and meet expectations, supporting economic growth, loyalty and sustainability.

Banff & Lake Louise Lead Tourism for Good

Banff & Lake Louise Tourism (BLLT) is the official DMO for Banff National Park, Canada. With a population under 10,000 and more than four million visitors annually, destination and visitor management are critical to their sustainability. 

Banff & Lake Louise Tourism (BLLT), the official DMO for Banff National Park, manages tourism for under 10,000 residents and four million annual visitors. Their 10-year plan, “Lead Tourism for Good,” focuses on smart tourism using data-driven solutions. The strategy prioritizes attracting visitors whose values align with the destination, fostering deep connections and respect for the park.

Data Driven Strategies 

In addition to marketing and targeting the right visitor aligned with their values, Banff & Lake Louise use a variety of tools and KPIs to evaluate the visitor experience and ensure they are delivering a world class and unique experience. 

Bringing together multiple KPIs in one comprehensive dashboard to convey the destination performance, Banff & Lake Louise is able to track and monitor visitation through the National Park Pass, visitor spending and revenue generated by source market, likelihood to recommend and loyalty via traditional visitor survey as well as more granular Rating + Review data sourced from online user-generated review sites,. As a result, BLLT has a much more holistic view of the visitor economy and its impact on the local community. 

Value Add of Ratings + Review 

Complimentary to a traditional visitor survey, but much more granular, scalable, timely and objective, Rating + Review data is sourced from actionable, user-generated rating data from more than 30 global travel review platforms. 

Aggregated at a category level (Accommodations, Attractions, Food & Drink) or drilled down to a sub-sector, geography or even property level, rating and review data is powerful, granular and robust enough to act on.

Banff Lake Louise integrates their visitor survey results and Rating + Review satisfaction data to enhance insights and validate trends and help answer the “why’s”. Overlaying with lodging performance and visitation trends, Rating + Review helps Banff & Lake Louise understand ADR, visitor volume and seasonality impacts on the visitor experience. Combined with their visitor survey, it is apparent that seasonality negatively impacts the visitor experience with the lowest NPS, ratings and sentiment scores occurring during the high summer travel season. 

By digging into the sentiment drivers behind the rating scores and understanding strengths and areas of weakness within each category, Banff and Lake Louise can share the aggregated Rating + Review data with key lodging, attraction and restaurant stakeholders to keep a pulse on what visitors are sharing about their experience and what is most memorable for them to share with other potential visitors.
Banff & Lake Louise identified that higher average daily rates at their lodging properties had a negative impact on perceptions of accommodation value for money but was only minimally impacting overall sentiment. While increasing rates may not currently have a noticeable impact on the visitor experience, if the experience does not evolve, lodging properties add new offerings and ultimately value, the ability to maintain an elevated ADR during the high season, attract loyal, repeat visitors and their high value target visitors will likely be diminished.

For Banff & Lake Louise Tourism, evaluating the visitor experience is critical to continue attracting values-aligned visitors and for the sustainability of the destination in the long-run. Rating and Review data compliments the visitor satisfaction survey to better identify the underlining challenges. Understanding the extent of the issues helps focus attention and prioritize investment opportunities whether it is on customer service, diversifying and dispersing tourism assets, to ultimately add more perceived value.