Why U.S. Travelers Return to the Same Spots: New Skift Research

For travel brands, and especially destinations, creating loyal customers can be a challenge. Making the decision to return to a vacation destination is quite different from choosing to patronize other types of businesses.

With this challenge in mind, Skift Research surveyed travelers who have returned to vacation destinations in recent years alongside those who have not. In our latest report, U.S. Repeat Visitation Survey 2018, we analyze the results of this survey in order to shed some light on how these groups of travelers differ from each other in behavior and in attitude.

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With the help of insights from expert interviews, we discuss the findings of the survey in this report. We look deeper at motivations for repeat visitation, activities during repeat visitation, and the impact of repeat visitation on travelers’ attitudes about a destination. To provide further insight into repeat travelers, we break down findings by age and income. Then, we provide a side-by-side comparison of repeat and non-repeat travelers’ travel attitudes and behaviors. Finally, we examine how the number of destinations repeat travelers have returned to in the last five years provides a more nuanced view of the members of this group. Together, the results of our survey demonstrate that frequent repeat tourists have unique attitudes and values that set them apart, and thereby require different marketing strategies and messages to be drawn back to a destination.

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What You’ll Learn from This Report:

• An overview of repeat travelers and non-repeat travelers from a demographic perspective.
• Key factors that motivate repeat travelers to return to a destination.
• Activities preferred by repeat travelers and how they change when returning to a destination.
• Impacts of repeat visitation on traveler’s attitude towards the destination.
• Key differences among repeat travelers by age and income.
• Accommodation preferences of repeat travelers.
• How repeat and non-repeat travelers differ demographically, behaviorally, attitudinally, and more with side-by-side comparisons.
• How repeat travelers differ from each other based on the number of destinations they have returned to in the last five years.

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This is the latest in a series of monthly reports aimed at analyzing the fault lines of disruption in travel. These reports are intended for the busy travel industry decision-maker. Tap into the opinions and insights of our seasoned network of staffers and contributors. Over 200 hours of desk research, data collection, and/or analysis goes into each report.

After you subscribe, you will gain access to our entire vault of reports conducted on topics ranging from technology to marketing strategy to deep dives on key travel brands. Reports are available online in a responsive design format, or you can also buy each report a la carte at a higher price.