Net Promoter Score ®, a KPI for Tourism Destinations

Over the past decade, there have been substantial shifts in the tourism marketplace that have resulted in the growing importance of the delivery of outstanding travel experiences. High satisfaction with travel experiences is critical to achieve increased visitor spending, longer stays, repeat visits and positive word of mouth referrals. Destination advocacy, either face-to-face or through electronic media, is critical to attract first time visitors to British Columbia.

To address these shifts, in late 2014, Destination British Columbia (DBC) released a new corporate strategy.  A key goal of the strategy is for British Columbia to become the most highly recommended destination in North America. The Net Promoter Score®(NPS®), developed by Frederick Reichheld and Bain & Company in 2002, is a simple metric that can be used to measure the intention to recommend/refer a travel destination, organization or sector and is also an indicator of overall satisfaction with the travel or customer experience. Therefore, DBC actively encourages its tourism partners (e.g. businesses, communities, sectors) to measure and increase their NPS.  As such, Tourism Kamloops starting collecting the necessary data as part of the departure survey executed at the Kamloops Airport in 2014.

This document provides an introduction to what the NPS is and how it is currently being used in the tourism industry:

http://www.destinationbc.ca/getattachment/Research/about-research-planning-and-evaluation/Future-Releases/Introduction-to-NPS_FINAL.pdf.aspx

Kamloops has seen favourable growth in our NPS® in the past two years – 29 to 44.  This compares to British Columbia’s NPS of 62.7.  To enhance our data collection and in conjunction with a new visitor survey, Tourism Kamloops will be seeking additional higher visitor volume locations throughout the city to conduct these intercepts.  Tourism Kamloops has also gauged NPS of the current mountain bike experience as part of the mountain bike economic impact analysis conducted in spring 2015.  Mountain biking in Kamloops has an NPS of 72 – this is considerably high and is regarded as an experience that most mountain bike enthusiasts would be likely to recommend.

Here is a more detailed look at the recommended research framework, methodology, tools and analysis:

http://www.destinationbc.ca/getattachment/Research/about-research-planning-and-evaluation/Future-Releases/How-to-Measure-NPS-in-BC-Communities_FINAL.pdf.asp