Profiling Australian visitors to Norfolk Island

Abstract

This paper reports on research undertaken to establish a socio-demographic profile of Norfolk Island. Prior to this research the Island's tourism industry has not had available a detailed profile of its visitors or their motivations for travelling to the destination and had in the absence of data of this nature relied on assumptions about the market. Before conducting a visitors survey members of the Island's tourism industry were interviewed and the assumptions they relied on for developing marketing strategies were identified. Many of the assumptions were not valid. As one example the industry assumed that most visitors had visited the Island previously. Findings indicated that only 18% of the survey respondents fell into this category.