About

Summary

In October 2017 St. Helena International Airport, initially connecting the UK Overseas Territory of St Helena with South Africa, opened for weekly flights.  This service cut the journey from South Africa down from a five day journey by ship on the RMS St Helena to a five hour flight from Johannesburg. The increased accessibility was likely to have many potential impacts on the tourism sector in St. Helena, including changes in visitor and trip profiles, expenditure and satisfaction levels.

Acorn was commissioned to establish air and cruise visitor surveys in St Helena, train interviewers to collect the data, then transmit it to our offices for analysis and quarterly reporting.  We were also contracted to set up an online tourism statistics database system (T-Stats) to track air and cruise arrivals data captured by Immigration on arrival in St. Helena.

Our Approach

We designed questionnaires for both the air and cruise visitor surveys, based on consultations with tourism sector stakeholders and drawing on our experience undertaking similar surveys in other small island destinations.  The questionnaires were programmed into Apple iPad tablets for electronic data capture at source, and we trained St. Helena Tourism staff to undertake the interviews.

The data collection system (which is ongoing) allows us to download data as soon as the iPads have been synchronised with our server on the Internet.  This enables tracking of the sample on a regular basis and the processing of data on a quarterly and annual basis to provide analysis for St. Helena Tourism.

To complement the collection of data from air and cruise visitors, an online tourism statistics database was set up using our T-Stats software to track visitor arrivals by air and sea.  These data include visitor arrivals by country of residence, purpose of visit, age, gender, accommodation used, and length of stay.  The database provides the St Helena Government with a system to closely track the sector and identify trends.

Outcome

Interviewing started in 2017 when the first flights arrived in St. Helena from South Africa and is ongoing with a sample of 30 air departing visitors per week, and 300 cruise visitors per season.  Some of the key findings include the average spend per air visitor (by purpose of visit) and per cruise visitor, which is essential for estimating the economic impact of tourism on the Islands.

The T-Stats system is updated by us on a monthly basis, providing a system that is always up-to-date for tracking the status of the sector.