Recent Travel Indicators

Travel Indicators | Visitation | Inquiries | Web Traffic | Spending | National Indicators | 2010 Campaign | Key Terms

TRAVEL INSIGHTS KEY TERMS & DEFINITIONS

The following glossary of terms is provided to help define metrics provided by the South Dakota Department of Tourism.  For further information, please contact Ashley Worth at 605-773-3301.

Web Statistics: Web traffic represents the data sent and received by visitors to TravelSD.com, the South Dakota Department of Tourism’s primary visitor promotion website. The values provided in the monthly Travel Insights email is reported as the following:

Web Visits (Visitors): A visit happens when someone visits a website. It consists of one or more page views. One visitor can make multiple visits to your site.
Pageviews: A pageview is each time a visitor views a page on a website.
New Visitors: A count of how many different first-time visitors view the website. For example, if a user has never visited the site before during the lifespan of the computer’s IP address, they are considered a new user. However, if a user comes back, whether it’s later that same day or months later, they may be considered a unique visitor (one visit to a site in a specified time period), but no longer a new visitor. A user can only be a new visitor once, but a unique visitor several times depending on the time period being accessed in analytics.
Average Time on Site: The amount of time a visitor spends within the website on average within a specific calendar quarter.

Information Requests: Information requests are defined as the number of visitors who request a printed or electronic guide, sign-up for Travelsmart e-newsletters via online or call center records for South Dakota Department of Tourism.

Top States:The Top States reported in the Travel Insights email newsletter are defined as the state of origin of Information Requests, if provided. The amount reported is a comparison of the same time period in the previous year.

 

 

Revenue Indicators

Tourism Taxable Sales: Volume of sales (gross receipts) subject to taxes reported by Tourism-related businesses (hotels and lodging establishments; campgrounds; motor vehicle and recreational equipment rentals; recreational services; spectator events; and visitor attractions in the state).

 

Gaming Handle: Volume of gaming dollars related to casino gaming in Deadwood, South Dakota, subject to taxes.

 

 

Hotel Indicators

The data provided in the monthly Travel Insight email is provided, with permission, by Smith Travel Research Inc./STR Global, Ltd.  All data is processed by STR using both the current and historical sampling of hotels (properties of 15 rooms or more). For further questions about the methodology used to produce the reports, please email Ashley.Worth@state.sd.us.

 

Occupancy: Total number of rooms sold divided by rooms available multiplied by 100. Occupancy is always expressed as an average percentage of rooms occupied from the first calendar day of the month to the last calendar day of the month, combined into calendar quarters and compared to the same quarter the previous year for the Travel Insights email newsletter.

Demand: The number of rooms sold or rented (excludes complimentary rooms). The percentage reflects a change in demand from the first calendar day of the month to the last calendar day of the month, combined into calendar quarters and compared to the same quarter the previous year for the Travel Insights email newsletter.

Revenue: Total room revenue generated from the sale or rental of rooms. The percentage reflects a change in revenue from the first calendar day of the month to the last calendar day of the month, combined into calendar quarters and compared to the same quarter the previous year for the Travel Insights email newsletter.

 

 

Social Interactions

Social Interactions reflects the year to date online interactions from consumers with either South Dakota Tourism or the state of South Dakota as measured by Radian6 and Facebook Analytics. These metrics and analysis do not represent individual SDT partner pages on social media and/or any interactions with those individual pages/presence online. These numbers are reported on a monthly basis and combined into calendar quarters for the Travel Insights email newsletter.

 

 

For more information regarding these travel indicators please contact Ashley Worth at Ashley.Worth@state.sd.us or call 605-773-3301.