2008 Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Awards

Visitors Experience Appraisal

Visitor experience and customer service is an important part of the Canberra and region tourism product.  To help support the development of the Canberra and region visitor experience, over the past two years Australian Capital Tourism has engaged a Mystery Shopping specialist provider to conduct 'Visitor Experience Appraisals' for the Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Awards. Visitor Experience Appraisals ensure that the awards are influenced by consumer perceptions and importantly, the visitor experience offered by the entrant. The program has evolved to become an integral part of the awards assessment process.

Being an entrant in the Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Awards enables participants to receive two complete Visitor Experience Appraisals of their business, reports, feedback and a one-on-one debrief with Australian Capital Tourism. This process has a full retail value of $1530.

Process

Each business is anonymously visited by a professionally trained ‘Mystery Shopper’ who will assess their business against categories that have been identified as desirable visitor experience factors.  This information, in the form of questions in a survey, covers diverse elements of service delivery, such as signage, availability of material on tourism, as well as elements of pre and post visitor experience and one on one service.

These surveys have been developed to ensure that the Visitor Experience Appraisals and evaluations are objective and independent. The assessors record facts not impressions.  Assessors are also asked to provide additional commentary throughout their report to illustrate or support the answers provided.

Feedback and reporting

The Visitor Experience Appraisals do not just provide a tourism awards evaluation mechanism. All entrants receive extensive feedback to ensure the process can be used to help with business development and staff training. All entrants that are assessed will receive the site report summary for two visits. This report comprises:

• Individual assessment forms completed by the assessor during their visit.
• A summary of the performance achieved at each step of the enquiry.
• Illustrative commentary to summarise what happened during the visit.
• Industry benchmarks for overall performance and areas of particular importance.
• Evaluated standards, the results and comments.

A whole of industry overview report and evaluation is also available for review. This summarises the results for all categories, enabling operators to benchmark their performance against other industry sectors.  This final report is a document which provides owners with competitive intelligence as well as a benchmark against the whole tourism industry.

How is Visitor Experience Appraisal information used?

All of the results and reports from Visitor Experience Appraisals remain confidential and are only discussed and made available to the business operator, the Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Award judging panel and the Tourism Awards Co-ordinator for the purposes of the judging process.

Visitor Experience Award

All entrants who are part of the 2008 Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Awards who undergo a Visitor Experience Appraisal are automatically entered into the Visitor Experience Award. The three businesses that obtain the highest overall results in the Visitor Experience Appraisal are recognised at the Gala Presentation Evening.

Businesses in Canberra and the Capital Region can also elect to enter the Visitor Experience Award in isolation without entering the 2008 Canberra and Capital Region Tourism Awards.