Case: Visit Sweden

“What attracts Germans to the Swedish winter holiday?”

Germany is Sweden’s second largest market for incoming visitors and most German tourists come to Sweden in the summer. Why should it not be possible to also attract the German tourists in the winter? And in that case, what would we need to offer, VisitSweden asks them selves.

We have previously done extensive target group analysis and a basic segmentation through Zapera and we have come to the conclusion that a selected target group should be prioritized, says Bitte Olsson, Information Responsible. We have chosen to let Zapera study deeper the private travel segments in the target group. These are DINKs – double income, no kids, WHOPs – wealthy, healthy older people and Active family.

To study the potential for winter tourism, VisitSweden has let Zapera conduct interviews in online focus groups with people from these segments, who go on winter holidays. There were eight focus groups with a total of 140 participants from four different geographical areas in Germany. The groups consisted of partly those who had visited Sweden within the past two years and partly those who had not.

The group discussions were completed in February 2008 so the results are entirely new and very interesting, says Carla Matta, who is Research Responsible at VisitSweden. Zapera cooperated with their German sister company Psychonomics. They have a number of professional psychologists who were of great assistance. What is interesting about the focus groups is the possibility to follow the questions as the survey is going on. I am very satisfied, says Carla.

We have gotten a clearer picture of a possible expanded traveling to Sweden wintertime, Bitte Olsson states. Spontaneously the Germans do not have a clear picture of Winter Sweden but a curiosity is gradually growing and a willingness to visit Sweden. Especially among those who have already visited Sweden in the summer time.

VisitSweden markets Sweden internationally as a travel destination. VisitSweden is owned by the state and the Swedish tourist industry in cooperation. Swedish tourist industry has a turn over of 215 billion Swedish Kroner and employs 152.000 all-year workers.

Source: Zapera News, Issue 29, May 2008