How do you design and conduct a travel needs assessment for a specific project or purpose?

My experience has been related to corporate travel, be it for sales conferences, tradeshows, training, etc.. Once you have identified what the goal of the travel is, determining who the stakeholders are and who the beneficiaries should be fairly easy. I had department heads determine who should go. After that it was a matter of costs of travel and ROI. I used surveys of travelers and a separate one for the department heads. I would compile the results and forward those to stakeholders. I always reminded them that there may be long term returns that don't show up immediately after the tradeshow. One never knows what sort of connection or future business may come from conversations at a tradeshow.

Dise?ando una evaluación de necesidades de viaje implica: - Identificar objetivos del viaje. - Recopilar requisitos y preferencias de los participantes. - Analizar destinos y opciones logísticas. - Considerar restricciones de tiempo y presupuesto. - Consultar políticas de seguridad y salud. - Crear encuestas o entrevistas para obtener retroalimentación. - Implementar cambios y optimizar continuamente.

For corporate and for individual travel I utilize forms to collect basic information surrounding the trip. What are the dates, budget, wants/needs, do we have accessibility needs of members of the travel party. If my form fails to collect all the information (skipping questions, lack of details); I'll schedule a call to gather more information. This is a critical first step. When you haven't defined the objectives, you'll rarely provide a proposal that hits the mark wasting the client and your time.

When designing a travel needs assessment, consider leveraging predictive analytics and AI tools to anticipate client preferences even before the trip begins. Analyze past travel behavior and preferences to forecast future needs, creating hyper-personalized itineraries. Engage with travelers throughout the planning process using interactive tools like chatbots for real-time feedback. Also, think beyond the trip—design post-trip surveys to gain insights for refining future offerings. Consider offering virtual previews of destinations to help clients feel more confident in their choices before booking.

I use a new prospect intake form to guide our initial calls prior to developing a initial draft itinerary. In this way, we put our heads together for a more efficient call with more clarity on the travel prospect's trip objectives.

When managing private travel design at scale, I implemented a project management tool that allowed our team to input individual guest and trip data via a fillable online form that was then stored in a spreadsheet where data could be easily sorted and filtered. This data collection was important in tracking travel trends, demand, and more for future products and training.

It's important to share this information in a clear and digestible format. Data reports should be informative but concise so that the target group can understand them.