H2R Market Research

Since 2004, H2R Market Research has studied visitors and customers for attractions, destinations and other travel and hospitality businesses. Its founders set out to give tourism leaders evidence in place of instinct, on the view that the generalist research firms and analytics platforms available to them are either too generic or can show what happened without explaining why.

Custom research built around each brand and market

H2R designs research around a client's brand, audience and market, studying visitors to find out what is working, what is not, and where a budget will have the biggest effect. The aim is to understand what the audience feels, so that decisions have a long-term impact rather than a short-term reaction.

Twenty years of travel benchmarks

The firm combines more than twenty years of industry benchmarks with custom research, and it describes its benchmark database as proprietary. These benchmarks give a client a comparison point beyond its own figures. The firm reports that its experience covers years of work across travel and tourism, from the founders' own careers onwards.

Why visitors come, stay away and return

H2R's audience work asks why people visit, why they stay away and what would bring them back. Its material sets out examples of an instinct set against what the research found. In one, leaders assumed that high prices and distance kept visitors away, when the research pointed to a lack of exciting must-see experiences. In another, visitors came for a fun outing they could enjoy together, rather than for rides and shopping alone.

Satisfaction alone does not drive growth

The firm's dual factor growth principle holds that satisfaction alone is not enough to grow visits. An attraction can have strong satisfaction scores and still stall when visitors have no fresh reason to come back, so H2R's research looks at motivation as well as satisfaction.