A survey among 23,000 holidaymakers in 26 countries worldwide has named Costa Rica as the destination most would recommend for a holiday based on personal experience.
The Global Tourism Monitor Survey asked travellers to identify the countries they had visited in the past 12 months and the likelihood of recommending the destination based on their personal experience.
Using a scoring system that subtracts the proportion of detractors from promoters to produce a Net Promoter Score* , the survey found the destinations with the best and worst appeal were as follows:
The top ten destinations in the report released Monday are:
- Costa Rica (63)
- Austria (58)
- Israel (58)
- New Zealand (57)
- Italy (56)
- Japan (56)
- Croatia (54)
- US (54)
- Norway (53)
- Canada (52),
- Greece (52)
- UK (52)
The bottom ten included:
- Bulgaria (21)
- Russia (20)
- Albania (20)
- Cambodia (16)
- India (13)
- Ukraine (8)
- Malaysia (6)
- China (5)
- Indonesia (4)
- Tunisia (-7)
The Global Tourism Monitor respondents were allowed to name more than one factor that affected their destination decisions. Recommendations from friends scored highest globally at 33%. Previous experience of the destination scored 30% while booking websites or media coverage scored just 13% each. Visitors also were influenced by travel agents (12%), advertising (12%) or travel providers such as airlines and hotel groups (8%).
The Global Tourism Monitor survey was conducted in the first quarter (Q1) of 2014 by Global Market Research, a leading international network of market research agencies. The survey comprised more than 23,000 interviews among nationally representative samples in 26 countries.
*Net Promoter Score
The survey measured destination appeal using a Net Promoter Score (NPS). Respondents first answered a question that asked them to award scores between 0 and 10, where 10 means they would definitely recommend a destination and 0 means they would definitely not recommend it. Subtracting the proportion of detractors of a destination from the proportion of promoters provides the NPS. Respondents were not allowed to rate their own country.
