Survey to read tourist minds
TOURISM bosses may soon be able to read the minds of visitors to the Gold Coast.
A new research tool capable of measuring “emotions” is being used to gauge what travellers want in a destination.
Developed by Australian firm Emotiv, the EEG (electroencephalography) headsets measure levels of electrical activity in the brain indicating stress, excitement, interest, relaxation and happiness – and they have been used on five Australian families in Singapore with surprising results.
Griffith Institute for Tourism deputy director Professor Noel Scott is heading up separate “neuro-tourism” research on the Gold Coast and says the potential benefits for our city are “endless”.
He told the Bulletin research on the Gold Coast had been underway for two years.
“It will mean n more effecg, effective marketing, better product development, pment, better insightt into what people want across different nt culott cultures,” Prof Scott said.
Ne u r o s c i ent en t i s t s Peter Simpsonone Young from the University of Sydney and Associate - Professor Joel Pearson from the University of New South Wales recently tested out the Emotiv headsets on five Australian families on behalf of the Singapore Tourism Board.
Prof Pearson said EEG had great potential as a destination marketing tool because it offered a more honest appraisal than traditional research methods.
“Questionnaires and surveys are susceptible to all kinds of influence from the way a question is worded to the clothes the interviewer wore,” he said. “I can get different responses depending on what I wear. That’s why people want to tap into the brain.”
The “real-time” nature of the EEG data was also of appeal, Prof Pearson said.
“People go on holiday and come back home and then you give them a questionnaire and that’s susceptible to all kinds of things like the recency effect,” he said. “The last thing they did tends to overpower their memory. It’s a psychological cal phen phenomenon.”
Mr Simpson-Young said the data gained from EEG h headsets had the potentia potential to revolutionise destinatio destination marketing if
used p properly.