LAUREN SCHLAU CONSULTING, a Los Angeles based women business enterprise (wbe), has offered a wide range of consulting services to private companies, non-profit, and public sector agencies desiring market research, community development and organizational development services since 1992.

Market Research and Strategic Management Services:

• Demographic and Behavior Studies
• Feasibility Studies
• Satisfaction Studies
• Advertising Conversion Studies
• Economic Impact Studies
• Management and Organizational Effectiveness
• Organizational Development
• Community and Economic Development
• Focus and Meeting Group Facilitation
• Marketing Strategy and Plans

Economic Impact Studies

To effectively develop and market visitor programs, it is beneficial to measure the economic impacts of tourism. These impacts focus on measuring visitor volume, visitor spending in total and by category, and local tax impacts and employment generated from visitation. If desired, an economic impact study can identify visitor demographics and trip behaviors including factors such as: geographic origin, planning resources used, reasons for visiting, lodging type and other trip characteristics.

Studies should be performed on a recurring basis, e.g., every two- five years, both to establish benchmarks and to chart progress over time. Such studies have multiple uses including: to measure program effectiveness, to guide marketing program placement, to improve a destination’s competitive position, to develop strategies to optimize the impacts of tourism, and to help guide the future development of visitor serving infrastructure and amenities.

Advertising Conversion Studies

How many people make inquiries to your organization and how many eventually visit? What level of influence did your organization have on trip-taking; that is, how many potential visitors converted to actual visitors? These are critical questions for any destination marketing organization. While measurements are not definitive and many factors influence a traveler’s decision-making process, your advertising, promotion programs and agency services should be credited for a portion of the resulting visitor volume, spending and tax impacts.

LSC conducts conversion studies that include identifying visitor demographics, trip behaviors (length of stay, lodging, transportation, etc), and visitor spending by category and in total, resulting in conversion rates, related visitor volume, aggregate spending impact and local taxes generated.

Market Research/Demographic Studies

Who are your customers, where are they from, what do they want, how do they perceive your destination and how satisfied are they when they have visited? These and other key questions can be addressed by conducting market research studies. These studies are invaluable in helping a destination to plan services, programs, advertising and promotion and identifying future development needs.

Market Research/Feasibility Studies

How should a private or public property owner enter the tourism business or expand its current holdings effectively and cost efficiently? These questions can be answered through well designed studies that identify sources of market supply and demand and competitive factors, and recommends the type of development that best meets market needs.

Marketing/Business Plans

Marketing is an expensive undertaking that should be founded on well considered research and planning. Market and business plans commit to paper research findings and actions plans that should be utilize scarce resources, with measurements for future accountability and performance. Whereas business and operational plans focus on the broader operation, market plans consider the entity’s competitive market position, strengths/weaknesses, opportunities/threats, and sets goals/objectives, strategies and action plans, including media, for accomplishing those goals.

Management and Organizational Effectiveness

Is the organization doing its best? Does it have identified goals, accom-plish goals in a timely and cost efficient manner and with the appropriate personnel? Such questions can be answered in studies dealing with improving management and organizational effectiveness. Within agency’s specific activity areas, studies address processes undertaken, how well, how long do tasks and projects take, and at what cost. Such studies can reveal problems and present solutions to improve program effectiven-ess and reduce operating costs.

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