Choosing what POIs to include in your ZDOS® may bring up some detailed questions for you... But don't worry-- You can find answers to FAQs here!
Maximizing Zartico's Place-Based Strategy will help you leverage your data on visitor movement. Let's talk through some FAQs that may come up as you are thinking through what POIs you would like to include on your list.
To learn more about how we use geolocation data to help you answer your destination questions, read Geolocation Data and the Destination Tourism Industry, by Dr. Alexandra V. Pasi.
Q: How many POIs should I have?
A: With Zartico, you have unlimited access to your place-based strategy that is continually evolving. How many POIs you have can depend on factors such as your destination's size. An overabundance of POIs may slow down the system. A state client may have at least 3 primary POIs in each county and a non-state client may have at least 6 primary POIs in each region. In most cases it is better to have more than you think you would need, but not every place in your destination!
Q: How many POIs should I have in each region?
A: You should have at least 5 or 6 POIs in each region, and it is helpful if those POIs are a mix of several different categories, such as Food or Accommodation.
Q: Should I use the official names for my POIs or can we nickname them?
A: We aim to be as accurate and consistent as possible in using the official names for locations to eliminate ambiguity or regional variations. For example, Utahns tend to refer to “Zion Park” instead of Zion National Park. Though you may use a colloquial name or nickname within your team, we want to use the official name in the ZDOS to provide consistency and improve linkage between data sets.
Q: What are some criteria to know if something should be a primary POI?
A: Primary places of impact are the places people plan their trip, or a day of their trip, around visiting. These are the places featured in your ads, on your homepage, and in your itineraries. These are the places for which you want to have the greatest visibility in tracking because they are the marquee attractions to their destination and will be part of your demand generation strategy and key areas to watch from a visitor distribution perspective.
Primary POIs are permanent places and while they don’t have to receive visitation 365 days/year, they should not be used for other purposes.
Primary POIs are National Parks, Airports, major sports venues, convention centers, large destination resorts (where the visitor spends most of the time on the resort grounds), youth sports fields where key tournaments are hosted, amusement parks, state parks, etc.
Q: Can I include POIs outside of my formal destination boundaries?
A: Points of Interest that aren't within your destination's boundary are called "Outside Of Boundary POIs" or OOBs. With your Zartico contract, you get a certain amount of them, and you will be asked to determine these during your Implementation Process. However, the way we set up these Outside Of Boundary POIs is different from other POIs, because we have to keep them separate from all the points of interest inside your destination. This prevents your destination's visitor data from getting skewed. For example, many destinations choose a nearby airport as an Outside of Boundary POI, but you wouldn't want airport traveler numbers to influence your numbers.
Q: Should all of the restaurants and shops in our destination be included in our POIs?
A: Any place that you want to see visitation should be included in your POIs. Places like fast food restaurants and convenience stores are usually considered contextual places and listing many of those can slow down your system. Only request them if they are major drivers of visitation to your destination. This of restaurants Guy Fieri would visit or shops that would draw a shopper to your destination rather than going somewhere else.
Q: Can I see businesses that are stacked on top of each other separately?
A: We track the footprints of a places of impact. Imagine looking at a satellite map of your location. If a POI is stacked on top of another we cannot observe them as separate locations. For this reason, we would recommend listing a shopping center or downtown shopping areas as one POI.
Q: Can I map individual POIs within a strip mall?
A: We don't map the individual places within the strip mall, shopping mall or multi-tenant building because can't know where the interior walls of a given place are. For this reason, we can't accurately and confidently determine where one business within a multi-tenant building ends, and the other begins. For data integrity our rule of thumb is "single-rooftop footprints;" whereby, if there are multiple tenants under one space, we map as one building rather than isolating the individual tenants.
Q: How small can a POI be? how sensitive are geolocation observations? For example, if a concert stage in a field is mapped, how close can people get to the stage to be observed? Or a shop on Main street?
A: Approximately 15 - 65 feet (or 5 - 20 meters) is the “sensitivity” of a device observation. This means that POIs that are close together are harder to distinguish one from another. For this reason, it is often recommended that shops close together are mapped as a group.
Q: What if one of my POIs extends beyond our destination boundary?
A: That's Okay! Sometimes large parks or airports may straddle two or more counties or borders. That entire POI will be included in your ZDOS™, BUT remember that a device will still need to be observed within your destination boundary for more than 2 hours to be counted. So a person who visits that extending POI outside of your boundary, but never crosses into your destination boundary or does so for less than 2 hours will not be counted in your observed visitor numbers.
Q: Can we include a street as a POI that hosts a popular festival in our area?
A: We don’t recommend doing this because the pass-through traffic would skew the data in your ZDOS™ every other day of the year. The best solution to measure this event would be through a dynamic visualization rather than mapping a POI for this street.
Q: Can we map a POI for a boat launch or other specific access point where we'd like to see visitation numbers?
A: We don't recommend it. The area needs to be large enough that geolocation sensitivity will capture visitation to that area specifically. Also, you will need to consider app usage within that specific area. Since Zartico geolocation data is captured by location sharing in app usage, visitors are observed when they are using and sharing their location within that area.
Q: What if I want to track a POI that is in a dead zone or has very poor cell reception?
A: We know when a device is outside of cell coverage, it reduces app usage and therefore the volume of geolocation data, due to the usability of some apps. However, the data Zartico collects from the apps is GPS data with a timestamp. This means if an app is being used offline, it's still collecting GPS data, and this uploads again when the device is back in coverage or in wifi service.
Q: I know of a POI (like a new hotel) that is being built right now... should I wait to add it to my list until later when it is done?
A: If a POI is being built and you know where it will be (like the general footprint of the building on a map), add it to the list and we can work with you to draw it and get it on your list. It is always better to add things now that you know you might be interested in later!
Q: Will my Out of Boundary POI show up in my ZDOS?
A: Your Out of Boundary (OOB) POI visitation will not be calculated within visitation to Regions, POI Categories or other charts pulling visitation from your Primary POI visitatation, because out-of-boundary POIs are not located within any region. There are two charts in your ZDOS™ where you can see visitation specifically to these OOB PoIs. We use out-of-boundary POIs in your Dynamic Visualizations to show visitor movement between that POI and your destination. We don’t include these OOB POIs in the majority of your ZDOS visitation because many of the visitors to these places never make it to the partner destination and their inclusion throws off the analysis of origin markets, Visitor-to-Resident ratio and other key metrics.
Q: Why is the visitor radius set at 50 miles from home location?
A: We are working to standardize all data insights so we can provide more value across the board to our partners. The 50 miles within Home location is consistent with the US Travel standards and metrics.
Q: Why are there POIs listed in "other" category?
A: The category "Other" will show up in your ZDOS if any POI lands outside a region. Every POI should be included in a region. If you see an "other" category, you may need to review your regions to ensure that your entire destination boundary is included in a region.
Q: Can I have a short-term rental be added in as a POI?
A: You cannot turn a short-term rental into a POI because it is considered a private residence. You can track information on your short-term rentals through any short-term rental lodging connections you bring in.
Have additional questions that aren't covered here? Reach out to your implementation specialist or send us a message!