A region is a custom way a partner divides up their destination and groups their POIs, but how does looking at a "region" rather than individual POIs help me manage my destination? --Find out more here!
What is a Region as a Non-State Partner?
Regions- Custom boundary layer within your destination boundary that groups POIs together.
Non-state regions are designed to help you understand the economic impact, traveler movement and destination utilization through different regions within your destination.
A Region in the ZDOS® allows you to define a broader, contiguous geographic area that shares common characteristics, visitation patterns, subcultures, etc. When a Region is defined, we are not measuring visitation as devices crossing the Region boundary, but rather aggregating the visitation to the Points of Interest (POIs) within the region together. Since it is an aggregation of POIs, all regions must have a handful of POIs within the boundary. For this reason, it may not align with the real estate neighborhoods you are used to. An example of a Region in our Operating System might be Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
Q. Can my region align with my legislative district boundaries?
A. It can. Zartico's ZDos supports data by Political District Boundaries. A District Boundary Map shows a specific jurisdiction's boundaries according to the records on file with the state, county or city. Types of maps may include Commissioner or Justice Maps; commonly known as Districts, Superintendents, Parishes, etc.
Learn how to submit regions using your legislative boundaries here.
What is a Region as a State Partner?
Regions are collections of geographically contiguous counties grouped together based on their visitation characteristics and cultural, environmental or historical factors. For example, a state may have several counties along the coast, which attract mostly beach goers and share a similar seasonal visitation pattern, type of traveler and they promote a similar experience to visitors. Alternatively, a region with a strong cultural or historical heritage the visitors experience today, like the Mississippi Delta would be a good candidate for a region.
Q: Should my regions be my legislative districts?
A: Regions are supposed to represent a destination's marketing regions (the physical, built environment used to attract visitors), so it is best practice to make your regions aligned with the way you already think about your destination for marketing purposes. For a small minority of certain destinations, this would align perfectly with their local political or legislative districts. That's great if that happens to be true locally because it likely means the legislators and tourism have a head start or advantage in working together for the community.
Learn how to submit regions using your legislative boundaries here.
How does looking at Regions rather than individual POIs give us a more strategic look at our destination?
Tracking individual POIs might be the most familiar, therefore most likely your default way of looking at your destination, individual POIs is not the most informative part of our geolocation strategy. The decisions one can make from looking at the top POIs alone is not as valuable as being able to look at the POI from various groupings and in various contexts (e.g. a cross-visitation between the stadium and the hotels and restaurants around the stadium).
Our POI strategy is designed to highlight the relationships between places, the places people visit together and how geographic regions, or industries are similar or different in their visitation patterns. This provides actionable insights on deeper, and more fundamental questions related to demand generation, visitor distribution and economic opportunity for the community.
Will I be able to see information on standard geographical breakdowns, like city or county?
With the release of 3.0, we will associate clusters of Census Tracts (city and county) into filters in the ZDOS. This provides the benefits of using existing, standardized geographic constructs and provides population, economic and demographic characteristics about the destination. This will give us better tools for analysis and reporting in addition to faster, more consistent setup for you.
How Do Regions and Event Data align?
Not only do Regions allow you to slice and dice your location data in a more granular way, but we align your Region boundaries with your Event data from Predict HQ. By overlaying these two datasets, your data is even more insightful. You are now able to see predicted event attendance and impact to each Region in your destination, rather than just the destination as a whole. Whether you are looking at demand need periods or reporting to stakeholders, this additional layer of granularity is invaluable.