Based on both the Mentality and the BSR model - which we have discussed in our previous blog - you can make a specific translation to the leisure and travel industry.
In this series of blog articles, marketing professional Edwin van der Woude from Het Regiobureau will take you on a journey to the world of focus groups. He’ll show us what we can learn from the leisure and travel industry. In the previous blogs, we discussed the importance of target group segmentation and models you can use for this. In this blog, we’ll translate these models to the travel and leisure industry.
Mentality International: Discover the different values for vacation and leisure
Motivaction and the Dutch Agency for Tourism and Congresses have turned the Mentality model into the Mentality International model. This model describes five personas: Upperclass Paul, Postmodern Nora, Achiever Michael, Mainstream Peter, and Traditional Mary. All five have completely different values, and therefore different needs during the leisure and holiday periods.
Postmodern Nora loves to go to unknown places, and even better is when her friends haven't visited these. Mary, on the other hand, prefers to go to familiar places. She loves to go to the same camping, during the same period, year in and year out. Michael is the joker of the group. He, therefore, searches for places with loads of fun activities: mountain biking, going out, beer experiences, etc. He doesn’t like culture and history as much, while Nora would love to dive into the cultural and historical sites. Nora thinks Michael is ‘flat’ and ‘fast’, while Michael thinks Nora is a little weird and principle.
You might understand now that both the content of your marketing communications throughout the experience journey and your offerings strongly depends on the target group you’ve chosen. This is where you can hit the bull's eye, but also where things can go completely wrong.
The benefit of using this model is that it’s created for international use, and therefore perfect for the German or Dutch market.
Do you want to know more about the personas of the Mentality International model? The NBTC has created some great passports for every persona1:
Lifestyle Finder: What do you do in your spare time?
Based on the BSR model, the Lifestyle Finder is created, specifically focused on the travel industry. This model classifies seven segments.
The segments in the Lifestyle Finder are named after the things each segment prefers to do in their spare time: adventure, fun, harmony, connection, peace, insight, or style. No one is a 100% Adventure or Peace seeker. This can even depend on the company you’re with, and the time of the year. Someone can be a Fun seeker when in the company of friends, and go on a Formula 1 weekend. That same person loves to spend the summer holidays with family in a place where every member of the family is having a good time. He therefore would be more of a Harmony seeker.
The following blog posts will focus on the Lifestyle Finder, although you might prefer to use the Mentality International model. Even though the BSR and Mentality models differ, they do compare in the different personas and you can - therefore - easily combine the both of them. For example, when you want to focus on both the Dutch and German industries. You can see Nora as the Adventure seeker, Michael as the Fun seeker (with a little Style seeker), Peter as the Harmony and Connection seeker, Mary as a typical Peace seeker, and Paul as a Style and Insight seeker.
That’s enough theory for now! But how can you actually use these models to your advantage? That’s what we’ll tell you in the following blog post. Depending on what target groups you decide on, you have to tailor your experience journey and offer to every unique focus group. How a tourist manager can do that, is exactly what we’ll show you in the next posts.
Tip: self-test
Both models offer a self-test, that helps you determine to which segment you belong. Not only interesting and fun but also very useful. This way, you find out if you can connect with the desires of your target audience with ease or not. A common ‘bias’ is that a marketer always sees themselves as a part of the target group, and makes their own interpretations based on that. When he or she doesn’t belong to the target audience, there’s something going wrong when making decisions. So it might be useful to find out who (of your employees, for example) does fit the target group’s needs when making decisions.
Mentality International: motivaction.nl/mentality/de-mentality-test
Lifestyle Finder: samr.nl/ennis/surveys/leefstijlvinder/
1: https://www.nbtc.nl/nl/home/kennis-data/doelgroepen.htm
