RTO 9 Reports
Ontario Annual Insights Report - January 2025
BUILDING A DATA-DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING CULTURE WITHIN ONTARIO’S TOURISM INDUSTRY
The Multi-Year RTO Research Program aims to foster a data-driven decision-making culture across Ontario’s Regional Tourism Organizations through comprehensive research and insights. It features quarterly and annual reports analyzing key trends, complemented by access to the Destination Canada Data Collective Dashboard. Targeted training sessions further enhance research capacity, enabling informed decision-making and long-term regional growth.
RTO 9 Consumer Insights Survey: Fall/Winter 2024
Discover the results of our Fall/Winter 2024 Consumer Insights Survey, designed to understand the travel motivations, priorities, and barriers of visitors to South Eastern Ontario. Conducted from December 6–17, 2024, with 774 respondents, the survey explored key topics such as travel interests, planning habits, and familiarity with the region's 11 destinations, as well as the likelihood of booking overnight stays.
RTO-9 - Quarterly Insights Report Executive Summary
BUILDING A DATA-DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING CULTURE WITHIN ONTARIO’S TOURISM INDUSTRY
Ontario's tourism sector in 2024 continues its steady recovery post-pandemic, but faces ongoing challenges such as inflationary pressures and seasonal imbalances. Rising costs in key areas like transportation and food are driving price sensitivity among travellers, influencing spending behaviours. While summer tourism has seen a robust recovery, the winter season lags behind, especially in attracting U.S. visitors. Border crossings from key markets remain below pre-pandemic levels, but growth in emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil offers new opportunities. The workforce has largely rebounded, with over 700,000 employed in the sector, though transportation and accommodation face wage and age-related challenges. Tourism spending reached $16.1 billion in the first half of 2024, driven primarily by domestic travel. Food and beverage remains the largest spending category, and culinary tourism is poised for growth. However, to sustain this momentum, Ontario must focus on innovative offerings and targeted marketing to address seasonal gaps and spending slowdowns in areas like recreation and entertainment.
RTO 9 Consumer Insights Survey Spring Summer Survey 2024
Key Objectives
To understand our consumer database and their travel motivations
- Measure interest in vacationing within South Eastern Ontario
- Measure how they plan trips and activities
- Measure travel behaviour among target segments (other report)
- Determine what types of activities these segments are interested in
Uncovering the Latest Ontario Traveller Insights
The following report presents the topline results of a quantitative market research survey of Ontario traveller perceptions and behaviours, conducted by Skift on behalf of Regional Tourism Organization 9 (RTO9). These results are the third wave of annual research conducted for RTO9 and their DMO and operator partners assessing current and future travel perceptions and behaviours and impact on South Eastern Ontario’s travel and tourism industry and economy.
The results highlight the changing perceptions and behaviours of Ontario travel consumers post COVID-19 and the ongoing evolution of the Ontario travel and tourism market.
Analyzing Economic and Market Indicators Relevant for South Eastern Ontario’s Tourism Economy
This report offers a comprehensive overview of the tourism economic landscape in Canada and South Eastern Ontario in 2023, with a focus on key indicators such as GDP, retail sales, consumer spending, tourism unemployment, total number of active tourism businesses, and accommodation occupancy rates.
This report analyzes the economic trends in the region, highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on the local economy and the recovery efforts in various sub-sectors. Additionally, it provides a comparison of the region's performance with the national averages.
RTO9, Hastings, Lennox & Addington, Frontenac Tourism Asset Inventory Assessment
The creation of a dynamic asset inventory and GIS product and experience mapping is designed to support RTO9’s tourism development and management plans, and those of key tourism and community partners. The workplan ran over 3 phases to successfully deliver on the project objectives, including the design of an asset inventory database framework, extensive asset data collection, development of GIS maps, and summarizing into a final insights report. The development of a custom tourism asset inventory database for RTO9, Hastings, Lennox & Addington and Frontenac allowed the capturing of detailed asset classification, location, information, seasonality and attributes, while consolidating all regional tourism assets in a dynamic and editable format, creating a comprehensive data pool ready to dissect and analyze for multiple purposes.
South Eastern Ontario Consumer Insights Survey - Fall Survey 2023
These survey results highlight the top findings in our Consumer Database Survey.
Key Objectives:
To understand our consumer database and their travel motivations
Measure interest in vacationing within South Eastern Ontario
Measure how they plan trips and activities
Measure travel behaviour among target segments (other report)
Determine what types of activities these segments are interested i
Analyzing Economic and Market Indicators Relevant for South Eastern Ontario’s Tourism Economy
This report offers a comprehensive overview of the tourism economic landscape in Canada and South Eastern Ontario in 2022, with a focus on key indicators such as GDP, retail sales, consumer spending, tourism unemployment, total number of active tourism businesses, and accommodation occupancy rates.
This report analyzes the economic trends in the region, highlighting the impact of COVID 19 on the local economy and the recovery efforts in various sub-sectors. Additionally, it provides a comparison of the region's performance with the national averages.
South Eastern Ontario Brand Insights and Travel Intentions Report 2023
This report presents the results from a quantitative market research study surveying statistically representative samples of travel consumers in Southern Ontario, Quebec, and the US Midwest in early 2023. The survey markets were as follows: Canada (Greater Toronto Area, South Eastern Ontario, Southwest Ontario, The United States of America (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan).
Included in this report: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Past Visitation & Future Consideration
• South Eastern Ontario’s Brand Health
• Interest in Types of Activity on Holiday
• Interest in Specific Activities
• Inspiration Source for Past Visits
• Key Elements of South Eastern Ontario’s Image
• What Drives Visitation to South Eastern Ontario?
• Brand Image Summary Dashboards
South Eastern Ontario Consumer Database Survey - February 2023
These survey results highlight the top findings in our Consumer Database Survey. This survey asked questions about our audience's travel motivations, how they plan for leisure trips, and what they enjoy doing on these trips.
South Eastern Ontario Consumer Insights Research Wave 2
This report summarizes the topline findings of the second wave of consumer brand research conducted by Twenty31 Consulting on behalf of RTO 9 in February 2022. It presents a current and statistically representative assessment of the market for travel to South Eastern Ontario among travellers in Ontario and Quebec.
Region 9 Summary
The reports from the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries include:
• The economic impact of tourism in the region
• Visitor Spending by origin and category
• Accommodation statistics
• Tourism related establishment by sector
The Tourism Economy in South Eastern Ontario
An analysis of the latest economic and market data
Twenty31 Consulting Inc.
January 2022
COVID-19 Immediate Action Plan & Interim Strategy
COVID-19 is likely to be deemed the most abrupt shock to the global economy and society in modern history. The global travel and tourism industry is profoundly impacted and will face a real risk to near-term survival of many tourism businesses and a significant disruption to communities, SMEs, trade channels, and destinations. While we must take serious action to control the spread of the virus, we must also take action to protect the livelihoods of the millions of individuals and businesses impacted. Global tourism may not return to 2019 quickly (e.g., Tourism Economics, a division of Oxford Economics suggests a return to 2019 tourism levels by 2023, under certain conditions), and while tourism may recover albeit in an altered form, our proposal and action plans are developed with a focus on resilience as a competitive advantage with as much downside mitigation for recovery as a first priority once the pre-conditions for the resumption of tourism are met with societal and travel restrictions gradually lifted.