myTobago – your questions, review and comment about Tobago

Following requests, I thought it would be interesting to do a demographic analysis of registered users of the myTobago forum, based upon the “location” declared by all users.

As at 31st December 2003, we had a total of 597 registered users.

60% - United Kingdom (England 55%, Wales 2%, Scotland 2%, Ireland 1%)
18% - North America (USA 14%, Canada 5%)
10% - Trinidad & Tobago (Tobago 7%, Trinidad 3%)
10% - Central Europe (Germany 4%, Netherlands 2%, Scandinavia 3% - 15 countries in total)
1% - Caribbean Region (1 Grenada, 1 Barbados, 2 French Guyana)
1% - Rest of World (1Saudi Arabia, 1 Africa, 1 China)

I don’t know whether any visitor demographics are available for tourists to Tobago. In theory, the above figures should be a fairly reasonable representation of people landing on the island.

I provide this tidbit of information for the help (?) of those visitors who wonder where all their fellow guests might originate from.

Hi Steve

Interesting stuff.

From what I read in the media here, 85% of "foreign" visitors to Tobago originate in the UK - if accurate, then that means that the non-UK visitors are more "cyber-active" than the UK ones? When I left the UK I believe that only about 40% of homes had a PC, whereas this percentage is sometimes much higher in other developed nations, possibly explaining why our USA friends represent 10% of your forum members but just 5% of actual visitors - although you will know more about these statistics than most, given your website buiding company.

Finally, the largest single group of tourists to Tobago are not foreigners but domestic visitors - from Trinidad. I guess they fare badly in your member numbers as they probably consider Tobago much like I used to consider Margate (!!!) as a lad! Fun place but once your daytrip or weekend is over it is back to work.

regards

Hi Glyn

Yes, I have never seen any official figures, but I always tell people (based upon nothing more than personal impressions) that 80-85% of all visitors are from the UK. I get the impression that this is then followed by Canadians and Germans in about equal number. Any thoughts on that?

Yes, Internet usage is obviously a factor, although I believe the number of UK homes with a computer is now in excess of 50%. However, I suspect two other factors may play a large part in our figures. Unlike other countries, the vast majority of UK visitors travel to Tobago on package holidays. Many of them have restricted their holiday research to the package tour operator brochures, whereas visitors from other countries have had to be more “hands on”.


Our sample of 597 users is too small to be significant, but if you – or anyone – sees any official demographic analysis of tourism on Tobago, please post it here in this topic. I’m sure it is information that will be appreciated by many readers – I’m always being asked what the mix is.

I cannot imagine why I opened this particular post or even more suprisingly took up the challenge. If you go to http://www.cso.gov.tt/statistics/ttei/default.asp you will find every imaginable statistic relating to life and tourism in Trinidad and Tobago, its all just a bit out of date.Happy hunting to all you insomniacs

Andrew - thanks for the link. I shall have a good look at that when I get home.