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Curaftesburcecollectlonl S9903 / TRAVEL r' ESOTA AND THE SUNBELT: !XAii!NAT!QN OF TWO IN T?R ABILIW TO TRACK MlNMI j8 SNOWBIRD POPULATION AND PROVIDE REGIONAL TOURISM MARKETING INFORMATION May, 1999 Produced by: Linda Limback, Manager of Research Art Adiarte, Industrial Economist The Minnesota Office of Tourism Department of Trade and Economic Development and Dr. Will Craig, Director Renata Polaskova, Research Assistant Center for Urban and Regional Affairs University of Minnesota Funding from hs University ofMimie^ota OILI'IILI fui TiaiuvuilaliLH Studies CURAftESbURCECOLLECtlONl Center for Urban and Regtond Affaln University of Minnesota 330 Humphrey Center Introduction Background The Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), University of Minnesota, through a grant from the Center for Transportation Studies, began a research project to investigate various data sources for their ability to provide a regular estimate of Minnesota's Snowbirds population. Snowbirds are people in their mature stage of life (over 50 years of age) who leave their northern state residences during the winter for an extended vacation in Sunbelt states but return to their northern residences for the rest of the year. In a previous study, CURA found that the Snowbirds phenomenon had unexpected impacts, such as shifting economic activity from Minnesota communities to southern states and depleting the volunteer labor pool in their home communities. Other studies have shown that, despite the infusion of new dollars into Sunbelt communities, Snowbirds can have unexpected negative effects on the host communities. These communities must provide housing, health care and infrastructure that is only used a few months of the year. In some communities the cost of the infrastructure investment may actually outweigh the positive benefits of travel related economic impact of these seasonal visitors. As the mature population increases, the Snowbird phenomena is expected to increase also. The primary purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate available data sources that might be used to measure and track Minnesota's Snowbird population so that the impacts of Snowbirds travel can be better assessed. CURA approached the Minnesota Office of Tourism to see if it knew of any data sets that may help. The Minnesota Office of Tourism was a subscriber to the U.S. Travel Data Center's TravelScope national travel survey, one of the largest national travel surveys conducted in the U.S. The Office of Tourism volunteered the TravelScope database, a large on-going travel survey database, as a data source. It offered to partner with CURA and its part of the partnership included obtaining authorization from the TravelScope administrator to use the database for this purpose and by providing the statistical runs on the TravelScope database to produce the reports needed. The Office of Tourism asked CURA to expand the project to look at the seasonal "balance of travel" between Minnesota and Sunbelt states. The Office of Tourism suspected that Minnesota had a travel deficit with many Sunbelt states. Travel deficit, in this context, is when the number of trips taken by Minnesotans traveling out to a particular area is greater than the number of trips taken by residents of that area coming to Minnesota. The Office of Tourism felt that a closer look at the travel flow between the Sunbelt region and Minnesota may lead to new marketing strategies. The Office of Tourism was interested in identifying factors that contribute to the travel deficit. Did the winter trips taken by Minnesotans to warm climate outnumber the trips of Sunbelt residents to Minnesota? Did any particular Sunbelt state offer good market potential for Minnesota vacations? Both organizations felt that the statistical reports needed to examine the Snowbirds population would also provide much of the data needed to make a preliminary assessment of the travel flow between Sunbelt states and Minnesota. But the ability of the data to help determine market potential or isolate the Minnesota Snowbirds population was unknown. Coincidently, just as this project was to begin, results from a new travel survey, this time one within the public domain, became available. This new smvey, American Travel Survey (ATS), was also a promising candidate and potential backup ifTravelScope was not available in the future. The ATS was conducted in 1995 by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Department of Transportation. Reports from it were just beginning to be released and made available to the public. Both CURA and the Minnesota Office of Tourism felt that an examination limited to TravelScope and the ATS would give a sufficient indication of whether any current travel survey could be used to provide the desired information. The goals of the study were expanded to include a broad level comparison of the Minnesota specific data tables from these two surveys as a reliability check on their output. If results compared favorably, either data source could be used in the future. Before TravelScope or the ATS were examined, a thorough library search was performed to identify other likely candidates. Library data bases available at the University of Minnesota through the Lumina library system were searched. In addition, CAB abstracts, a subscription library data base that has a travel and tourism index, and the Minnesota Department of Transportation's transportation abstracts database were also searched. These searches found few studies that addressed any issues concerning the Snowbirds segment of the population and no sources addressing the balance of travel between northern and southern states. The searches turned up no other likely sets of data, outside the ones that had already been identified, that might help quantify and track this group of people. TravelScope was chosen as the database from which the most variables and data tables would be run because it has a relatively simple structure and the Office of Tourism could produce targeted statistical runs displaying either results for survey respondents or results extrapolated to the total population for each variable. This job would be more difficult using the ATS. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics had produced a number of tabulated reports using the data and made them publically available on the web. Their limitation for this study is that they provide extrapolated values only. After reviewing the sample selection process for both surveys, it was decided that results from TravelScope would provide a confidence level quite similar to that of the results from the ATS. For this combination of reasons, TravelScope was selected to use for the in-depth tabulations. Comparison of Methodology: American Travel Survey and TravelScope TravelScope and the ATS use quite different methodologies, sample selection and survey administration processes, and trip definitions. Understanding these differences is important when comparing results because the technical aspects of survey research are the key to what is measured and how accurately that measurement reflects a population. The first survey, 1995 ATS (ATS) was conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics of the U.S. Department of Transportation to meet a need for interstate travel flow data. The focus of the survey is on long distance travel between population centers within a framework of transportation. The Bureau plans to repeat the survey every five years to measure trends in long distance travel but the threat of budget cuts could jeopardize that effort. ATS was primarily a phone survey with advance contact and a personal follow up visit to non- respondents. The survey consisted of four detailed interviews conducted approximately every three months from April 1995 to March 1996. The survey population, a sample size of 80,000, was selected in two stages. In the first stage, the nation was divided into geographic units. Three hundred and fourteen of these were automatically included in the geographic areas from which a fixed size sample of households would be drawn. Demographic and economic characteristics of the remaining areas were analyzed and results were used to group the areas into 415 stratums. Then one sampling area from each stratum was selected by its ability to reflect the population of the area of each state not akeady covered by the 314 geographic units. Stage two involved selecting a representative sample population from the targeted geographic areas. The ATS survey instrument collected destination data on each long distance trip taken by anyone in the household, as well as data on household demographics, trip^and travel party characteristics and transportation variables. These same households were interviewed every three months to capture information on all of the trips anyone in the household took during the year. The siu-vey achieved about an 85% response rate with the highest level of response during the first quarter of surveying and continual drop off in the other three quarters . Although a copy of the raw data from ATS was obtained m case it was needed for this project, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics had already performed many statistical runs and made these reports available to the public on its web site: www.bts.gov/proerams/ats/. The ATS data tables used in this report were obtained from the web site. The data tables contain only extrapolated results and do not report number of respondents for any of the tabulated results. TravelScope is the other national travel survey that this project examined. It is primarily used as a travel and tourism monitor with statistically reliability of±J% nationally and lower on a state level. It is conducted by a survey research firm. National Family Opinion Research, Inc., but designed and coordinated by the U. S. Travel Data Center's division of the Travel Industry of America for a 21 member cooperative group of states and community convention and visitor bureaus. The results of a short travel questionnaire are merged with other demographic, psychographic and consumer behavior data on households included in National Family Opinion's other databases.
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