by Will Emhardt, Sports Analytics graduate student
This summer, I had the unique opportunity as an applied data science graduate student at IU Indianapolis to work with faculty in the Department of Tourism, Event, and Sport Management. I worked on a data analytics project with Dearborn County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), a county located in Southeast Indiana along the Ohio River across the river from Kentucky and just outside Cincinnati. I was tasked with leveraging the foot-traffic software Placer AI to develop data-backed business proposals for Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and Dearborn County.
In early May, I was able to visit Lawrenceburg for the first time and meet some of the key business owners in Dearborn County. After sifting through the capabilities of Placer AI, we discussed specific questions these business owners wanted answered in the next few months. The business owners wanted to know more of who their consumers were and where their consumers were coming from and going after visiting their business. More specifically, the conversation steered to finding out what other towns in the Midwest were doing that could be translated to Lawrenceburg.
To begin, we collaborated on a list of 14 towns we believed Lawrenceburg could compare and aspire to. With this list of towns I pulled, cleaned, and created an interactive dashboard in Tableau, highlighting the strongest industries and relative ranking of towns for each particular industry. This initial presentation of data led to additional questions that could help shape the future of entertainment and attractions in the county. The next step was to identify tourist attractions in similar communities and determine what attractions could be successful in Dearborn County. We decided on the following requirements for these businesses: town population of less than 5,000 (with a few exceptions), in the Midwest, located on a water source preferably riverside.
My next few weeks were spent on a deeper dive in the Placer AI platform, learning its capabilities and limitations. Much of what we were asking about these aspirational businesses could be hosted by the Placer AI platform, however there was a limit on the amount of businesses you could simultaneously compare. I then created a workbook in Tableau where I was able to expand the performing capabilities of Placer. I looked on the same map where customers were going right before visiting each business, and the same for where they were going after. I looked at the favorite places of visitors to each business ‘A’, these were separate businesses that were extremely popular for ‘A’ in the selected time frame. I also looked at the approximate home locations of visitors to glimpse into the relative market for each business. Quick shoutout to Placer, they were one of the few data providers in the space to source legal data, there was a strict opt-in. After spending most of my July and August digging into the main question, I finally found a business Lawrenceburg could look to bring in, it had exact comparables to the Lawrenceburg DORA district and could create a partnership with a major business in the region.
I met with my department chair and professor David Pierce, Ph.D., and Jason Toth to present my findings. Jason connected me with Carrie Lambert, executive director of the Indiana Tourism Association (ITA), and we were able to talk about the research we did over the summer. I presented on a panel discussion about research & data at the ITA Marketing Summit in Terre Haute, Indiana, where I advocated for the potential of student research in the industry.
I encourage other DMOs to increase student involvement and I cannot thank Carrie and the entire ITA enough for allowing me to discuss my findings.
** – Special thanks to Jason Toth, director of sales and marketing for Dearborn County CVB and David Pierce, Ph.D., at IU Indy for connecting me with this opportunity.
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