2006 Travel Activities and Motivations Survey (TAMS)

The 2006 Travel Activities and Motivations Survey (TAMS) has been completed. The TAMS project examines recreational activities and travel habits of Canadians and Americans. The survey examines travel behaviour of the past two years, providing detailed information on travellers' activities, travel motivators, places visited, type of accommodation used, impressions of Canada/Manitoba, demographics and media consumption patterns and helps identify existing and potential travel markets in North America.

TAMS represents a comprehensive assessment of travel behavior and motivators and provides a rich and authoritative database by which to develop marketing strategies and travel products to attract visitors to Canada. In particular, TAMS was designed to:

Identify existing and potential tourism markets for Manitoba;
Measure the likelihood of these tourism markets being attracted to vacation experiences in Manitoba;
Create packaging opportunities for each of these markets;
Determine how to reach these markets (i.e. in terms of communication strategies); and
Provide information on how to better fine-tune and target existing marketing campaigns.

TAMS was sponsored by the following organizations:

The Ontario Ministry of Tourism
The Quebec Ministry of Tourism
The Ontario Tourism Marketing Partnership
Travel Manitoba
The Canadian Tourism Commission
Tourism Saskatchewan
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency
Alberta Economic Development
The Department of Canadian Heritage Tourism
BC Parks Canada
The Government of Yukon
Statistics Canada
The Government of Northwest Territories

The survey was conducted in Canada and the United States between September 2005 and April 2006. The Canadian survey consisted of a telephone survey and a mailback that was completed by those who had traveled in the past 2 years. The U.S. survey consisted of a mailback survey only as it used an existing mail panel. The U.S. sample was 61,000 individuals and the Canadian telephone sample was 25,000 individuals of which over 15,000 completed the mailback questionnaire.

In this second wave of TAMS (the first wave was completed in 2000), we've adjusted the survey to better meet the needs expressed by our tourism stakeholders. Some of the differences include:

More detailed questions regarding activities, as well as identifying the activities that were the primary motivators for trips;
Identification of the travel decision-maker in the family and the process of selecting trip types;
More detailed questions regarding media habits;
Additional questions on ethnic/cultural background to identify the country of birth of the parents of the respondents; and
Ratings of Manitoba and other jurisdictions as a destination for pleasure travel.

We invite you to review the full questionnaires below to develop an understanding of what respondents were asked and how their responses might be of use to you.

Canadian Questionnaire (1MB)
American Questionnaire (1.3MB)