Surveys (Sectors)
RIBOS can work with both serviced and non-serviced surveys, providing distinct data forms for each of: Serviced Serviced, Self-catering Self-catering, Touring Touring and Hostels.
You generally work with any one survey at a time and can use the survey selection form at the top right of the admin website to select which Survey, Year and Month you want to use.
Contacts are generally the owners or managers of the properties taking part in the surveys. Contact records are used for all communication with the participants and provide the login details for participants to access the respondent website.
Profiles are the individual properties belonging to the contacts. Each profile is allocated to a survey so, for example, might be a Serviced hotel or a Self-catering cottage.
Categories
Categories are used to define each profile so that you can analyse them by groups. For example, you would have a Rating category, with options for 1 Star, 2 Star, 3 Star, etc. and allocate a rating to each profile. You can then produce results showing occupancy rates for each Star Rating. Categories would also include geographical information such as County, District and Location.
You can add as many categories as you need, and add them at any time, making it possible to extend the analysis you do with RIBOS to include new groups such as Green Tourism schemes.
Each Category can have any number of Category Options. Analysis will produce results for each option with a category.
Data Forms for a survey are collected using online data forms. You can also produce paper data forms if you wish, and post these to participants, keying the data into the online forms when they are returned.
There is a different data form layout for each sector, and participants can choose to enter data either on a daily basis (weekly for Self-catering) or as monthly totals. Daily data allows for additional analysis to be performed so should be encouraged.
Analysis and Results
Analysis is a process which goes through all the data forms that have been returned, producing cumulative totals and using these to calculate all the occupancy rates for whichever Categories you have chosen, and then storing these as Results.
Results are the occupancy rates created by the Analysis, which can be reported on either as tables or graphs, and exported as spreadsheets.