A person is very small (but can do something)

Futurismo often hosts students from various countries, allowing them to gain experience with us by helping out during our tours and completing work required for their university degree. 

During the period of October to December 2017 DeniseVerstraeten joined us from Van Hall Larenstein, University of Applied Sciencesin the Netherlands. She was interested in learning about the people that joined our whale watching trips. Therefore, Denise completed a small project to gain a greater understanding of the customer experience of the trip by the help of a brief inquiry. 

Different questions were asked, such as:

1. Did you feel any emotions by seeing the animals? 
2. What was the highlight of the tour for you? 
3. What key message did you take away after today’s tour?

But, of course, firstly she wanted to know why our clients went whale watching in the first place! The majority were very curious to know more about whales and dolphins, or went on a trip out of passion for these animals.

To get a little bit more insight into their motivations, she asked our clients:

• Why they booked a tour with Futurismo. 

 - The majority responded with ‘recommendations’ or ‘reputation’.

So the tourists became more curious? Great! More than 95% of our clients reported that they experienced feelings or emotions towards whales and/or dolphins when they encountered them with Futurismo! To make it a bit more specific, 97% of their emotions were positive, however a small group felt some mixed emotions like ‘sadness’ or ‘fear. 

Why? During our trips Futurismo’s biologists explain a lot about conservation and threats to marine life. This may have had an effect on our clients’ emotions, which makes sense right? To give you an idea of the different emotions, a figure is made which is shown below.

The highlight of the tour were very different for each one of our customers, but that did not make them less interesting! 

A few that really popped out were: ‘The animals in their own environment’, ‘The information of the guide’, and ‘Awareness’.

Awareness was a highlight that also came back in the key message of our customers… Most key messages were related on conservation! (more than 50%) The majority of the people filled in a conservation-related key message like ‘Marine mammals should not be captured’ and ‘a person is very small (but can do something)’.

We were very pleased to hear our clients had a joyful experience and remembered the trip for being a contributor to the protection of these magnificent animals! 

Therefore, let’s work together and save our whales!

By: Denise Verstraeten