Visitor Motivation, Expenditure
and Satisfaction (VMES) Survey

The Visitor Motivation, Expenditure and Satisfaction Survey (VMESS) is a collaborative effort between the National Bureau of Statistics within the Ministry of Finance & Corporate Governance and the Ministry of Tourism & Investment. This survey has been conducted since 2007 and is still ongoing, after a brief hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This exercise is conducted for one week of every month within the departure area of the VC Bird International Airport. The data is collected by trained interviewers via face-to-face interviews with a member of each travel party using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewer devices (tablets) through an app called KOBO, on which the structured questionnaire has been uploaded. Excluded from this pool of respondents are in-transit passengers and visitors for the exclusive purpose of study. The data collection process follows a stratified sampling technique based on the main markets derived from air visitor arrivals data.

The questionnaire is divided into seven categories: Visitor Profile, Motivation and Purpose, Trip Planning, Accommodation, Visitor Expenditure and Places of Interest and Visitor Experience. The information gathered are not only useful for tourism marketing purposes but as a contributor to the compilation of other economic indicators, as well.