2018 Year in Review – Guest Composition

We are taking a look back at the various activities of The Maine Brew Bus during the year 2018. First up, we will look at who our guests really are and exactly where they come from.

Note: This is the first in a series looking back at our tour operations during 2018. 

Through weekly analysis of our reservation system, the Maine Brew Bus hosted 7,331 Guests on tours in 2018.

Although that is slightly lower (by 1%) than the year before, it does mean that we have had nearly 15,000 guests on tour over a two year period.

It isn’t much of a surprise here in Vacationland that the largest concentration of guests last year was from June 24th through August 26th.

2018 Maine Brew Bus Guests by Week

During that 10-week period, we saw 27% of our annual total of guests with over 2,000 people taking tours.

Our reservation system asks the person booking to indicate their state or country of residence. If that person was booking a tour for a group, we previously would not necessarily know the home location for the other people on the tour.

During April and May last year, we put an online waiver system into place which asks the same question of everyone who is on a tour.

Now we have enhanced our data collection capabilities by zip and country code. This gives us more accurate geographic information for a larger percentage of our guests (and this information is getting better every day).

2018 Maine Brew Bus Guests by Country

From this combined data collection process, we know that guests from 44 States, 4 Canadian Provinces, and 11 Countries were on board.

Over 80% of our guests came from outside the State of Maine, and sometimes well outside of New England.

2018 Maine Brew Bus Guests – USA by Zip Code

But of course, guests came in high concentrations from New England and the Mid-Atlantic areas. In fact, the largest concentration of U.S. guests (72% of all guests) during June through December came from these Top 5 States: Massachusetts (30.8%), Maine (19.8%), New York (8.7%), New Hampshire (7.4%), and Connecticut (5.3%).

2018 Maine Brew Bus Guests – New England by Zip Code (Geo)

If it surprises you that more guests come from Massachusetts than from Maine, this has always been the case for us. Nearly one-third of our guests come from Massachusetts, and the majority of those people live in the area around Boston.

2018 Maine Brew Bus Guests by Age Group

All age groups (obviously 21+) are represented. Half of all or our guests (49.9%) are 26-35 years of age. But 5.5% of our guests are 61 years of age and older!

2018 Maine Brew Bus Guests – Age Group by Top 5 States

When looking only at our previously defined Top 5 Guests states, the largest segments are residents of Massachusetts between 26 and 35. Combined, this age group makes up 26.2% of guests coming from our Top 5 States.

So, there is a better look at where our guests come from.

Next up in the series is information about our various tour offerings and where they went last year.

Don Littlefield is the General Manager of Brew Bus Tours. In a previous career, he worked as an overnight data supervisor for UPS. He enjoyed a few cups of Rebel Blend from Coffee by Design while preparing this post. Twitter @BeerinME