Parents play a crucial role in the university decisions of future students, especially in relation to their accommodation. Our next University Futures collaboration will provide accommodation teams with fresh intelligence about the expectations and needs of parents. The strategic insight report will help you to develop your accommodation offer, wrap-around services and marketing approach to help make parents feel you are the right choice for their child.
“I feel that [universities] seem to think the students are all grown up and that we have no concerns about them anymore, but as parents we still care and want to make sure they are OK.”
Parent of applicant who took part in our recent ‘parents as influencers’ project
Why join the collaboration?
Shape strategic development: Understand parents’ expectations regarding university accommodation offerings to help shape your strategic development
Prioritise investment: Develop the right wrap-around and ‘residence-life’ services by understanding what parents care about the most
Inform marketing: Shape how your accommodation is marketed to parents in order to maximise your occupancy and revenue
Deliver the right types of accommodation: Adopt practical ideas/recommendations to ensure that the type and character of your accommodation will be attractive to parents
Collaborating partners will have the opportunity to help shape the research design, but at this stage we expect to explore:
- What are parents, expectations and priorities when it comes to student accommodation?
- How are parents’ decisions made about accommodation and how does this link with influencing university choices?
- What do parents think about the cost of accommodation and budgets, and how are they making financial decisions?
- What fears, concerns and worries do parents have about student accommodation and their children?
- What demographic factors influence the way parents think about student accommodation?
- Where do parents look for information and what information do they need?
How does the collaboration work?
The project will kick-off with a collaborative workshop, bringing together participating university and PBSA accommodation providers from across the UK. Fresh intelligence will be delivered through a strategic report based one a new national quantitative survey of 500 parents, and follow-up focus groups.
Alterline’s unique collaborative research model brings universities together to work on common challenges and build communities of innovative practice. By taking part you’ll have the opportunity to:
- Help shape the research design
- Share ideas and build links with other institutions
- Save time and resource with Alterline’s full-service research support
- Gain detailed insights from the full strategic research report and easily implement actions from the practical recommendations
- Easily share high level insights with your key stakeholders from summary documents and presentations.
How much does it cost?
Joining this collaboration means you will have access to the valuable insights and practical recommendations for just £5,450 (excl. VAT). This is a fraction of the cost of commissioning individual research, giving you superb value for money.
The deadline for joining the project is the 30th of October 2019. For more information click here to email Sharon Steele, Client Communities Manager, at sharon.steele@alterline.co.uk or call 0161 503 5760.