[R]esearchers will be out and about in the coming weeks speaking to visitors across the county, as part of a major Cumbria Tourism project to find out they come from, why they come and what they do during their trip.
The Cumbria Visitor Survey will see 1,400 in-depth, face-to-face questionnaires completed and analysed between now and the end of September. Questions will range from what influences their choice of accommodation and how they prefer to book, to how they travel and how much they spend. It is the only county-wide piece of research which gathers this level of detail about visitor behaviour and has been carried out every three years since 2006.
As the official Destination Management Organisation for the county, Cumbria Tourism takes the lead on the Cumbria Visitor Survey with support from seven local authority partners. That includes Cumbria’s Local Enterprise Partnership, the Lake District National Park, Allerdale Borough Council, Carlisle City Council, Copeland Borough Council, Eden District Council and South Lakeland District Council.
Cumbria Tourism’s Research Manager, Helen Tate, says, “The Cumbria Visitor Survey is a key piece of research which not only identifies where our visitors come from, but looks at everything from the size and composition of their party, to what they do – and spend – while they are here. To gain a representative sample, we have carefully selected a range of locations designed to pick up different types of visitors and compare results with surveys carried out in previous years.”
Managing Director of Cumbria Tourism, Gill Haigh, adds, “Cumbria Tourism’s role as the Destination Management Organisation for the county means we are in a unique position of working across local authority boundaries with our partners, to ensure we get the fullest, most accurate picture of visitor behaviour. Crucially, we will collectively use the results to support our lobbying work as a county, to inform our marketing activity and to identify opportunities and areas of development to help continue to grow the value of our £2.9billion tourism industry countywide.”
Cumbria Tourism will reveal the key findings of the Cumbria Visitor Survey in the autumn.
