Data & Information

A history of key Peak District visitor surveys and volume data

Prior to 1986/87 there were two main surveys related to both the number and profile of visitors to the Peak District. In 1963, the British Travel Authority undertook a survey of the Peak District and concluded that there were an estimated 4 million visitors to the area during the six summer months. During 1971 and 1972, roadside interviews were conducted around the Peak District. The report concluded there were 16 million visits by car to the area each year. Between 1976 and 1986, traffic counts were conducted on the major routes crossing the Peak District. The counts show that in ten years between 1976 and 1986, there was a 20% increase in the volume of traffic entering and leaving the Peak District. On the basis of this growth, it was assumed the number of visits would have grown. Thus, a figure of 20 million visits was regularly quoted in the 1980s. From the mid-1980s onwards, the National Park Authority has undertaken one major visitor survey every decade.

26 million visitors per year - Assessment of Visitor Numbers 1996

The most common statistic causing confusion regarding visitor volume is from a report based in 1996. The assessment was correct, however the common quote; “second most popular National Park after Mt Fuji” was completely wrong. The two National Parks we assessed completely differently and no comparison or conclusion between the two could be substantiated.

Undertaken by Touche Ross in 1996, this report was commissioned to carry out a review of the All Parks Visitor Survey and other available data in order to reach an independent view as to the likely range of visitor numbers to the Peak District.

This report used four expansion factors (daily, annual, cordon and car occupancy) to gross up the numbers of visitors to the Peak District. These results gives a range of visitor days between 21.9 and 26.3 million excluding evening visitors.

Visitor Surveys

Visitor Surveys provide information required for effective visitor management and compliments data in most areas of National Park Authority work. Visitor surveys remain the best method for quantifying behaviours and perceptions of visitors to the National Park. They focus on Impact and behaviour of Visitors answering key questions such as;

• identifying the profile and origin of visitors

• examining their behaviour once at the destination

• evaluating the effectiveness of marketing activities

• assessing the quality of service and levels of visitor satisfaction

• testing reaction to new or proposed developments, services or promotional materials

How are they collected?

The methodology can vary in many ways but if often comes down to the following;

• What you are trying to find out

• The context in which you are operating

• The resources available

Larger Visitor Surveys may need to take account of surveys at peak, off-peak and shoulder seasons, together with annual monitoring data. This spread helps to identify variations in visits and visitor type. The main types of Visitor Surveys are as follows:

• Face-to-face surveys are useful to obtain high response rates and obtain representative samples and probe responses but they are relatively expensive. Self- completion questionnaires are cheaper but more difficult to introduce quotas

• Site surveys can be useful in finding the volume of visits to a particular site, who your visitors are, what they are doing, their motivation, satisfaction and suggestions for improvements, which are useful for planning and management, and if a consistent set of questions is asked, trends could be identified over time.

• Household and Telephone surveys can be useful to finding the overall volume and value of visits to the National Parks as the sampling universe can be identified and a representative, robust sampling regime can be taken. They can also identify non-users, visitors who visit the Park for leisure but do not stop, and barriers to use.

• Diary surveys can be a useful way of identifying spend.

• Roadside surveys can be useful to identify the volume and composition of the traffic leaving the Park, travel patterns, the nature of journeys and the volume of visits, including non-stopping visits.

What are the limitations?

Surveys are the best method of understanding visitor behaviour across multiple variables such as activity type, spend and visitor profile etc… However, surveys are insufficient in themselves and they are relatively expensive. They should be complemented by knowledge of the accommodation stock, occupancy levels; visits to attractions and traffic and pedestrian monitoring.

As shown above, there are several methods available for surveying visitors to large areas like National Parks. They all suffer from various disadvantages in terms of accuracy, sample bias, omissions of certain types of visitor etc. The method used will depend on the main objectives of the survey; e.g. whether it is total volume/numbers or rather information on visitor profiles, attitudes, behaviour or expenditure that is the most urgently required, as well as budget and time constraints.

If the survey is to be a sample survey, which is generally the case in practice, it should be remembered that, whatever method is selected, the results will be an estimate. Therefore, the degree of the inaccuracy of the estimate will depend mainly upon:

• The size of the sample

• The accuracy of the sample frame

• The extent to which the information can be cross-referenced

For visitor surveys to be representative, the sample frame must reflect as closely as possible the total visitor universe. As visitors to a large area like a National Park are moving about in a great variety of unpredictable ways, there is no flawless, reliable method to identify the total visitor universe to the National Park. For the last few decades, the best way to estimate the visitor universe was to use the cordon roadside method. The works on the definition that most (not all) visitors will cross the National Park boundary, as over 80% of visitors arrive by vehicle, this is the most efficient way to capture the maximum number of visitors. Of course, this doesn’t account for:

• Visitors staying in the National Park may not cross the cordon on all the days of their stay

• Conversely, some visitors may cross the cordon multiple times in one day, if visiting multiple areas of the National Park

• Visits by residents can be missed

• Peripheral users of the Park not arriving by Motor Vehicle

Due to these limitations, and the expense of roadside surveys, this methodology has not been repeated for the last few visitor surveys. Although an under-estimate, STEAM data is now used to provide Volume Trend Figures for the Peak District supplemented by Visitor Surveys to show visitor impact, behaviour, profile etc…