Massive drop in visitor numbers

Published: Friday, 01 January 2010

BRITISH Waterways' Jonathan Ludford (Email: Visitors and visits) should be congratulated for explaining the difference between visits and visitors, writes Allan Richards.

However, he will certainly win no friends amongst BW's directors and, in particular, the chief executive who has been targeted with doubling visitor numbers by 2012, as he has managed to let the cat out of the bag concerning the drop in visitor numbers.

In the current annual report and corporate plan BW quotes a visitor number figure of 3.4m. This figure is repeated in 2020 vision introduction document 2020—A Vision for the Future of our Canals and Rivers together with figures for previous years. What does 3.4m mean?

The visitor survey

The figures quoted in the three documents come from a telephone survey. The basics regarding why it is carried out and how it works, are best described by simply quoting BW's last corporate plan:

'Increasing the number of visitors (people) using the waterways is an important target for us, not least in assessing the level of public benefit that we are delivering. More visitors means more people are benefiting from our waterways, possibly for the first time, rather than just existing customers visiting more often.

'We assess the number of visitors to our waterways through a telephone survey. The survey runs continuously through the year, speaking to a sample of 11,500 people representative of the UK population. The survey asks people if they have visited a waterway in the last two weeks—any longer and people tend to forget. When the results are analysed and extrapolated to the population we know that in a typical two week period in 2008, 3.4 million (2007; 3 million) people visited a BW managed waterway in England and Wales.

'We had previously set a target of increasing the number of visitors to 3.5 million by March 2011. In view of the reduction in marketing spend driven by budgetary constraints we are retaining the 3.5 million target by March 2011 and 2012.'

The figure of 88.4m that Jonathan has difficulty understanding is simply explained by multiplying 3.4m by 26 (the number of two week periods in a year). Jonathan's 262m 'visits' a year may be explained by the telephone survey asking how many times in the 'two week period' the respondent visited. Perhaps the survey shows that those that have visited in the past two weeks have visited a little under three times (i.e. 3.4m x 26 x3 = 265.2).

Whilst the above provides some sort of explanation as to how 'visits' and 'visitors' may be derived from the telephone survey, it does not close the gap between experienced boaters estimates of visitor numbers and BW's!

Robin Evans targets

BW's latest corporate plan reinforces the importance of visitor numbers (see above). Within months of Robin Evans taking office he was set yearly targets that would lead to a doubling of visitor numbers based on the 'typical two week period'. In short, the targets set sought to raise the figure from 3.6m in 2003/4 to 7.2m in 2011/12.

Robin Evans 'achievement' against targets set from 2004/5 to 2008/9 were 72.9%, 72.5%, 64.4%, 64.0% and 59.7%. But it get worse! BW's latest corporate plan suggests that for the years 2009/10 to 20011/12 he will fall even further behind with figures of 53.8%, 50.7% and 48.6%.

BW are predicting that by 2012 it will only achieve 3.5m against a target of 7.2m and a baseline figure of 3.6m. In short, BW expect that in eight years, despite much marketing effort, visitor numbers (as measured by telephone survey) will have decreased slightly rather than doubled.

From bad to worse

The achievements against the targets that were set are bad enough. However, Jonathan Ludford's revelation that last year BW had 262m  'visits' comes with a massive sting in the tail for in BW's 2003/4 annual report we find a figure of 400m 'visits'!

Using BW's figures, visitor numbers have dropped from 400m to 262m over five years. Has BW lost 'visits' at the average rate of 27.6m a year?

Increase or decrease

Jonathan ends his email with: 'Anyone who has read a newspaper lately will know that an increase in visits can only be good news (despite Victor's seemingly negative view of promotion) at a time when demonstrating the waterways' wider value to society is absolutely key given the increasing pressure on all areas of the public purse'.

Leaving aside Jonathan's dig at Victor, one can only agree with his sentiment! However, if two sets of figures show a decrease in visitor numbers rather than an increase should we keep quiet or speak out?