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BW surveys popularity of inland waterways
Next month (August), British Waterways (BW) will be unveiling the results of a year’s worth of visitor surveys designed to accurately measure the number of people visiting and using inland waterways in Britain.
The programme of surveys, conducted by tourism research agency, MEW Research, was initiated last August to enable BW to track whether it is on course to achieve its target of creating a largely self-sufficient network by 2012 which is used by twice as many people as in 2002 – a grand total of 187 million people a year.
The surveys are already giving a good indication of visitor numbers, with interviews carried out between August 2003 and March 2004 revealing that the number of people using the waterways in any two-week period is currently 3.6 million.
BW’s marketing director, Simon Salem, said: “We’re beginning to get a far more accurate picture of who visits our waterways and why. The new research shows a staggering 415 million visits are made to the network each year – far higher than we had previously thought.
“There’s also enormous potential to turn casual visitors and their families into regular users and to promote the enjoyment and variety of the inland waterways to people who enjoy other leisure pursuits but haven’t yet tried waterway attractions.”
The company is also attempting to track how people’s attitudes to the waterways change, by asking respondents to rate inland waterways against other tourist attractions such as museums, the seaside and historic houses.
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