Survey of Burren Tourism Research and Visitor Profile
During summer 2007, the Burren Connect Project commissioned and carried out an extensive survey which canvassed the views of visitors, accommodation providers and the managers of visitor centres in the Burren region. The objective of the visitor survey was to assess the visitor experience of the Burren, to allow information be targeted more effectively, and to develop sustainable services and activities based on real visitor demand.
538 visitors participated in the survey, all were availing of accommodation in the area (day trippers were excluded). This sample size is large enough to yield significant and meaningful results. In addition 63 accommodation providers and 10 visitor centre mangers were surveyed.
The survey questions teased out information on how visitors hear about the Burren, how they get here, what they do here, what they would like to do, and most importantly, if their visit met their expectations and if they would return.
Visitor’s knowledge of the fragile nature of the Burren environment was examined, as well as awareness of the impact of certain practices such as picking flowers or removing stones. Accomodation providers and visitor centre staff were surveyed on developing the Burren as an Ecotourism destination.
To download copy of the survey please click here
Further Research
Burren Connect contacted a range of agencies and research institutions and invited businesses represented on a number of the committees currently working with the project to participate in the development of a research programme to follow up on the initial work of the survey. Representatives from Teagasc, Shannon Development, Clare County Council, the University of Limerick’s Tourism Policy Unit and a number of Burren businesses met in UL in June 08 to discuss the development of a research programme to allow us to collect up to date socio-economic information on the impact of tourism in the Burren and capture information useful to local business. The proposed research strategy will look at the use of :
- Tools to capture useful market information (surveys, interviews, traffic counts, etc)
- Experiments with interventions that would increase tourism revenue/length of stay in the Burren and encourage the development of ecotourism
- Methods to measure the effectivness of these interventions.
- Methods for the collation of hard data (relevant market/economic/social data from Clare County Council, Shannon Development, Failte Ireland, Tourism Ireland, Leader, Teagasc)
To assess the current situation and to identify weaknesses and opportunities in tourism provision, Burren Connect are currently compiling a comprehensive database of all tourism related businesses in the Burren and are carrying out an analysis of research into tourism in the region in recent years. The committee will use the results of this assessment exercise to further develop the research strategy.
Tourism in the Burren: Literature Summary.
We have compiled a summary report of all literature published on Tourism in the Burren. To access the shorter version of this, please click here.
To access the longer version, please click here.
