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CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY 
Finance Committee Paper 1 20/02/09 

CAIRNGORMS NATIONAL PARK AUTHORITY 
FINANCE COMMITTEE 


FOR DECISION 


Title: Visitor Survey 2009/10 

Prepared by: Heather Trench, Sustainable Tourism Officer 

Purpose 

To seek the committee’s approval for funding of a year-long, Park-wide visitor 
survey in 2009/10. 

Recommendations 

The Committee is asked to approve funding of up to £48k towards the 
delivery of the 2009/10 visitor survey. 

Executive Summary 

1) A baseline visitor survey was carried out around the time of National 
Park designation in 2003/04 to give an insight into visitor demographics, 
motivations and behaviour. At that time the intention was that the 
survey would be repeated at regular intervals to identify visitor trends 
and allow monitoring against Park Plan outcomes. The first repeat 
survey is planned to run during 09/10, and full details are included on 
the attached Expenditure Justification Form. 

2) The survey would be conducted from April or May 2009 until March or 
April 2010, with an interim report submitted in October 2009, and a full 
report available by June 2010. This information would then inform the 
development of the 2012-2017 draft National Park Plan, as well as the 
redevelopment of the Cairngorms Sustainable Tourism Strategy in 2010. 
This would allow submission to Europarc in re-application for the 
European Charter for Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas in early 
2011 as scheduled. 

3) The initial survey was carried out at the same time as a survey for Loch 
Lomond & the Trossachs National Park, using the same methodology. 
Initially LLTNPA had planned to run their repeat survey in 09/10 as well. 
Unfortunately they now no longer have the resources to do so. Whilst 
ideally both surveys would run in tandem, to delay the Cairngorms 
survey by a year in the hope of running both surveys in 2010/11 would 
have serious implications for the planned strategy work as detailed 

above. Therefore the recommendation is to go ahead as planned 
with the Cairngorms Survey in 2009/10, and this has been budgeted in 
the 09/10 operational plan. 

Heather Trench 
February 2009