Tourism and urban regeneration : an analysis of visitor perception, behaviour and experience at the quays in Salford

Following the loss of heavy, manufacturing industry in many industrial areas inthe 1970s and 1980s, tourism has featured extensively in urban and waterfrontregeneration policy because of its ability to generate substantial economicbenefits to destination communities. There is now an extensive literaturecovering urban tourism and dockland regeneration, but visitors' perceptions ofurban waterfront destinations and their on-site behaviour and experience remainlargely unexplored. Additionally, whilst there is now a substantial body ofliterature relating to tourism's economic impact at the macro level, less is knownabout tourism expenditure at destination and sub-destination levels.The thesis focuses on the Quays in Salford, Greater Manchester - the city'sformer docklands, which have been regenerated and repositioned as its flagshiptourism product. It reviews the pertinent literature and reports the findings froma questionnaire survey of visitors' perceptions, behaviour and experience of theQuays including expenditure by local category/tourism product component. Theperceived performance of the destination's secondary components was found tobe significantly higher than that of its primary features and significant betweengroupdifferences were found on the basis of visitors' socio-economic andbehavioural variables, as was the case with visitor satisfaction and intention toboth recommend the Quays and return to the destination. Most visitorexpenditure was on shopping and in restaurants and cafes and visitors weresegmented on the basis of behavioural traits and into heavy, medium, light andno expenditure groups; socio-demographic/behavioural profiles of each segmentare presented. Heavy spenders are more likely to be female, in a family groupand have shopping as the main visit motivation.A principal components analysis revealed that four product performancedimensions: 'primary attractions', 'secondary attractions', 'access' and'environment', explained 62 percent of the variance in the data and just under 38percent of overall visitor satisfaction. Not surprisingly, given the perceivedperformance of the destination's secondary features, they explained more of the variance in visitor satisfaction than its primary attractions, which in turn, weremore influential than the environment and access components. A comparison ofthe results with those found in previous research and the contribution of thethesis to the academic literature are discussed. The implications of the findingsfor destination planning and marketing are also evaluated.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral (Level 8)

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Craggs, R

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1337200

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:salford-repository.worktribe.com:1337200