CRPR student secures ESRC business placement at Exmoor National Park

An Exeter CRPR PhD student (Tim Wilkinson) has won an ESRC Business Placement to work alongside Exmoor National Park Authority (ENPA). Worth £7,000, this placement will directly intervene in executive strategising over the short to medium term through generating quantitative data about ‘non-visitors’ to Exmoor National Park.

Dr Robert Fish of CRPR said, "We're delighted that Tim has secured this placement with ENPA.  We work closely with the National Park on a range of issues relating to sustainable land management and this is a tremendous opportunity for Tim to build on these links in ways both practial and relevant to his own doctoral research."
In the light of current government targets laid out in the new Tourism Strategy (March 2011) to increase the proportion of UK residents who holiday in the UK, there is a need to obtain data that can help Exmoor to grow the tourism potential of the area. The placement work will complement previous research into Exmoor visitors, the results of which suggest that visiting patterns have remained largely unchanged between 2005 and 2010, with 80% of tourists in Exmoor classified as repeat visitors.
While ENPA have a representative understanding of why these people come to Exmoor from our visitor surveys, their knowledge of the ‘non-visitor’ market is based on unsystematic insights and anecdotes. The object of this placement is therefore to compose structured information about potential visitors to Exmoor, which will have wider relevance to the National Park sector as a whole. Data and interpretation from this project will orient marketing strategy and ensure that Exmoor is marketed in a way that appeals to a broad spectrum of people, not just repeat visitors.