Whether you are involved in managing an urban park visited by local residents or a country park that’s buzzing with visitors, the need for park visitor data and insights has never been more important.
No longer is park management about specifying what type of tree is needed… it is now all about understanding what is happening in the park. It’s about activity, negotiating leases and engaging with park users.
The latest mobile GPS footfall and visitor behaviour data can now support many aspects of park management – from leisure and recreation provision for locals, events and marketing to tourists, as well as landscape management and conservation.
Listed below are eight key data insights for urban and country park managers available through Place Informatics green space data dashboard.
Park visitor postcodes
Our green space data dashboard can be used to see very clearly, the percentage of people from every catchment postcode and this also includes a guide to social grade – showing the socio-economic profiles of people who visit your urban or country park, helping identify that your catchment area consists of many people with lower socio-economic status. This is extremely persuasive when attracting funding for park regeneration projects.
Leisure and tourism
Easily identify the share of park visitors who are local and visit on a regular basis for leisure and recreation – or those who have travelled from further afield – ‘tourist postcodes’. The green space data dashboards also reveals the postcodes where low numbers of visitors come from, but are within travelling distance. This is helpful to know, particularly for tourism and marketing managers, as it will guide decisions for social media and advertising outputs.
Monitoring marketing campaigns impact on attracting visitors from targeted postcode areas is easily achievable by tracking the number of unique individuals visiting your park each month – immediately accessible through the green space visitor catchment dashboard.
Movement flow
Visual heatmaps are used to monitor footfall on individual pathways – showing at a glance in the green space footfall dashboard, the busiest areas, the flow of people and where they accumulate. This valuable data can help urban and country park managers to see which are the most in-demand areas and pathways at different times of day – to help predict what may be required for the smooth running of the park – generally assisting in promoting health and safety and the wellbeing of visitors.
Park maintenance
Landscape management teams have found the use of urban and country park footfall data and heat maps of visitors extremely useful when deciding which trees should be assessed first and to create a plan to assess the trees in accordance with the risks to the public.
Conservation
For environmental sustainability, analysis of green space footfall data can help to make decisions about protecting ancient woodland, heathland and grasslands, wildflower meadows, woods and forests, lakes, ponds and nature reserves.
The data can help Wildlife conservation officers to make decisions on which areas could be designated as conservation areas and to assess if these areas have rising footfall.
Park events
Urban and country park footfall data is required for funding bodies to persuade them to provide the financial support for events, as well as to measure the economic impact and the return on investment after an event has taken place.
For event managers, visitor home postcode data is invaluable for targeting both print and social media marketing campaigns and then measuring the increase of visitors for each postcode area.
Car Parks
Visitor and car park footfall data can assist with making decisions whether to increase or decrease parking charges for cars or coaches – or where in the country park might require new parking provisions, roads or footpaths due to increasing footfall.
Commercial Management
Commercial outlets such as café’s, travelling fairgrounds or visitors centres can also benefit from making decisions based on park and green space footfall and visitor behaviour data. Granular heat maps of your urban or country park easily identify potential locations for a new café or other commercial opportunities.
For existing tenants footfall data helps support leasing negotiations and renewals.
Essential Data Insights for Urban and Country Park Managers
To discover the footfall and visitor behaviour data for your own country parks available in our green space data dashboard, please call 0161 706 1343 or drop us a message via our Contact us page.
