Annual and Quarterly Patterns of Rainforest Tourism in the Wet
Tropics World Heritage Area, North Queensland
Research Report
Karen McNamara and Bruce Prideaux
School of Business, James Cook University
ISBN 9781921359156
Published September 2008
MTSRF Project 4.9.2 -
Sustainable nature based tourism: planning and
management
Introduction
In response to a need to more clearly identify the
characteristics, motivations and travel patterns of tourists who
visit the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area, this annual report
presents a range of rainforest visitor data that can be used by
management authorities for planning, for marketing purposes and by
tourism industry operators.
This report is a culmination of the research conducted in 2007
on rainforest tourism in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area
(WTWHA) in Tropical North Queensland (TNQ). Research was
funded through the Australian Government’s Marine and
Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF). Key tasks
allocated to MTSRF Project 4.9.2
Sustainable nature based tourism: planning and management
are:
The project was designed to identify aspects of the annual
tourist usage of the Wet Tropics rainforest, including key trends,
visitation patterns and visitors’ motivations.
Throughout this report, data is outlined on a quarterly and
annual basis. The quarters of data collection were January to
March; April to June; July to September; and October to December.
A total of 1,408 surveys were completed by tourists across
the whole WTWHA during 2007.
The results in this report are grouped and discussed under the
following three strands:
-
The socio-demographic characteristics of respondents;
-
The motivations and behaviours of respondents; and
-
The experiences and satisfaction of respondents.
Individual quarterly data has already been released and can be
accessed at the MTSRF
website. Given that
fieldwork for this project began in November 2006, the first four
quarterly barometers have covered the periods of November to
January (Q1); February to April (Q2); May to July (Q3); and August
to October (Q4). From 2008 onwards, the quarters will be aligned
with the calendar year, and as such this Annual Report will analyse
data from January to December 2007.
