Press Release
For immediate use
7 June 2005
New survey reveals that one third of visitors to Glenveagh are return visitors
A new Donegal Tourism Research survey has found that one third of visitors to Glenveagh National Park are return visitors and most of these visitors are from the Island of Ireland and the United Kingdom.
A series of interesting statistics relating specifically to tourism in Donegal has been revealed as part of a broader Donegal tourism research project to generate baseline data for the County.
The Research and Policy Unit of Donegal County Council has just completed its analysis of the Glenveagh National Park survey and has revealed that 2770 responses from individuals speaking on behalf of 10,064 family members or groups were captured as part of this survey. Speaking about these findings Ms. LorettaMcNicholas, Research and Policy Manager stated that “some very interesting statistics have been revealed from this survey”. She added that “this is the first time that county specific data of this nature has been collated for Donegal and that the onus is now on the tourism industry to analyse these statistics so as to assess the implications for their businesses”.
According to Barney McLaughlin, Community and Enterprise Development Officer with Donegal County Council “the findings of this survey will be of immense value to the tourism sector in guiding future marketing and product development plans for the county”. He added that “a workshop will be held within the next few weeks with relevant stakeholders including members of the Tourism Sectoral Forum to assess the implications of these findings for County Donegal” and Mr. McLaughlin urged stakeholders to attend this workshop as the findings will be of value to the tourism industry in determining marketing and product development as well as broader issues such as customer service and value for money.
This survey was undertaken as part of a broader tourism research project that was funded under Measure 4.1 of the Peace II programme, Donegal County Council, Failte Ireland and Glenveagh National Park.
Speaking about the findings Ms. Róisin Mc Bride, Research Officer with Donegal County Council stated that there are a number of other interesting statistics associated with this survey, including:
· 54% of tourists to Glenveagh National Park were domestic visitor (Island of Ireland) and 46% were overseas visitors
· 55.8% of visitors who came from the Republic of Ireland resided in either Donegal (28.7%) or Dublin (27.1%). Republic of Ireland Visitors to Glenveagh National Park do not necessarily reside in the neighbouring counties
· The majority of visitors from Northern Ireland, 50% in total, came from the non-border counties of Antrim (26%) and Down (24%)
· (26.4%) of overseas visitors to Glenveagh National Park entered through the regional airports
· The largest segment of visitors were aged under 15 years and made up 16% of the sample, if this figure is further broken down it can be seen that 3% of this segment were under 5 years of age and 13% were aged between 5 – 14
· Clustering of Tourism Attractions was evident with over 56% of respondents indicating that they had visited or intended to visit other sites/festivals or events in County Donegal
It is planned that a similar analysis will take place on the Tory Island and South West Donegal Surveys over the coming months.
END
For further information contact:
Anne Marie Conlon
Communications Officer
Donegal County Council
Tel: 074 91 72574
Mob: 087 9192275
Email: amconlon@donegalcoco.ie