section3-03

Enhance Visitor Experience

Measuring Visitor Use, Satisfaction and Understanding: Parks Canada’s Visitor Information Program

Parks Canada’s Visitor Information Program, initiated in 2000-2001, conducts a survey every five years at 114 of the national parks, national historic sites,or heritage places and exhibits administered by Parks Canada.

Participating sites differ in the groups targeted by the surveys (i.e, some sites exclude visitors who arrive on bus tours, or in the case of canals, only surveying land-based visitors and not boaters).

Parks Canada carried out a review of the attendance monitoring and visitor information programs between September 2003 and March 2004. The report Review of Parks Canada’s Attendance Monitoring and Visitor Information Program is available at www.pc.gc.ca.

The number of unique locations conducting surveys during the first survey cycle is shown in Table 24 along with the percentage of recorded visits to Parks Canada at the locations surveyed.

Table 24: Number and Percentage of Participating Locations in Visitor Information Program (First five-year cycle)

Year	Number of Participating Locations	Number of Survey Locations	% of Eligible Locations (n=114)	Participating Locations # of Recorded Visits	Participating Locations % of Recorded Visits
2000-2001	26	23	23	10,434,424	46
2001-2002	31*	30	27	3,794,202	17
2002-2003	12	15**	11	2,466,252	10
2003-2004	7*	8**	6	186,485	1
2004-2005	8*	9**	7	339,469	2
Total	84	85	74	17,220,832	76
Source: Social Sciences Branch, ERVE Directorate Participating locations differ from survey locations since multiple parks and/or sites may participate in the same survey administration. * A survey(s) took place at a location that did not report attendance data. ** A survey(s) took place at a location(s) that had already participated in cycle 1 of the program.

In total, 74% of the 114 participating sites, representing about 76% of the person-visits to Parks Canada-administered heritage places, will have been covered in the first five-year cycle. The 30 locations where surveys were not conducted during the first cycle will be captured during the second cycle.

The second five-year cycle began in 2005-2006 with the same number of eligible locations (114). The number and percentage of participation locations is shown in Table 25.

Table 25: Number and Percentage of Participating Locations in Visitor Information Program (Second five-year cycle)

Year	Number of Participating Locations	Number of Survey Locations	% of Eligible Locations (n=114)	Participating Locations # of Recorded Visits	Participating Locations % of Recorded Visits
2005-2006	20	20	18	4,210,837	20
2006-2007	14	14	12	1,562,102	7
Total	34	34	30	5,772,939	27
Source: Social Sciences Branch, ERVE Directorate

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