Tourism and urban regeneration : an analysis of visitor perception, behaviour and experience at the quays in Salford

Craggs, R

Abstract

Following the loss of heavy, manufacturing industry in many industrial areas in
the 1970s and 1980s, tourism has featured extensively in urban and waterfront
regeneration policy because of its ability to generate substantial economic
benefits to destination communities. There is now an extensive literature
covering urban tourism and dockland regeneration, but visitors' perceptions of
urban waterfront destinations and their on-site behaviour and experience remain
largely unexplored. Additionally, whilst there is now a substantial body of
literature relating to tourism's economic impact at the macro level, less is known
about tourism expenditure at destination and sub-destination levels.
The thesis focuses on the Quays in Salford, Greater Manchester - the city's
former docklands, which have been regenerated and repositioned as its flagship
tourism product. It reviews the pertinent literature and reports the findings from
a questionnaire survey of visitors' perceptions, behaviour and experience of the
Quays including expenditure by local category/tourism product component. The
perceived performance of the destination's secondary components was found to
be significantly higher than that of its primary features and significant betweengroup
differences were found on the basis of visitors' socio-economic and
behavioural variables, as was the case with visitor satisfaction and intention to
both recommend the Quays and return to the destination. Most visitor
expenditure was on shopping and in restaurants and cafes and visitors were
segmented on the basis of behavioural traits and into heavy, medium, light and
no expenditure groups; socio-demographic/behavioural profiles of each segment
are presented. Heavy spenders are more likely to be female, in a family group
and have shopping as the main visit motivation.
A principal components analysis revealed that four product performance
dimensions: 'primary attractions', 'secondary attractions', 'access' and
'environment', explained 62 percent of the variance in the data and just under 38
percent of overall visitor satisfaction. Not surprisingly, given the perceived
performance of the destination's secondary features, they explained more of the variance in visitor satisfaction than its primary attractions, which in turn, were
more influential than the environment and access components. A comparison of
the results with those found in previous research and the contribution of the
thesis to the academic literature are discussed. The implications of the findings
for destination planning and marketing are also evaluated.

Citation

Craggs, R. Tourism and urban regeneration : an analysis of visitor perception, behaviour and experience at the quays in Salford. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 17, 2021
• Award Date: Apr 1, 2008