Water Transport & Visitor Attraction Success Factors

Posted on Feb 11, 2025 in Geography

Water-Based Transport

Types of Water-Based Transport:

Cruising

  • Cruises are mainly concentrated on short sea journeys of about a week.
  • The cruise product can take many forms, from small-scale specialist ships to gigantic mass-entertainment ships.
  • Cruising has become a significant tourist industry; big cruisers are like floating resorts where guests can enjoy luxury and entertainment while moving towards multiple destinations.
  • Companies are now offering bigger cruise ships, which bring economies of scale.
  • The international market for cruising was about 18.3 million tourists in 2010, which involves an annual growth rate above 7% since 1990.
  • The main cruise markets are the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, with Alaska and Northern Europe also popular during the summer season.

Ferries

  • Ferries are used to cross water where it forms a barrier to travel.
  • In some peripheral locations that have a highly seasonal tourist market, such as the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the ferry service not only operates under public service grant to subsidize the operation but is also a vital lifeline to a scattered series of communities.
  • The volume on these services is around 6 million passenger journeys a year, including nearly 2 million car crossings.

Pleasure Craft on Inland Waterways

  • Jennings (2007) pointed out that there are around 20 million private pleasure craft globally, with over 12 million in the USA.
  • In countries that have an industrial heritage based on canals and inland waterways, a significant vacation market has developed based on the former canal and waterways that were previously developed to serve the transport needs of a former era.

Factors Determining the Success of Visitor Attractions

  1. Professional management skills and the operator’s available resources
  2. The type of attraction or product offering
  3. Market demand for the product
  4. Ease of access from major routes and centers of tourists and resident populations
  5. Appropriate hours of opening
  6. Provision and quality of on-site amenities, such as parking, visitor center, signs and labels, shops, guides, refreshments, toilets, litter bins, seating, and disabled provision.
  7. Quality of service, including staff appearance, attitude, behavior, and competence
  8. The mood, expectation, behavior, and attitude of visitors
  9. Value for money

Ownership of Attractions

  • Attractions are owned and managed by a range of organizations, trusts, and individuals, working in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors.
  • The attraction sector is dominated by large commercial ventures.
  • A high level of state involvement in attraction funding is evident across Europe and in other parts of the world, like Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia.
  • There is little public sector intervention in attractions in the USA.

Perception of Attractions

  • Some visitors may perceive an attraction as such, but others may not.
  • For example, sites associated with disaster and death have become tourism attractions, known as “dark tourism”.
  • Whether a location such as the World Trade Center should be viewed as a visitor attraction poses an ethical and philosophical dilemma and is likely to be perceived differently by different groups of people.