Research in Australia has shown that effective visitor information centres (VICs) can have a direct influence on visitor planning and decision-making, with survey research showing that 33 percent of respondents were influenced to participate in more activities after visiting a VIC. Visitor information centres are important in providing visitors with the information and trip planning services they require pre-trip, while they are en-route, or during their visit. Research into the effective planning and development of visitor information services provided by VICs has shown that:
Establishing effective management and operational models for Visitor Information Centres is important in ensuring the delivery of appropriate visitor information in a destination. The STCRC VICKit can assist.
The Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre has a number of research reports into the effective design and development of visitor information centres, the dissemination of information and the design of interpretation. STCRC has also developed an online ‘VICKit’ to support destinations to assess and improve visitor information centre performance as well as an ‘Interpretation Evaluation Tool Kit’.
Being able to document the achievements of your interpretive program influences not only budgets and financial decisions, but it also provides benchmarks needed for monitoring and continually improving the interpretive services and products you offer. The Tool Kit contains 11 ...
This report outlines the development of a framework for a new interpretation research agenda relating to sustainable tourism. It proposes a classification system for evaluating research and includes selected case studies. Four main research areas – to mitigate visitor impacts, ...
This report provides the key findings from a series of surveys carried out in three national parks—Hasting Caves State Reserve in Tasmania, Blue Mountains National Park in New South Wales and the Grampians-Gariwerd National Park in Western Victoria. The researchers collected ...
As part of the project ‘Improving the yield of tourism in regional areas: the role of visitor information centres', this report developed a tool for assessing the management of knowledge within a Visitor Information Centre. This report deals with two ...
This report presents the findings of a study into the role played by Visitor Information Centres (VICs) in enhancing tourism yield within regional Australia. It has drawn upon both qualitative and quantitative data collected in New South Wales and Victoria ...
The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of the Strahan Visitor Centre looking at who uses the centre, how visitors use the centre, what visitors think of the centre and what impacts the centre has on users. ...