From the outset, New Zealand’s tourism industry was built upon magnificent landscapes, and experiencing these up close. The Milford Track, New Zealand’s first ‘great walk’, established multi-day walking-in-the wilderness as a cornerstone of the nation’s tourism offering. Today, DOC manages nine ‘Great Walks’ that traverse New Zealand’s most compelling landscapes, and these are marketed extensively at home and abroad as truly iconic visitor experiences.
In the June 2017 year, almost 120 thousand ‘Great Walks’ were booked and completed by Kiwis and international visitors. Ensuring that this level of success is maintained requires digging further. As noted by the tourism sector regarding the success of New Zealand’s ‘Tourism 2025’ strategy:
“Many tourism businesses and organisations are doing a great job in creating an experience platform where the visitor will recall and share the details of a memorable visit through pictures, stories and souvenirs with friends and family during their travels and when they return home. But that is not enough. We need to consistently deliver experiences that exceed visitors’ expectations.”
http://www.tourism2025.org.nz/tourism-2025-archive/enhance-the-total-visitor-experience/
Exceeding visitors’ expectations requires a clear understanding of what benefits walkers are seeking from their ‘Great Walk’ experience, and how satisfied they are that these have been delivered. By looking at factors associated with walkers’ ‘satisfaction’, DOC is able to identify key opportunities for making improvements that matter to customers and exceed their expectations.
| Satisfied with Great Walks Experience | Count | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Extremely | 2697 | 49.49 |
| Very | 2283 | 41.89 |
| Moderately | 365 | 6.70 |
| Slightly | 62 | 1.14 |
| Not at all | 43 | 0.79 |
While useful, overall satisfaction ratings do not provide sufficient insight into key factors driving walker satisfaction. A closer look at those who recorded being satisfied, especially those ‘Extremely’ satisfied, can help identify these key factors, and provide greater clarity for the ongoing maintenance and improvement of ‘Great Walks’.
73 % of those who responded were ‘Extremely satisfied’ with the ‘Condition of the huts/shelters/campsites’ expressed extreme satisfaction with their ‘Overall experience’, compared with only 35 % of those who were less satisfied with the condition of these facilities.
Similarly, 67 % of those who responded ‘Agreed totally’ with ‘I experienced natural soundscapes/tranquillity’ expressed extreme satisfaction with their ‘Overall experience’, compared with only 37% of those who expressed less agreement.
When these two factors are put together, only three groups showed higher than the average level of being ‘Extremely satisfied’ overall (49%).
Those who were ‘Extremely satisfied’ with the ‘Condition of the huts/shelters/campsites’ had very high levels of being ‘Extremely satisfied’ with their ‘Overall experience’, as did those who ‘Agreed totally’ about ‘Experiencing natural soundscapes/tranquillity’ (82%) and those who ‘Agreed a lot’ (67%). The other group with higher than average extreme satisfaction with their ‘Experience overall’ (56%) were those who ‘Agreed totally’ about ‘Experiencing natural soundscapes/tranquillity’, but who were ‘Very’ (rather than ‘Extremely’) satisfied with the ‘Condition of the huts/shelters/campsites’.
When asked to describe their ‘Great Walk’ experience in three words, “Beautiful” was the word most commonly (27%) volunteered by walkers. “Beautiful” along with other words such as “spectacular”, “stunning” and “scenic”, confirm that ‘Great Walks’ continue to connect visitors to outstanding and truly memorable natural settings. Appendix 1 also reveals that “beautiful” is the descriptor consistently chosen by international walkers, irrespective of their nationality.
The most common words appearing in the open-ended comments given for ‘Highlights’ of the ‘Great Walk’ experience were: “scenery” and “views”, one or other appearing in 1568 of the responses.
In contrast, the most common words for ‘Lowlights’ of the ‘Great Walk’ experience were weather related, with “weather” or “rain” occurring in 638 responses. It is notable that “none” appears in the ‘Lowlights’ word cloud with 132 responses, compared with zero (0) such entries for ‘Highlights’.
When the ‘Highlights’ and ‘Lowlights’ are combined in one word cloud, it is clear that respondents are reporting ‘Highlights’ more frequently that ‘Lowlights’.
Australians and Canadians top the list for reporting their ‘Great Walk’ experience was ‘Challenging’, while French and German walkers barely mention this (Table 1).
| Nationality | Percent challenged |
|---|---|
| Australian | 20 |
| Canadian | 16 |
| US | 13 |
| NZ | 13 |
| (all) | 12 |
| UK | 11 |
| Other | 6 |
| German | 5 |
| French | 3 |
In general, the more mountainous ‘Great Walks’ present the greatest level of challenge, compared with the less mountainous and coastal ‘Great Walks’ (Table 2). Further analysis is required to identify the key factors that contribute to perceptions of challenge, and how these may vary by nationality.
| Great Walk | Percent challenged |
|---|---|
| Tongariro Northern Circuit | 19 |
| Kepler Track | 17 |
| Milford Track | 14 |
| Lake Waikaremoana Track | 14 |
| Routeburn Track | 13 |
| (all) | 12 |
| Whanganui Journey | 9 |
| Heaphy Track | 9 |
| Abel Tasman Coast Track | 6 |
| Rakiura Track | 4 |
Consistent with the results reported above, Appendix 1 reveals that for Australians, the word “challenging” came close as the most common descriptor of the ‘Great Walk’ experience (126 occurrences compared with 134 for “beautiful”).
The ‘Great Walk Guest Survey’ for 2016/17 comprised an integrated pair of web-based questionnaires that ran for the duration of the ‘Great Walk’ walking season (Oct 2016-May 2017). The questionnaires included both quantitative and qualitative questions.
This report relates to the following ‘Outcomes Monitoring Framework’ (OMF) Indicator and Measures for ‘Intermediate Outcome 3: New Zealanders and our visitors are enriched by outdoor experiences’:
Indicator 3.2.2: Opportunities, facilities and services provided meet customer expectations and preferences
The Department of Conservation’s (DOC) Outcomes Monitoring Framework (OMF) provides a platform on which DOC and others can assess outcomes in a clear, structured and transparent way (Lee et al., 2005). It has been developed as a logical hierarchy that is based on broad, overarching Outcomes, beneath which are nested Outcome Objectives, Indicators, Measures and Data Elements to provide ever-increasing levels of detail. The framework is scalable, as the indicators and measures remain compatible and consistent whether applied locally, regionally or nationally.
Recently updated and expanded, the OMF provides a roadmap for gathering information to meet the specific objectives of DOC and other agencies (McGlone and Dalley, 2015).
The provision of a national framework with agreed outcomes, indicators and measures supports collaboration with national and regional land management and regulatory agencies, as well as other stakeholder groups. This enables more integrated policy development and status reporting.
DOC has partially implemented a national monitoring and reporting system, whereby priority ‘Indicators’ and ‘Measures’ selected from the OMF are routinely used to report on progress against DOC’s stated objectives and outcomes. This factsheet reports on a measure for the 2016/2017 year.
McGlone, M., Dalley, J., 2015. A framework for Department of Conservation inventory and monitoring: Intermediate outcomes 1-5. Landcare Research Contract Report LC2427 (unpublished) for the Department of Conservation, Wellington.