Client: Hampshire County Council

We completed a review of Manor Farm Country Park to consider investment needs, ways to improve operational performance and enhance the visitor experience. Manor Farm is an attractive country park that incorporates a heritage farm with a pay zone within a traditional wider country park landscape with a network of trails and bridleways. A number of the buildings within the farm are Grade II and Grade II* listed.

Our visitor experience masterplan has been used to underpin the future investment programme across the five country park managed by Hampshire County Council. Our work included:an individual site review to identify constraints and opportunities; an operational review and financial analysis to identify the baseline position; extensive stakeholder and staff consultation; a programme of visitor research (over 2,000 surveys were completed) to identify visitors’ needs; an assessment of case examples to identify best practice within the country park and wider visitor experience sectors; a detailed market assessment including demographic profiling and a review of the tourism market place and preparing a visitor experience masterplan and capital cost estimates for Manor Farm Country Park.

Our work focussed on seven key themed areas within the country park: activities including high and low ropes and other third party activities; play and learning; catering and retail; marketing; technology – the use of technology to improve the customer experience; the visitor journey and flows and car parking.  The primary objective of our work was to identify and assess ways to increase visitor numbers, identify income generation opportunities and enhance the individual visitor experiences Manor Farm Country Park. It was important to identify the sense of place and to ensure that each suggested action respected the site’s own sense of place and special qualities. Photos kindly supplied by Hampshire County Council.

How can we help?
If you have any questions or would like to discuss our work please don’t hesitate to call Richard Linington on 023 9248 1999 or email richard@pslplan.co.uk