Client: Hampshire County Council
We completed a review of Queen Elizabeth Country Park to consider investment needs, ways to improve operational performance and enhance the visitor experience. Queen Elizabeth Country Park is woodland country park which also incorporates Butser Hill National Nature Reserve. The main visitor hub includes a visitor centre with café and retail space along with play areas within the wider park.
Our work has been used to underpin the future investment programme across the five country park managed by Hampshire County Council. Our work included:
- Individual site reviews to identify constraints and opportunities
- Operational reviews 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
- Assessing a number of case examples to identify best practice within the country park and wider visitor experience sectors
- Carrying out a detailed market assessment including demographic profiling and a review of the tourism market place
- Preparing an action plan and capital cost estimates for each country park
Our work focussed on seven key themed areas within the country parks as well as the overall programme:
- 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
- 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 Queen Elizabeth Country Park. It was important to identify the sense of place at the country park 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 are thinking of developing a visitor experience masterplan for your park or business plan please don’t hesitate to call Richard Linington on 023 9248 1999 or email richard@pslplan.co.uk