Research in Cumbria

Cumbria is far more dependent on tourism than most other parts of the UK. The county has a wide range of accommodation providers, visitor attractions, heritage sites and outdoor activities.

This presents a complex picture that needs to be monitored and evaluated to ensure the overall destination continues to deliver a compelling world-class visitor experience.

Cumbria Tourism undertakes a wide range of surveys and data collection activities across the county to monitor this complex picture.

Economic Impact of Tourism - Visitor Volume and Value

Cumbria Tourism, along with a number of partners including Cumbria County Council, the district councils, and the Lake District National Park Authority, commission Global Tourism Solutions Ltd to estimate the economic impact of tourism in Cumbria. This is achieved through use of a model called STEAM (Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor). Through STEAM the county has a continuous tourism economic impact dataset from 2000 to 2010. STEAM uses locally-derived data from a variety of sources including tourist information centres, visitor attractions and events, accommodation bedstocks and occupancy rates. Data is analysed to produce estimates of the number of visitors, visitor days, employment supported by tourism, and revenue generated.

In 2010 Cumbria had 40 million visitors, made up of 35 million day trippers and 5 million overnight visitors. This brought in £2 billion to the region's economy and provided employment for 32,573 full time equivalent (FTE) posts. As many tourism jobs are actually part time, or seasonal, the total number of people in tourism jobs is estimated at 56,011 - 19% of all employment in the county.

The following table shows tourism revenue, tourist days, tourist numbers and tourism employment during 2010 for each of Cumbria's sub-areas and the county as a whole. Please note that the Lake District National Park Authority sub-area spans parts of Allerdale, Copeland, Eden and South Lakeland districts -rather than being an additional component of the Cumbria total.

For more detail please contact info@cumbriatourism.org

Cumbria Tourism's Visitor and Business Research