New Data shows Urban Parks are Vital at Attracting Visitors to Centres & Help Boost Local Economies

Place Informatics, the leading provider of footfall and location visitor behaviour data monitoring in the UK, have recently expanded their services and are now helping councils, businesses and planners understand how green spaces such as country and urban parks, public gardens, nature reserves, forests and footpaths are used by visitors and can really assist local councils and businesses to manage those areas.

These insights have already shown how visitors are using urban parks, helping councils manage facilities, measure event performance, quantify park usage, target tree maintenance and determine parking requirements and pricing. The data helps commercial traders and businesses located within these parks or close to them on peak times of the day or the best location within the green space to operate or attract visitors to maximise return.

Examples of how this data has been used includes adding additional commercial outlets and leisure facilities in line with the socio demographic attributes of visitors to the park to increase footfall further. As the data shows the flow of visitors, targeted adverts and signage have also been used to direct consumers to town centres and other local attractions, impacting income for local businesses and increasing footfall to town centres.

This data can also show where visitors have travelled from – the catchment area of local visitors and tourists from further afield and shows how the different types of visitors interact with the amenities within parks, for example giving an indication of how many park visitors who visit the green space, also tend to visit the town centre businesses in close proximity.

Place Informatics helps organisations understand where their visitors come from, where they visit whilst in the area and how they interact and behave in any location. By using mobile GPS data, Place Informatics is able to provide actionable insights which help support and enable decision making – to assist in health and safety, conservation, events, marketing and return on investment for economic regeneration projects.

This data can also assist country park and urban park managers, hospitality, travel organisations, tourism, councils and many other businesses and services understand how visitors are behaving, where they are attracting visitors from and most importantly what services they are utilising on their visit, including areas of green space.

Clive Hall, CEO of Place Informatics, commented, “Green spaces such as urban parks are important visitor attractions for many local communities and our insights have already helped many councils understand how they are being used and adapt their offering accordingly.

We offer local councils and businesses detailed insights to show how visitors are behaving on a daily basis and also provide monitoring to assess the performance of regular or special events. We can also provide details of the postcode area that visitors have travelled from, giving valuable information needed to make informed choices and maximise the return from these.”