Our Expertise

Culture & Tourism

Culture is increasingly seen as key to achieving quality of life for UK communities – promoting understanding and respect between different cultures, and building community pride and a sense of community distinctiveness. Our creative industries have grown twice as fast as the rest of the economy in recent years, now accounting for over seven per cent of GDP.

Tourism is now one of the largest industries in the UK, worth around £86 billion a year. Meeting the challenges of increased overseas competition and the current economic climate requires improved skills and delivery of high quality experiences, as well as a better understanding of the impact and value of the work of the culture and tourism sectors.

Step Ahead can support you in improving the services, events and facilities you offer by providing you with clear, robust evidence on your users, visitors, local sector and workforce.

Our research has helped previous clients to: 

• measure their users’ satisfaction levels;
• profile and understand their visitors or audience;
• understand local demand for cultural services and facilities;
• measure the impact that their facilities have in economic, socio-cultural and environmental terms;
• use ICT better to improve their effectiveness;
• measure effectiveness (through destination and organisational benchmarking) and prioritise areas for improvement.

Examples of our work include:

• assessing the impact of the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise and making recommendations for sustainable future partnerships between universities and the cultural sector in London;
  
  
• assessing the economic impact of the Funchal 500 Tall Ships Event in Falmouth event on the town and surrounding area through a visitor and business survey and a full visitor count;
  
  
• evaluating the success of subsidised training for SMEs in improving competitiveness in Devon’s tourism and creative sectors and promoting cultural tourism;
  
  
• assessing the financial health, sustainability and governance of museums in the South West;
  
  
• generating recommendations for targeted marketing to increase visitor numbers to an attraction by carrying out audience development work.

If you are interested in finding out more about our work in this area, please contact:

Lucy Hutton: 01392 433528
lucy.hutton@stepaheadresearch.co.uk

Steve Matthews: 01795 438899
steve.matthews@stepaheadresearch.co.uk