Do buses help meet tourism objectives? The contribution and potential of scheduled buses in rural destination areas

Abstract

A review of tourism policy documents reveals three key objectives: environmental, social and economic sustainability. This paper examines the role of scheduled buses in meeting these objectives, using data from a large survey of bus passengers in rural tourist destinations. It finds that buses achieve modest modal shift from cars, allow access to the countryside for people without cars and generate spending in local economies. It suggests how these functions could be improved by market-segmentation, better publicity and service delivery and questions why many such services struggle for funding each year.

Introduction

Using new data from an extensive survey of bus users in rural tourist destinations, this paper examines how bus services address three recurring themes in tourism policy: environmental, social and economic sustainability (Department for Transport and the Regions, 1998; Department of Culture and Media and Sport, 1999; Scottish Executive, 2005; Welsh Assembly Government, 2003). It finds clear evidence that scheduled bus services are helping to reduce car use, enabling people without cars to reach such destination areas and contributing to local economies. However, the findings also suggest that such services, with some simple improvements, could increase their attractiveness to and use by targeted segments of the travel market.

A number of agencies are responsible for policy formation in tourism and its implementation at a national and local level. The three core themes: environmental, social and economic sustainability, albeit with varying emphases, are found in the majority of their policy documents (Gray et al., 2001), yet, in recent decades, visitors to the countryside have increasingly adopted modes of travel which bring negative externalities such as noise, emissions and pollution (Countryside Agency, 2003). This not only threatens the environmental sustainability of many environmentally fragile areas, it also risks their economic sustainability by encroaching on the qualities (such as tranquillity, unspoiltness) which attract visitors and their spending. This has led several authors, such as Sharpley (2001; p. 57), to suggest that ‘a dichotomy exists between the general principles and objectives of sustainable development and their application to the specific context of tourism’. Currently many local authorities and national parks are reducing their financial support to rural public transport (Reeves, 2006; p. 3) while ‘traffic restraint measures to discourage leisure travel by the private car remain a low priority for many National Park Authorities’ (Reeves, 2006; p. 3). This widens the gap, between those with and without their own private transport, in opportunities to enjoy such areas. With the loss of Countryside Agency support in England, additional funding to local government sources lies firmly with the Regional Development Agencies, who have not yet readily addressed the problem (Wood, 2005).

This paper first explains the extent of leisure travel how it differs from utility travel. It describes how policies for tourism and travel interact and then discusses the findings of previous research into the leisure travel. The reasons for Tourism on Board, the project's name, are explained on the next section and the way in which the survey was conducted and the findings analysed are described. The findings are presented in the next section. They cover which passengers had a car available to them on the day they made the bus journey, the reasons people used buses, what passengers said they would do if the bus had not been running, how much they spent, what they spent it on and how the bus service could be improved. The last section summarises the conclusions of the research.