The other week I got an email forwarded to me from a chap who works for the Trade Association at the British Consulate Toronto asking:
- Do you have statistics on the Mountain Bike audience, i.e. age, disposable income, length of stay at a resort, dollar spend during their stay, etc.
- Do you know what the total worth of mountain bikers visiting resorts is?
- Any information/statistics on mountain bikers in Canada and especially Ontario would be very welcome.
Sadly I had to turn him away empty handed. I was able to put him in touch with some people who might have the data he’s looking for, but from an Ontario perspective I’ve already asked those people and they didn’t have data before, so they’re not likely to have it now.
I know that Canada, and specifically Ontario, is a great place to ride. You tell me what kind of riding experience you’re looking for (short of “big mountain”) and I’ll be able to point you in the right direction. But we have no statistics to back this up. If we want people to pay their hard earned money to come ride here, and we do, how are we going to convince them? “Trust me, the riding is awesome dude!”
Other outdoor sports like hunting, fishing, ATV, Snowmobile, etc. have this data readily to hand. We don’t, and we are pretty far away from being able to generate such numbers. Something to ponder over this holiday season.
4 users commented in " Mountain Bike Tourism in Ontario "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWhat would we need to do to be able to get these stats? Why are we so far away from getting them? Could our new provincial advocacy group play an integral role? That could be one of our first tasks, raising money/support to initiate a study.
Just a thought….
Are those kind of stats available in the US?
Not to sound trite, but money is what is holding this back.
The Ontario Leadership Council is certainly one body that could tackle this. Raise money to define and perform a study. We could work with industry (bike and tourism) or government (local or provincial). BC seems to have done this work with industry, while QC is doing it with the gov’t.
These kinds of numbers are available in US, but I’m not confident in applying the usual “rule of 10″ to adapt it to the Canadian situation. Better for us to have our own numbers.
Stats are something that we as a club have identified as being required to strengthen our advocacy efforts. We have just thrown the idea out there on our forum and there seems to be lots of interest. If something is put together on a more formal basis or if other clubs have and interest in putting together some sort of stats we would be more than happy to partner or work trogether with others.
http://shorthillscyclingclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1720
The Ont Tourism Marketing Partnerships may be able to pull this or related data. I doubt they track mountain biking specifically, but it may reside in another category. The TAMS surveys may also be expandable, as done for other sports/activities.
I think if a compelling argument could be made why this data is needed, OTMPC could figure out how to get it.
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