TOURISTS Fact Sheet DELIVERABLE 2.4 WP 2: Communication & Organisation Knowledge Centres Published in August 2015 www.velo-citta.eu Bike sharing for tourists Target Group Charateristics and Best Practice Tourists in the VeloCittà cities Tourists who are visiting a city are a large potential market segment for bike sharing schemes. In addition to people who visit for multiple days, we also consider visitors for one day as tourists. Business travellers are also included in this segment. All VeloCittà cities have significant numbers of tourists visiting. Burgos, with a population of around 180.000, receives annually about one million tourists of whom 30% stay overnight in the city. Burgos hosts several World Heritage sites and it brands itself as a whole-family destination as well as a nature destination. There are many sights and hotels in its city centre, close to the BSS docking stations. Research has shown that tourists are often unfamiliar with the bike sharing scheme, but they do have an interest in using the bike more often. Krakow is Poland’s second largest city and welcomes around 9 million tourists per year, of which 77% were foreign tourists in 2012(1). This number is ever increasing. British, Germans, Italians, French and Russians top the list of foreign travellers. The majority of the current BSS docking stations are located in the histo- ric old town. London Lambeth and London Southwark are neighbouring boroughs. Lambeth hosts the London Eye, a popular tourist attraction, as well as many other key London attractions. The famous Tate Modern can be found in Southwark. Of the more than 15 million international tourists that London received in 2007, around 7 million visited the Borough of Lambeth (excluding business travellers). For Southwark the num- bers are similar. Padua is an important tourist destination in northern Italy, profiting from the massive numbers of tourists visiting its neighbouring city Venice. Padua has a population of 210.000 and hosts around 607.00 tourists per year. Many visitors arrive in Padua by train. The historical city centre is a car-free zone and most of the bicycle docking stations are situated in that area. Located in the Southern part of Hungary, Szeged is the third largest city of Hungary with a population of around 163.000. It is known as the “City of Sunshine”, because it has the highest number of sunny days throughout the year. Szeged is the main city in Csongrád County and serves as a commercial and cultural centre of the region. Today’s Szeged is an important university town and a popular tourist attraction. It is famous for its Art Nouveau buildings in the city centre and a number of open-air events in summer. Ap- proximately 206.000 tourists visit every year. What Tourists need Tourists form a significant target group in all VeloCittà cities. To accommodate their needs and achieve a lasting positive image of bike sharing, some basic requirements should be fulfilled. High visibility: Many bike sharing schemes, except the one in London, lack visibility among tourists. Tourists need clearly visible BS stations along the main touristic sights, near the railway station and hotels. They may need to know the rent-a-bike price to compare. The city can increase visibility by including the BSS service in a city visitor’s card, making the service immediately available to tourists Ease of use: The registration should be as simple and straightforward as possible and information about registra- tion should be available in at least English and preferably additional languages based on the main tourist originations. Cooperation with the tourist sector: Cooperation should de sought with hotels and conference centres. Clear and concise information on the BSS should be delivered in information points for tourists or any other institutions that maintain any relations with tourists. Pre-registration by for example hotels or the Tourist Offices should be made available. Safety: Tourists need to perceive the whole system – registration, the bicycles itself and the cycling lanes - as safe. Even though a BS system can be widely known, like in London, if the common perception is that cycling in the tourist destination is dangerous this can completely undermine its usage. Integrated ticket: Unique card or ticket for public transport and shared bicycles offers to tourists a smooth and simple multimodal journey. With the possibility to connect bike sharing with other modes of transport new mobility options are being created. How Bike Sharing Schemes benefit from Tourists The decision to actively involve tourists and to target them as users for the local bike sharing scheme ge- nerates a number of benefits for the scheme itself, for the tourist sector and for the municipality. Visibility & perception: For many cities, tourists come in such large numbers that they are a great potential increase the overall scheme visibility. Their positive experiences with bike sharing can bring added value and be - nefits not only to bike sharing schemes but more in general to cycling mobility. City branding: As cities are competing for tourists and guests, they invest a big effort in presenting their city as modern and innovative. In that context bike sharing can be seen as an environmentally friendly service to support the modernity and individuality of a city. Getting to know the city by bicycle can be promoted more actively as a unique experience. Bike sharing schemes and city marketing should go hand in hand and can open up new areas for visitors. Scheme size & density: New or enlarged stations at main tourist destinations, close to big hotels or close to conference centres contribute directly to the overall scheme size. Turnover: Tourists generally have a high individual willingness-to-pay and can thus contribute considerable additional turnovers to the scheme. Diversification: The target group “tourists” reaches a differentiated public with regard to gender, age, income and cultural belonging. Challenges Tourists bring along Tourists bring not only benefits for the local bike sharing scheme but can also put the scheme to the test. Scheme availability: Long and very frequent rentals at a few “hot-spots” reduce the overall availability of bikes for other users. Redistribution can be logistically complex in a crowded, possibly car-free, city centre. Operating costs: Building BSS-infrastructure in the touristic centre or close to popular sights is often difficult due to monument protection or lack of space. Additionally the overall maintenance costs increase when bikes are heavily used. Low customer loyalty: Tourists are by definition only visiting shortly and therefore do not form a reliable, fixed customer base. Safety: Tourists are not always familiar with cycling, which can offer challenges regarding safety and related infrastructure. First findings about Tourists in VeloCittà In the framework of a comprehensive market segmentation task, tourists and day visitors were surveyed in the VeloCittà sites. The survey provided some interesting findings about their mobility behaviour and revealed some possible strategies to market the local bike sharing scheme to tourists. Krakow Lambeth Southwark Burgos Padova Szeged Sample 77 35 110 100 26 75 Safety In all of the surveyed cities, the large majority of respondents is capable of riding a bicycle. This obviously is an important prerequisite, but not something obvious, as tourists come from all over the world, some- times from countries without any cycling culture. In London Lambeth, Padova and Szeged, 45-60% of the interviewees considers cycling to be a dangerous activity (figure 1), which may considerably hinder the uptake of bike sharing. Targeted campaigns on this topic seem justified here. In Lambeth and Padova, the majority of respondents also think cycling is slow, whereas in the other cities cycling is more generally considered a fast way to move around town. Figure 1: DistaImage of cycling – safe versus dangerous Familiarity with the scheme The London sites stand out with regard to the high knowledge tourists have of the system. On the opposi- te side, in Burgos only 10% of tourists know the system. None of the respondents used it, however, 90% of them are very interested in using the BSS. In Krakow, Padova and Szeged, knowledge of the system is also on the low side. Efforts need to be made to increase this in order to use the full potential that the tou- rist segment offers. In various cities, the website of the scheme is only in the local language which makes registration difficult for foreign tourists. This is a relatively fast and cheap thing to change. Figure 2: Knowledge and usage of the bike sharing scheme Price Even though knowledge about the current pricing is quite low, the willingness to pay is high in most surveyed sites. This is especially the case in Burgos, Szeged and Krakow, where tourists are sometime willing to pay more than the actual price. In Burgos and Szeged, hotels were interviewed as well and they often agreed that costs of the system are fairly low and they could provide the bikes as a service to their customers. The interviewed hotels in Krakow already provide free bikes to their guests. In London it is an opportunity to talk to hotels about sponsoring and pre-registration, as the tourists are enthusiastic of cycling in London. Figure 3: Willingness to pay How to address Tourists in VeloCittà Operators of bike sharing schemes who want to target tourists must consider that two different groups have to be addressed: tourists themselves as users of the scheme and hotels or conference centres are as potential payers. The following actions are recommended: • Make BSS as accessible as possible for tourists; simple language, many languages. Use websites in pre- paration of their visit; offer them info in their hotels, hostels and conference centres.