Theme Park Management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Theme Park Management - Assignment Example The maximum number of tourists are from Germany (about 50 percent), with Switzerland contributing 22 percent and France, a close second, with 18 percent. The rest 10 percent constitute visitors from other countries. Given these facts, the researcher has attempted to find out if the planning process of the theme park laid any stress on sustainable development of the local community. The research, therefore, aimed at evaluating to what extent the local residents were involved in the planning process of the park, both then and now, and the perspective of the local residents and stakeholders about their involvement, again both then and now. The researcher has used a positivistic research philosophy with a mainly deductive research approach, to establish the research objectives. Primary research (interviews, questionnaire) and secondary research (review of travel literature) were used for the project. The logic employed was that since the number of people was relatively large, a quantitative approach was employed. Though the researcher has not excluded the importance of qualitative research and in fact has included few interviews in trying to establish the aim of the project. In every research it is important to know about the research approach, how the data was collected and analysed, as the results of the research will vary accordingly. (Language Center. Writing up Research Method and Research Design.) For example, if the efficiency of the voting system in a democracy has to be determined and if a questionnaire survey is being provided to the people across the country, then it is a much better approach than randomly interviewing people. Two factors, one the huge base and the second sectional bias and prejudice will affect the results of the interviews. However, if the questionnaire has options marked as excellent, very good and good, then it gives no option to the respondent to answer in the negative. Hence, though the quantitative research method would be the best suited, it may lead to wrong conclusions, because the questions did not have exhaustive options. What is generally agreed on is that there is no 'perfect' research method. Data collection, however, is best representative when both quantitative and qualitative data is collected. So, interviews, which tell the 'inside story' is essential to understand the analysis. (Carter McNamara, Copyright 1997-2008.) In whatever which way the data is collected, analysis is best when the process starts working backward that is from the research goals. Starting this way, helps to streamline the thought, organise the data and focus on the analysis. In the Europapark project, though the aim was to determine the involvement of the local community in the initial as well as the present planning and implementation of the theme park project, the research objectives were fragmented into: Determining tourist attraction in a theme park and ways in which the local community can be involved in the project. Identifying the actual involvement of the local community in the planning process, in the design phase and in the current period. Determining the local community's perception of their involvement in the