Cycle tourism market segmentation research undertaken by Tourism Western Australia (Tourism WA) in 2018 indicated that for the three years ending in December 2017, that 29% of Australians had a holiday that involved a cycling experience. Of these, 28% were Destination Cycle Tourists while 72% were Cyclists While on Holiday. To enable this opportunity in 2019, Tourism WA prepared the following four Urban Bike Explorers cycle trails which provide tourist routes around the Swan River and Kings Park.

An audit of these four trails was undertaken by WestCycle on behalf of Tourism WA in late 2019. This audit concluded that the user experience of wayfinding these four Perth Swan River routes was suboptimal. Uniform signage was lacking. Each of the four routes does not exist as a product of itself. While riding these routes ‘as a product’ there is no experience of being on an identified and branded route.

Wayfound was commissioned by Tourism WA to undertake a new audit in 2021 to review the four cycling routes and make recommendations for approving overall trail awareness and trail wayfinding. The trail network comes under the jurisdiction of ten different stakeholder organisations ranging from state government authorities and LGA’s through to advocacy groups with no one having overall control and budget for trail wayfinding implementation and maintenance. The other key element that directed our recommendations was that every stakeholder in the the trails catchment was undertaking or planning major infrastructure projects in their catchment. This work would result in trails needing to be realigned, some temporarily and some permanently which would mean resigning sections of the trails regularly. Therefore our recommendations is to install a minimal amount of signage and take all of the trails online.

Our recommendations;

• Branding – The Urban Bike Explorers brand name seems to have little recognition or recall. We recommend exploring the modification of the existing name or adopting a new brand name that more closely link with Perth Water.
• Website – We recommend establishing a standalone purpose built website/PWA (progressive web app). A standalone website will address a number of issues that the Urban Bike Explorers brand is experiencing.
• Search Engine Optimisation – As the Urban Bike Explorers Trails has no web presence of it own there has been little chance to build Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to improve the ability for people to find your content online. It can take the form of registering your site with google, setting up google analytics, keyword research, linking to other websites etc. All of this adds up to improve the chances of being found.
• Trail signs – Based on the reasons presented we recommend only a limited number of trail signs with these mostly being located at the key decision making points where the trails cross the river at the Narrows,Causeway and Matagarup Bridges. We would also recommend that these trailhead signs also be installed at key locations including Elizabeth Quay, Crawley and at the Kings Park and Point Fraser bike hire businesses. The trailhead signs would give an overview of the entire trail system and a map showing all four trails with a “you are here” pin to show your current location. By showing visitors the entire trail network they will be able to make informed decisions on which trail they’ll ride or allow them to change trails along the way at the river crossing points.

Tourism WA has accepted our report and will now plan to implement and roll out our recommendations.