Visitors undertaking some form of mountain biking activity in Tasmania rose another 15.3% in the March quarter of 2017 to an estimated 21,400 compared to the previous year.
For the first time since mountain biking activity numbers were recorded in June 2013, visitors undertaking 'cycling' activity actually declined year on year by 13%, leaving overall visitor numbers participating in mountain biking and cycling activity fairly stable at 38,300 people.
In the context of overall visitor numbers increasing by 7.3% over the same time last year this is actually a decline in participation overall.
Mountain biking is still a very small participation activity for visitors at 1.7% participation, ranking it near 4WD and quad biking (1.7%), canoeing/kayaking (2.0%) and golf (2.3%).
As reported in a previous article, very few of these visitors who indicate they are undertaking mountain biking, actually appear to be visiting Derby our main mountain biking region, suggesting it is an incidental activity, rather than a driver for most visitors.
The data used for this article come from the TVSAnalyser. This data has wide error bounds on it and should be treated with caution. Any errors in interpretation are a mistake and are mine.