2006 Volume 9 Issue 3 Visitor Studies Today Behind the Scenes 27 viewing animals. Visitors appreciated this honest approach, and were better prepared to deal with disappointment. We have recommended to service providers that this sort of information be provided to all visitors as a matter of course. As an aside, the unexpected appearance of animals not on visitors’ “must see” lists is also a very real possibility when working in The Great Outdoors. For instance, one night at Mon Repos a snake joined the queue for tickets, creating considerable alarm and disrupting the data collection process for the remainder of the evening. In cases like these, our only recourse was to abandon the recruitment process and beat a hasty retreat to the safety of the rangers’ office until the threat had removed itself! 1. Non-captive wildlife does its own thing One factor common to all non- captive wildlife tourism is that animal sightings are far from assured. In the big wide world of nature there are no certainties—animals hide from view; appear when and where least expected; “perform” in places that are inaccessible to visitors; and/or simply refuse to “behave” as they should! Marine animals are particularly elusive—for such large animals, whales can be incredibly difficult to find. This can be extremely disappointing for visitors who have paid handsomely to get “up close and personal” yet fail to catch more than a fleeting glimpse of a tail in the distance. How does this impact on our research? First, if the research aims to measure the impact of wildlife viewing on visitors’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, visitors need to have actually seen some wildlife (other than feral children and unkempt “surfies”!). We did our best to collect data when the chances of viewing wildlife were highest, but there are never any guarantees. We also included a question in our survey to identify what visitors actually saw, so that this could be entered as a variable. Second, visitors may be so disappointed if sightings are poor that they no longer wish to participate in the research. In many cases we found visitors’ expectations were unrealistically high—they had not even considered the possibility of a non-sighting. In response to this, we instituted a procedure whereby, during the recruitment phase, we gave visitors information about the likelihood of Working with Animals and Children: The Challenges of Visitor Research in Wildlife Tourism: Karen Hughes, Roy Ballantyne & Jan Packer Our team at the University of Queensland has been investigating conservation learning at two Queensland ecotourism sites—a three hour whale watching cruise operating from the Gold Coast and turtle viewing at Mon Repos Turtle Rookery, Bargara. We present here a set of five challenges we have faced in this research, as a warning to all who might dare to attempt similar studies. Our experience has demonstrated that the famous adage of show business, “Never work with children or animals” can indeed apply in wildlife tourism research. very keen office cleaner—they have no respect for data. Always make sure that completed surveys are safe from the cleaners. Even when they are sealed in labelled boxes with signs attached saying things like, “Please don’t touch, important visitor data to be collected tomorrow”, many cleaners still can’t resist the apparently very strong urge to throw that box away. This urge is especially strong if the building has an incinerator or if the cleaning is done the day before the industrial bins are collected and compacted. There is a positive and perfect correlation between cleaners putting your surveys in the trash, and it being a day when there is no way to retrieve them from the trash. EPILOGUE Over twelve years this research team has been made up of 24 fulltime research officers, 10 academic staff and hundreds of casual and voluntary research interviewers. To acknowledge them individually would inevitably mean that someone important would be missed. But despite the challenges in conducting visitor research, the outcomes have always been worthwhile and all who have participated have made a unique and valuable contribution. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gianna Moscardo is an Associate Professor in the School of Business at James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.