Year 9 Fieldwork - The Impact of Tourism in Stratford-Upon-AvonIntroduction-Stratford is in Southern Warwickshire, in the centre of England. It is situated on the river Avon, 22 miles south east of Birmingham and 8 miles south west of Warwick. It has a total population of around 26,000. It is a busy market town which attracts tourists because of its links with William Shakespeare, England's most famous playwright, receiving 3 million visitors a year from hundreds of different countries.Stratford is over 800 years old, with Anglo-Saxon origins. It was most likely chosen as a settlement due to its proximity with the River Avon, which could provide water for cleaning, washing ad drinking. It did not develop into a market town until the medieval period.Shakespeare grew up in Stratford during the 16th century and spent most of his life in the town. After Shakespeare's death in the early 17th century, people began to visit the town, to see where one of the most famous playwrights had grown up. This resulted in the establishment of services for the tourists. Hostels and inns would have been opened to meet the needs of the increasing number of tourists. As e number of tourists as increased, so has the number of shops, restaurants and attractions. The rise in the number of tourists has had both positive and negative effects for Stratford. It has created a lager number of jobs for the locals and has had huge economic benefits for the town but it has made Stratford extremely busy and some say that it has ruined Stratford's charm.Hypothesis 1-Most of the people in Stratford are tourists and most people are in Stratford due to its connection with ShakespeareIntroduction:Our first hypothesis needed us to find out whether people were in Stratford due to the fact that it was the birthplace of William Shakespeare and whether they were local or were a tourist. I expected that the majority of people would be visiting Stratford because of its connection to Shakespeare. I thought this because Shakespeare is a very well known playwright and is famous all over the world, so lots of people come to Stratford to visit his birth place. A huge number people visit Stratford every year so I thought that quite a large proportion of these people would be visiting because of the town's connection with Shakespeare. Therefore I believed that most of the people in Stratford would be tourists, due to the high number of visitors annually and the vast number of attractions in the area. I believed the hypothesis to be true.Methodology:We used two different methods to collect data and information:Questionnaire Survey- This consisted of asking different people in Stratford questions about our hypothesis. We asked 3 different questions linked to our hypothesis:Do you come to Stratford regularly?Are you in Stratford due to its connection with Shakespeare?Are you a local or a tourist?We only asked closed questions (questions with set answers). This was to ensure that we could mak...
