CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Form­al Board Paper 4 12/03/2021

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: CAIRNGORMS TOUR­ISM ACTION PLAN: MID-TERM REVIEW

Pre­pared by: MUR­RAY FER­GUSON, DIR­ECT­OR OF PLAN­NING AND RUR­AL DEVEL­OP­MENT PETE CRANE, HEAD OF VIS­IT­OR SERVICES

Pur­pose

To review pro­gress with the deliv­ery of the Cairngorms Tour­ism Action Plan and agree pri­or­it­ies in the years ahead.

Recom­mend­a­tion

That the Board:

a) Notes pro­gress with the pro­gramme of work that has been under­taken by part­ners to date which is deliv­er­ing both the Tour­ism Action Plan and key actions in Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 – 2022 b) Agrees to the changes in the Tour­ism Action Plan which have been con­sidered by the Cairngorms Tour­ism Partnership.

Sum­mary

This paper sum­mar­ises the stra­tegic pro­gramme of work under­taken by a range of part­ners to deliv­er the Cairngorms Tour­ism Action Plan and the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan as a con­tri­bu­tion to deliv­ery of the nation­al strategy, Scot­land Out­look 2030. The past year has been extremely chal­len­ging for every­one; the Cov­id-19 vir­us has impacted on many aspects of deliv­ery of the ori­gin­al Plan. Atten­tion of the main part­ner organ­isa­tions has shif­ted sig­ni­fic­antly dur­ing the last year to sup­port­ing busi­nesses; vis­it­or man­age­ment; main­tain­ing com­munity sup­port for the vis­it­or eco­nomy; and improv­ing our infra­struc­ture to cope with anti­cip­ated increased demand for out­door recre­ation and the changes in vis­it­or behaviour.

CAIRNGORMS TOUR­ISM ACTION PLAN

Stra­tegic Context

1. In 2005 the Cairngorms Nation­al Park became the first Nation­al Park in the UK to be awar­ded the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas (the Charter). In 2017, when our new strategy was inde­pend­ently veri­fied, the Charter was re-awar­ded. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park is the only des­tin­a­tion in Scot­land to hold this award, and one of only three such des­tin­a­tions in the UK.

2. The European Charter is a prac­tic­al man­age­ment tool that enables pro­tec­ted areas to devel­op tour­ism sus­tain­ably, based on five Prin­ciples: a) Giv­ing pri­or­ity to pro­tec­tion b) Con­trib­ut­ing to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment c) Enga­ging all stake­hold­ers d) Plan­ning sus­tain­able tour­ism effect­ively e) Pur­su­ing con­tinu­ous improvement

3. Scotland’s nation­al tour­ism strategy, Scot­land Out­look 2030, was launched in March 2020, just a mat­ter of days before the dra­mat­ic impact of the Cov­id 19 Vir­us star­ted to be felt by vis­it­ors, com­munit­ies and busi­nesses. The new strategy is based on the need for change – it placed much more emphas­is on sus­tain­able and rur­al tour­ism, cli­mate change and address­ing the impacts of vis­it­ors on our places and people. The main ele­ments are: a) The Vis­ion – we will be the world lead­er in 21^st cen­tury tour­ism. b) The Mis­sion – togeth­er we will grow the value and pos­it­ively enhance the bene­fits of tour­ism across Scot­land by deliv­er­ing the very best for our vis­it­ors, our busi­nesses, our people, our com­munit­ies and our envir­on­ment. c) Key Pri­or­it­ies – our pas­sion­ate people, our thriv­ing places, our diverse busi­nesses, our mem­or­able experiences.

4. The 2017 – 22 Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan includes the fol­low­ing Actions that relate to tour­ism, dis­trib­uted across sev­er­al Pri­or­it­ies: a) Devel­op­ing new ways, includ­ing vis­it­or-giv­ing, to fund infra­struc­ture invest­ment and main­tain­ing and upgrad­ing key off-road routes includ­ing Spey­side Way, Deeside Way and the Core Paths net­work; b) Deliv­er­ing a con­sist­ent high qual­ity of vis­it­or wel­come through new and improved inform­a­tion, sup­port for ranger ser­vices and part­ner­ship work­ing to sup­port busi­nesses, com­munit­ies and vis­it­or attrac­tions; c) Improv­ing the vis­it­or infra­struc­ture in Cairngorm and Glen­more, and Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et; d) Com­plet­ing the ​‘Snow Roads Scen­ic Route’ and devel­op­ing a sim­il­ar exper­i­ence along the A9; e) Encour­aging the pro­vi­sion of low cost camp­ing and motor-home sites in appro­pri­ate loc­a­tions; f) Improv­ing vis­it­or trans­port options and inform­a­tion; g) Bet­ter co-ordin­a­tion and pro­mo­tion of pub­lic trans­port and act­ive travel; h) Improv­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for act­ive travel in Aviemore that deliv­er improved trans­port con­nec­tions for vis­it­ors and res­id­ents; and i) Estab­lish­ing a new spa­tial pri­or­ity area to provide an enhanced level of future assistance/​collaboration over a focused time peri­od to the Dal­whin­nie, Kin­gussie, Lag­gan and New­ton­more area from ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀, mak­ing the most of invest­ment in the A9 dualling project.

Deliv­ery of the Tour­ism Action Plan

1. The coordin­a­tion and deliv­ery of the Action Plan is over­seen by the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship (CTP) which com­prises key private-sec­tor des­tin­a­tion organ­isa­tions, com­munit­ies, land man­agers and the pub­lic agen­cies involved in tour­ism in the Park. The CTP ful­fils the func­tion of a per­man­ent ​“sus­tain­able tour­ism for­um” which is one of the key com­pon­ents of the Charter pro­cess. The CTP com­ple­ments the work of oth­er more spe­cial­ised advis­ory groups for the Park includ­ing the Loc­al Out­door Access For­um and the Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group.

2. As soon as the Cov­id-19 situ­ation developed in March 2020, a Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group (CTERG) was formed. The Group met, ini­tially weekly and more recently every few weeks, and was chaired by CNPA Board mem­ber, Janet Hunter. The group com­prised private sec­tor des­tin­a­tion organ­isa­tions, loc­al author­it­ies and key CNPA staff.

3. In early 2021 the CTP agreed that, giv­en the sig­ni­fic­antly changed envir­on­ment for tour­ism, it would be timely to under­take a mid-term review of pro­gress in deliv­er­ing Tour­ism Action Plan with a view to identi­fy­ing any neces­sary changes of emphas­is at a stra­tegic level. As part of this pro­cess an over­all assess­ment of deliv­ery by part­ners against the actions set out in the Action Plan was under­taken and is provided at Annex 1.

4. Key high­lights of the work to date include: a) Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group: The Group has been extremely valu­able in help­ing respond to a rap­idly devel­op­ing situ­ation and keep­ing key play­ers well-informed, united and work­ing well togeth­er across a wide geo­graph­ic area. The Group has, for example, reg­u­larly reviewed how busi­ness sup­port was dis­trib­uted, advised on com­mu­nic­a­tion mes­sages and data-col­lec­tion exer­cises, and fed into nation­al tour­ism dis­cus­sions. b) Vis­it­or Man­age­ment: Board mem­bers are already well aware of the extens­ive vis­it­or man­age­ment work that has been under­taken over the last year includ­ing recruit­ment and deploy­ment of sea­son­al rangers, improve­ments to vis­it­or infra­struc­ture and the devel­op­ment of area vis­it­or man­age­ment plans. This work was developed in part­ner­ship with the Cairngorms Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group com­pris­ing land man­agers, loc­al author­it­ies and oth­ers. A full report was provided at Board in Decem­ber 2020 and vis­it­or man­age­ment plans are in an advanced state of pre­par­a­tion. c) #Cairngorm­s­To­geth­er Cam­paign: As the Cov­id-19 emer­gency developed, there was con­cern in cer­tain quar­ters about how to encour­age the return of vis­it­ors in the sum­mer while keep­ing loc­al people and com­munit­ies, employ­ees and vis­it­ors all safe. A pro­act­ive cam­paign was developed to build sup­port, devel­op con­fid­ence and pro­mote the inter­de­pend­ence of these three crit­ic­ally import­ant groups – this included devel­op­ment of a com­mu­nic­a­tions frame­work, pro­duc­tion of videos, pro­mo­tion using social media and reg­u­lar brief­ings for com­munity lead­ers. Fur­ther inform­a­tion can be found at https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​w​p​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​6​/​C​a​i​r​n​g​o​r​m​s​T​o​g​e​t​h​e​r.pdf d) Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship: The CBP has played an extremely valu­able role over the last year in sup­port of their mem­bers (now over 400). Their three stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies are Busi­ness sup­port, Busi­ness rep­res­ent­a­tion and Vis­it­or mar­ket­ing. Mark Tate, the CEO, and his small team have worked extremely hard rep­res­ent­ing busi­nesses in nation­al dis­cus­sions about loc­ally, prov­ing excel­lent updates about the com­plex array of busi­ness sup­port funds. CBP has worked very effect­ively in part­ner­ship with CNPA in host­ing meet­ings with com­munity lead­ers to build gen­er­al sup­port of our joint work through the CTP. Around the Park, oth­er des­tin­a­tion organ­isa­tions, includ­ing Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire and Vis­it Moray Spey­side, have played a sim­il­ar, crit­ic­ally import­ant role in their areas and worked col­lab­or­at­ively with regards to the Nation­al Park. e) Nation­al Park Vis­it­or Sur­vey and oth­er data col­lec­tion: The Vis­it­or Sur­vey, under­taken every five years using a con­sist­ent meth­od­o­logy, was com­pleted just as the Cov­id-19 emer­gency developed in spring 2020. The res­ults were extremely pos­it­ive about many aspects of the vis­it­or exper­i­ence, show­ing increased vis­it­or aware­ness of the Park with 95% feel­ing wel­come, 96% say­ing they loved the Park and 99% will­ing to recom­mend the Park to oth­ers. Toi­lets and pub­lic toi­lets were high­lighted as requir­ing improve­ment. Mean­while the Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er, fun­ded by CNPA, tracked busi­ness prof­it­ab­il­ity and busi­ness con­fid­ence – in Q4 of 2020 88% of busi­nesses repor­ted a decrease in turnover; short and medi­um-term con­fid­ence declined on pre­vi­ous quar­ters, whilst con­fid­ence in the longer term held firm. We con­trib­ute to work at a nation­al level, both fin­an­cially and sup­ply­ing inform­a­tion, via the pro­gramme of research on people and nature led by NatureScot. Res­ults of all these sur­veys are avail­able at links below and will be used to help chart our green recov­ery work and deliv­ery of the Tour­ism Action Plan.

    i. Visitor Survey summary: https://cairngorms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2019_2020VisitorSurvey_FINAL.pdf
    ii. Business Barometer: https://str.com/cairngorms-national-park-business-barometer
    iii. People and nature research: https://www.nature.scot/professional-advice/land-and-sea-management/managing-access-and-recreation/increasing-participation/measuring-participation
   

   f) Devel­op­ing the vis­it­or exper­i­ence in the quieter areas of the Park: Dur­ing the peri­od very sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress was made, invest­ing in tour­ism and the vis­it­or exper­i­ence in cer­tain key areas. The £3.5M Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et Land­scape Part­ner­ship pro­ject came to an end in Feb­ru­ary with 20 pro­jects fin­ished and a mar­ket­ing strategy for the area developed. In Badenoch, a new place-based brand iden­tity was developed, based on the cul­tur­al her­it­age (“Badenoch: The Story­lands”); new her­it­age and shinty trails have been cre­ated, a new com­munity-led web­site and an app launched and the Spey­side Way was exten­ded to New­ton­more. Else­where, along the SnowRoads Scen­ic Route the pro­file of Cat­er­an Coun­try was raised with arts based inter­pret­a­tion pro­jects and plans for a new off-road cyc­ling net­work. These ini­ti­at­ives are an import­ant part of our sus­tain­able approach and provide oppor­tun­it­ies to spread vis­it­ors across the Park, encour­aging them to stay longer and bene­fit loc­al com­munit­ies – such work can also help take the pres­sure off oth­er crowded hot-spots. g) Green Recov­ery Fund: In Septem­ber 2020 the CNPA and Cairngorms Trust launched the Green Recov­ery Fund and 13 pro­jects were fun­ded through grant-aid. Many of the pro­jects were tour­ism related and com­munity-led; for example, scheme fun­ded the devel­op­ment of improved park­ing areas for access to Mun­ros, com­munity lit­ter pick­ing schemes and the safe­guard­ing of his­tor­ic castles. The CBP led on a pro­ject to improve the vis­it­or inform­a­tion for camper­vans to the Park while the char­ity, Grow­biz has worked up a scheme to pro­mote the cre­at­ive and arts sec­tor bet­ter to improve its fin­an­cial sus­tain­ab­il­ity. Plans are being made for a fur­ther Green Recov­ery Fund in ²⁰²¹⁄₂₂. h) Nation­al pro­gramme of vis­it­or man­age­ment work: New emphas­is has been giv­en to a nation­al pro­gramme of work due the prob­lems caused across Scot­land in 2020. There is an over­all Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group, chaired by CEO of Vis­itScot­land, and three sub-groups, focus­sing on Infra­struc­ture (chaired by Grant Moir); Pre­ven­tion and Reg­u­la­tion; and Com­mu­nic­a­tions and Mar­ket­ing. The lat­ter Group are par­tic­u­larly con­sid­er­ing how to reach new audi­ences and devel­op a con­sist­ent and ima­gin­at­ive approach to com­mu­nic­a­tion of the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code. There is a sig­ni­fic­ant vis­it­or man­age­ment sum­mit planned on 19 March to review the Groups’ recom­mend­a­tions and we will work to integ­rate the work into the plans for the Nation­al Park. i) Par­ti­cip­a­tion in the Charter Net­work across Europe: Since host­ing the Euro­parc con­fer­ence in Aviemore in Septem­ber 2018, the Cairngorms has had a sig­ni­fic­antly high­er pro­file with­in Euro­parc for our work on sus­tain­able tour­ism. With­in the last year, staff and Board mem­bers have been invited to par­ti­cip­ate in a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing events, for example we have shared our exper­i­ence at the Euro­parc 2020 con­fer­ence and the Iberi­an Sus­tain­able Tour­ism work­shop (both vir­tu­al events). It was evid­ent from the dis­cus­sions that many pro­tec­ted areas across Europe exper­i­enced very sim­il­ar prob­lems in 2020 with lack vis­it­ors and sig­ni­fic­ant busi­nesses losses in spring and then sud­den influxes of new vis­it­ors and many man­age­ment prob­lems in summer/​autumn. Exper­i­ences were exchanged, solu­tions shared and new enthu­si­asm was stimulated.

5. In terms of pro­gress towards the tar­gets set in the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan, we can report as follows:

Tar­get in Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 — 2022	Update on progress
a) Increase the eco­nom­ic impact of vis­it­ors to east­ern and south­ern Cairngorms Nation­al Park from 21% to 25% of the total vis­it­or economy	2018:21.9% 2019: 21.6%* (source: STEAM) * The 2019 STEAM fig­ures for the Park were very pos­it­ive (show­ing an over­all increase of eco­nom­ic impact of vis­it­ors of 14.2% from 2018) but it should be noted this may par­tially be due to a review of input data in 2019. The decline high­lighted against the indic­at­or for SE of the Park should be seen in the con­text of a 12.6% increase in tour­ism eco­nom­ic impact for this area com­pared to 2018.
b) Increase the per­cent­age of vis­it­ors using act­ive travel dur­ing their stay to 19% by 2022	2015⁄16:16% 2019⁄20:27%* (source: Cairngorms Vis­it­or Sur­vey) * There was large increase in those walk­ing, up from 15% to 24% of vis­it­ors —but a slight drop in those cyc­ling, from 7% to 5%.
c) Main­tain or improve busi­ness per­cep­tions of NP influ­ence cus­tom­er attrac­tion and profitability	His­tor­ic aver­age: 54% 2020: 72% (Source: Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er, Q4 2020)

Mid-term Review and For­ward Look

1. The CTP con­sidered all of the pro­gress made and plans at their meet­ing in Janu­ary 2021 and noted that atten­tion of the main part­ner organ­isa­tions had shif­ted sig­ni­fic­antly dur­ing ²⁰²⁰⁄₂₁ to sup­port­ing busi­nesses; vis­it­or man­age­ment; main­tain­ing com­munity sup­port for the vis­it­or eco­nomy; and improv­ing our infra­struc­ture to cope with anti­cip­ated increased demand for out­door recre­ation, and changes in vis­it­or beha­viour. Over­all, there has been a high­er degree of col­lab­or­a­tion than had ever been seen before and, des­pite all the chal­lenges, very good pro­gress has been made with deliv­ery of the Action Plan. Vis­itScot­land staff com­men­ted that the Park had undoubtedly strengthened its role as the premi­er sus­tain­able tour­ism des­tin­a­tion in Scot­land as a res­ult of all the part­ner­ship effort under­taken over the last year.

2. It was agreed that, look­ing for­wards, some sig­ni­fic­ant changes do need to be made to the Tour­ism Action Plan and these are presen­ted in Annex 2 and in sum­mary com­prise: a) Sig­ni­fic­antly great­er emphas­is on vis­it­or man­age­ment plan­ning, ranger ser­vices and infra­struc­ture improve­ments at key sites b) More atten­tion to staff train­ing and skills devel­op­ment for tour­ism work­ers c) Sus­pend the planned work on total qual­ity des­tin­a­tion and place emphas­is on use of new tech­no­logy and use of data to address spe­cif­ic issues and long-term man­age­ment prob­lems d) Increase the emphas­is on devel­op­ing and pro­mot­ing the vis­it­or exper­i­ence in the less developed areas of the Park (e.g. Badenoch, Tomin­toul and Glen­liv­et, and Cat­er­an Coun­try to the SE the Park, etc.) e) Ration­al­ise the work on vis­it­or inform­a­tion and mar­ket­ing to tie in with work at nation­al level and emphas­ise safe and sus­tain­able vis­it­or exper­i­ences and con­sist­ent mes­saging of Scot­tish Out­door Access Code by all part­ners. f) Work on post-Cov­id mar­ket­ing, giv­ing more atten­tion to domest­ic UK vis­it­ors in the short term.

3. It will be for each par­ti­cip­at­ing organ­isa­tion to alloc­ate suf­fi­cient resources in their own way to deliv­er these actions. The CNPA budget will be approved at the March Board meet­ing and is mak­ing pro­vi­sion for ranger ser­vices, increased cap­it­al expendit­ure and a new ver­sion of the Green Recov­ery Fund. The Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship and Vis­it Moray Spey­side are both mak­ing plans to bene­fit from the HIE Des­tin­a­tion Devel­op­ment Fund which, if approved, would see them recruit new staff and take for­wards sev­er­al joint pro­jects to devel­op the vis­it­or economy.

Next Steps

1. Once agreed, staff will write to Euro­parc to share the res­ults of the mid-term review and the revised actions in the Tour­ism Action Plan. The next review pro­cess for the Charter starts in ²⁰²²⁄₂₃ and we will wish to make sure the pro­cess is embed­ded with­in the work of pre­par­ing the next Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan.

2. The next meet­ing of Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship is in June but the Emer­gency Response Group and the Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Group will meet much more fre­quently to ensure the reopen­ing of the vis­it­or eco­nomy devel­ops as smoothly as possible.

Mur­ray Fer­guson Pete Crane March 2021 murrayferguson@​cairngorms.​co.​uk petecrane@​cairngorms.​co.​uk