210719CTERGMeetingNote

Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group 19^th July 2021 MEET­ING NOTE Present: Janet, Mur­ray, Pete, Mark, Jason, Chris F, Rhona Apo­lo­gies: Colin, Chris T, Geva, Grant, Heath­er, Laurie

1. Wel­come and introductions

   • The Chair wel­comed CBP’s new Des­tin­a­tion Devel­op­ment Man­ager, Jason Mar­tin, who star­ted today.

2. RESPOND: Busi­ness Sup­port Update HIE

   • No detailed update as Rhona, returned from leave today. Aber­deen­shire Council
   • Dis­cre­tion­ary fund wait­ing for com­mit­tee approv­al for Phase 3.
   • Sup­port­ing busi­nesses that are re-open­ing, get­ting the con­fid­ence to open.
   • Vis­it­or num­bers are ok, could be bet­ter, still some issues of staff­ing shortages.
   • Some indic­a­tions of mov­ing toward ​‘busi­ness as usu­al’ with enquires start­ing to return to normal.

Key issues from DMOs CBP

• Biggest issues facing busi­nesses at moment is lack of staff, par­tic­u­larly hos­pit­al­ity busi­nesses. Isol­a­tion peri­od is caus­ing busi­nesses sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenges. There are chal­lenges for staff mov­ing into the area due to cost and sup­ply of accom­mod­a­tion: there is a need to look at long term solutions.
• Mark attend­ing a meet­ing with Kate For­bes MSP and 10 of the lar­ger employ­ers tomor­row. Spe­cif­ic asks to Gov­ern­ment to take some lead­er­ship to find some medi­um and long term solu­tions. Hop­ing out­come will be a Gov­ern­ment lead summit.
• Repu­ta­tion­al chal­lenges – need to look at CNPA Con­sulta­tion for NPPP4, using that mech­an­ism to pick up on the medi­um to long term solu­tions. VisitAberdeenshire
• Quarterly busi­ness sur­vey has been done with res­ults by Thursday shared. Staff­ing issues weren’t picked up on sur­vey as sur­vey went live before it became an issue.
• Sus­tain­able tour­ism strategy com­pleted with pro­gramme run­ning seminars
• Mar­ket­ing cam­paigns – des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing Shire-spe­cif­ic activ­ity in the autumn
• Tour of Bri­tain, Stage 8, 12 Sept, Aber­deen­shire – comms meet­ing tomor­row, and announce­ments about stages are due to be made soon. Tour of Bri­tain | Stage Eight

1. RESET:

2. RESTART Man­aging for vis­it­ors update:

   • Rangers are encoun­ter­ing mostly pos­it­ive beha­viour but the ​‘hot spots’ were busy this week­end with the roads tem­por­ar­ily closed at Linn of Dee, Muir of Din­net, Glen Muick
   • Sub­stan­tial increase in wild campers with 319 tents being counted.

• Vari­able signs installed at Glen­more and Linn of Dee, some loc­al feed­back is that the vari­able signs are not giv­ing enough information
• Beha­viour is gen­er­ally bet­ter that last year (esp in rela­tion to fires), but still see­ing some irre­spons­ible behaviour.
• Wild camp­ing is still caus­ing issues but bet­ter than last year, pos­it­ive beha­vi­our­al changes.
• Oppor­tun­ity to put a press release/​blog out from Janet thank­ing people on what pos­it­ive beha­viour looks like.
• Camper van leaf­let being re prin­ted, Rangers find these very use­ful to pos­it­ively engage camper­van users
• Wait­ing to hear from High­land Coun­cil regard­ing when they can put the double yel­low lines on the Glen­more road.
• Keep Scot­land Beau­ti­ful – Mike Woolv­in atten­ded meet­ing and is work­ing to encour­age com­munit­ies who have had fund­ing to help get them going to organ­ised lit­ter pick­ing events.

Action: MF/JH to work with OD and Comms team to put togeth­er a press release, prob­ably asso­ci­ated with com­munity meetings.

Work­ing with Police Scotland

• CNPA/​FLS/​Highland Coun­cil are now fund­ing Police Scot­land for addi­tion­al patrols at week­ends on Fri­day and Sat­urday even­ings over the next 6 weeks a press release will be put out on that soon.
• Police Scot­land were out on the ground at Glen­more at the week­end until about 10.15pm. They were very enga­ging with the Rangers and vis­it­ors, and saw how their pres­ence is required — this is a good start to part­ner­ship working.

Paddle­board­ing

• Gen­er­al issues of con­cerns in some parts of the Park, most acutely felt and dealt with is in Deeside.
• Loch Kinord – Nature Scot have put in place Loc­al Access Guid­ance to dis­cour­age people from using the loch until end of August (nest­ing sea­son) and avoid dis­turb­ing wild­life. NS is mon­it­or­ing situ­ation so that bet­ter arrange­ments can be in place for next year.

1. RECOV­ER Her­it­age Hori­zons and Tour­ism Declares
   • CNPA have been suc­cess­ful with bid to NLHF for Cairngorms 2030 pro­ject bring­ing £50M to the Park from part­ner bod­ies. Much work to be done over the next 7 years ‑the pro­ject starts with a 2 year devel­op­ment phase and 5 years deliv­ery phase. .
   • The ini­tial first step is recruit­ment of staff, with 13 new posts to be recruited in time.
   • Tour­ism Declares some con­sid­er­a­tion is being giv­en to par­ti­cip­at­ing in this ini­ti­at­ive from Tour­ism Declares for the destination,
   • CNPA will bring NLHF to CNP tour­ism part­ner­ship to dis­cuss at meet­ing in August MT/MF to dis­cuss busi­ness involvement

Tour­ism Recov­ery Plan – EV infrastructure

• JH/MF meet­ing with Janie later in week, will have more of an update then.

North East Adven­ture Tourism

• Paul McCaf­ferty & Jen­nifer Craw had a pos­it­ive meet­ing recently about NE Adven­ture Tour­ism Pro­ject. Gav­in Miles (CNPA Head of Plan­ning) and PC will fol­low up with Will Clarke

1. Any Oth­er Updates Com­munit­ies Meeting
   • Janet, Grant MT and PC be attend­ing the meet­ing on the 29^th July. Janet asked that any feed­back from indi­vidu­als is passed to her before the meeting.

Min­is­teri­al Visits

• There will be a few Min­is­teri­al vis­its going to hap­pen in the area, OD is co-coordin­at­ing that process.

1. Date of next meeting
   • Will con­tin­ue with monthly meet­ings ‑next meet­ing will be on Monday 16^th August.