240322CNPABdPaper4SustainableTourismActionPlan

Form­al Board Paper 4 22 March 2024 Page 1 of 5

For inform­a­tion

Title: Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan – Annu­al Update

Pre­pared by: Heath­er Trench, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer Mur­ray Fer­guson, Dir­ect­or of Plan­ning & Place

Pur­pose To update the Board on deliv­ery of the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan 2022 – 27 and give wider con­text on asso­ci­ated policy developments.

Recom­mend­a­tions The Board is asked to: a) Note pro­gress in deliv­ery of the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan 2022 – 27.

Stra­tegic context

1. In 2022 the Board approved the 5‑year Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan (STAP), one of a series of action plans that build on the work with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP4). The actions with­in the STAP set out the con­tri­bu­tion of the wider tour­ism industry to the deliv­ery of par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant NPPP4 object­ives, as well con­trib­ut­ing to Scot­land Out­look 2030, the nation­al tour­ism strategy. It sits along­side oth­er related action plans, includ­ing the Stra­tegic Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Plan, the Act­ive Cairngorms Action Plan and the emer­ging Well­being Eco­nomy Action Plan. Over­sight of the STAP lies with the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship which is chaired by CNPA Board mem­ber, Xan­der McDade. Deliv­ery of the actions with­in the plan are car­ried out by a range of part­ners, who have all con­trib­uted to the com­pil­a­tion of this first annu­al review of pro­gress as detailed in Annex 1.

2. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park has been accred­ited with the European Charter for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism in Pro­tec­ted Areas (the Charter) since 2005, shortly after des­ig­na­tion as a Nation­al Park. The accred­it­a­tion is awar­ded on the basis of a 5- year strategy and action plan for sus­tain­able tour­ism. NPPP4 acts as the over­arch­ing Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Strategy for the Park and was sub­mit­ted along­side the STAP in Decem­ber 2022 as part of the re-applic­a­tion for the Charter. After an

---

Form­al Board Paper 4 22 March 2024 Page 2 of 5

on-site veri­fic­a­tion vis­it in May 2023, the Charter was offi­cially re-awar­ded in Novem­ber 2023. The Charter, and all the con­nec­tions we make though the Euro­parc Net­work, sig­ni­fic­antly con­trib­utes to the repu­ta­tion of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park in Europe.

Nation­al Tour­ism Policy

1. While deliv­ery of the STAP is car­ried out at a loc­al and region­al level, it is shaped by the wider tour­ism policy envir­on­ment, and there are sev­er­al devel­op­ments that are worthy of note.

a) Short-term let licens­ing: This scheme has now been imple­men­ted across Scot­land, and the Short-term let con­trol area, estab­lished in Badenoch and Strath­spey by High­land Coun­cil, came into force on 4 March 2024. The imple­ment­a­tion of both sys­tems has been dis­cussed extens­ively at the Park Author­ity Plan­ning Com­mit­tee. The Schemes are being mon­itored by loc­al author­it­ies and the Park Author­ity plan­ning team will be col­lat­ing data for the Nation­al Park. This will be repor­ted back via the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship in due course to ensure that we main­tain an appro­pri­ate range of accom­mod­a­tion for visitors.

b) Tran­si­ent Vis­it­or Levy: The Vis­it­or Levy (Scot­land) Bill was intro­duced to the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment in May 2023 and the gen­er­al prin­ciples agreed at Stage 1 in Feb­ru­ary 2024 – the legis­la­tion is pro­grammed to be finally approved by June 2024. If passed, the legis­la­tion will give all loc­al author­it­ies the powers to intro­duce a scheme to add a levy for overnight accom­mod­a­tion if they wish to do so. This will be based on a per­cent­age of the cost, with the rate set by indi­vidu­al loc­al author­it­ies. An expert advis­ory group, led by Vis­itScot­land, is devel­op­ing nation­al guid­ance and best prac­tice. The levy will provide an extremely import­ant new source of funds to help mange tour­ism sus­tain­ably with­in the Nation­al Park. CNPA facil­it­ated a round-table meet­ing with Min­is­ters and stake­hold­ers; and staff have met with Vis­itScot­land and the Bill Team to make rep­res­ent­a­tions regard­ing the need to ensure a joined-up approach to both col­lec­tion and the use of the funds in rela­tion to Nation­al Parks.

c) Tour­ism Fund­ing: Across Scot­land it is evid­ent that there are sig­ni­fic­ant pres­sures on budgets that relate to sus­tain­able tour­ism activ­ity. Sev­er­al private sec­tor des­tin­a­tion organ­isa­tions have closed or are redu­cing their staff and

---

Form­al Board Paper 4 22 March 2024 Page 3 of 5

oper­a­tions. Mean­while the Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund, admin­istered by Vis­itScot­land is com­ing to a close. The Bet­ter Places Fund, admin­istered by NatureScot, and which fun­ded sea­son­al rangers and related activ­ity will not be avail­able in the imme­di­ate future. With­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park the com­bined effect of these changes will be min­im­ised by our dir­ect fund­ing from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment and our suc­cess­ful efforts to draw in part­ner­ship funding.

d) Changes to Qual­ity: Assur­ance scheme: In Feb­ru­ary 2024 Vis­itScot­land announced changes to the nation­al approach to qual­ity assur­ance over the next year and part of chan­ging mod­el of oper­a­tions. Vis­itScot­land are mov­ing to a digit­al-first approach which will offer free-to-access pro­gramme of busi­ness advice that will provide insight and sup­port to inspire qual­ity in the tour­ism industry. The scheme will come to an end on 31 March 2025 and in the Park this will mean changes for around 135 businesses.

Key areas of activity

1. A sum­mary of pro­gress against the full range of actions is included in Annex 1, but there are a few key areas of activ­ity to note.

a) Pre-arrival vis­it­or inform­a­tion: With fund­ing from the Cairngorms Caper­cail­lie Pro­ject, the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship developed the ​‘Love Nature, Love Cairngorms Nation­al Park’ pro­ject to encour­age busi­nesses to share enga­ging mes­sages about respons­ible beha­viour with their audi­ences, par­tic­u­larly in advance of vis­it­ing. A range of new assets and videos have been deployed, all util­ising the Nation­al Park brand guidelines.

b) Tour­ism assets: A range of pre­vi­ous part­ner­ship pro­jects have developed an array of tour­ism assets and products, includ­ing Badenoch — The Story­lands, the SnowRoads Scen­ic Route and the Tomin­toul & Glen­liv­et Dark Sky Park. These ini­ti­at­ives were designed to draw vis­it­ors to the quieter areas of the Nation­al Park. Work is con­tinu­ing, in part­ner­ship with the Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, to pro­mote and man­age the leg­acy of these pro­jects through busi­ness engage­ment, train­ing, and marketing.

c) Redu­cing sea­son­al­ity: In 2021 we com­mis­sioned mar­ket research to sup­port a winter mar­ket­ing cam­paign. This has under­pinned an ongo­ing cam­paign called ​‘Where Winter Comes to Life’ which was launched in winter ²⁰²²⁄₃ and

---

Form­al Board Paper 4 22 March 2024 Page 4 of 5

developed fur­ther in ²⁰²³⁄₂₄. As well as pro­mo­tion through tar­geted digit­al advert­ising, PR cov­er­age and audio Spo­ti­fy advert­ising, there has been a focus on busi­ness engage­ment with the cam­paign, and devel­op­ment of products, pack­ages and events to drive winter visits.

d) Com­munity-led Tour­ism: There is increas­ing interest in com­munity-led tour­ism in Park pro­moted, in part, by the form­a­tion of SCOTO — the Scot­tish Com­munity Tour­ism Net­work. SCOTO held their first nation­al con­fer­ence in Kin­gussie last year and staff and mem­bers atten­ded their recent con­fer­ence in Dum­fries. The are many good examples of com­munity-led tour­ism pro­jects with­in the Nation­al Park and poten­tial for this area of activ­ity to grow fur­ther in future years.

Research and Monitoring

1. We con­tin­ue to com­mis­sion research to allow us to mon­it­or key tour­ism trends.

a) Vis­it­or Volume & Value: Vis­it­or num­bers and the value of tour­ism to the loc­al eco­nomy is meas­ured through STEAM, a sup­ply-side eco­nom­ic mod­el. The most recent data we have is for 2022, at which time there were an estim­ated 1.73 mil­lion vis­its to the Cairngorms, with an eco­nom­ic impact of £353 mil­lion. While vis­it­or num­bers were down around 16% com­pared with a pre-Cov­id baseline in 2019, eco­nom­ic impact was up by 2%.

b) Busi­ness Baro­met­er: The Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship con­tin­ue to man­age a quarterly sur­vey of busi­nesses, includ­ing busi­ness levels, bar­ri­ers to growth and busi­ness con­fid­ence. The most recent data for Quarter 4 2023 shows an increase in short, medi­um and long-term busi­ness con­fid­ence. While the most sig­ni­fic­ant bar­ri­ers to growth con­tin­ue to be bureaucracy/​legislation, sup­pli­er costs and staff levels/​avail­ab­il­ity, each of these are less sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenges on aver­age than recor­ded in pre­vi­ous recent quar­ters. The full quarterly report is avail­able here.

c) Vis­it­or and Res­id­ent Research: Since Nation­al Park des­ig­na­tion in 2003, we have com­mis­sioned a 5‑yearly vis­it­or sur­vey to cap­ture key data on vis­it­or demo­graph­ics, motiv­a­tion, activ­it­ies and sat­is­fac­tion levels. This allows mon­it­or­ing of NPPP4 indic­at­ors, and allows busi­nesses and part­ners to make informed decisions about invest­ment and mar­ket­ing. We have now appoin­ted con­sult­ants to carry out the next wave of research. While the meth­od­o­logy will remain sim­il­ar, with face-to-face inter­views car­ried out at around 35 interview

---

Form­al Board Paper 4 22 March 2024 Page 5 of 5

sites across a full cal­en­dar year, this time we plan to carry out two sep­ar­ate waves of research with­in the 5‑year con­tract to give us more reg­u­lar inform­a­tion. The first wave will run from May 2024 to April 2025 and the second wave from Novem­ber 2026 to Octo­ber 2027. Addi­tion­ally for the first time we have tendered along­side the vis­it­or research, a sep­ar­ate but related sur­vey for those that live and/​or work with­in the Nation­al Park. This will take place bien­ni­ally as an online sur­vey, with the first wave due to take place in late sum­mer 2024.

Next Steps

1. The next annu­al update on STAP deliv­ery will be pro­duced in March 2025. A wider mid-term review of the Action Plan will take place in late 2025 or early 2026. As well as assess­ing deliv­ery, this will be an oppor­tun­ity to make some amend­ments to the plan where neces­sary in response to the chan­ging tour­ism landscape.