8 June CTERG Meeting Note

Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group 8^th June 2020 MEET­ING NOTE Present: Matt Smith, Grant Moir, Pete Crane, Mark Tate, Chris Taylor, Janet Hunter, Heath­er Trench, Rhona Taylor, Alistair Reid, Laurie Piper, Mur­ray Fer­guson, Colin Simpson. Apo­lo­gies: Colin Knight, Geva Blackett.

1. Wel­come and intro­duc­tions Janet wel­comed Matt Smith from Wild Scotland.

2. RESPOND: Wild Scot­land update Matt gave an update on a meet­ing last week with key part­ners to dis­cuss pri­or­it­ies for the wild­life sec­tor. There is a need to bring guid­ance togeth­er from lots of dif­fer­ent organ­isa­tions and Wild Scot­land will just sign­post to rel­ev­ant guidelines when they are pro­duced. There were dis­cus­sions about risk assess­ments and insur­ance liab­il­ity, and agree­ment of the social dis­tance require­ments of 2m / 1.5m / Im is cru­cial for the sec­tor. Some mem­bers are work­ing with OS on a map of what activ­it­ies can take place and where, as restric­tions ease.

Grant gave an update on the STERG meet­ing last Fri­day about sec­tor­al guid­ance. He had fed in com­ments from DMOs. The guid­ance is to be avail­able by 18^th June for the next lock­down review.

Key issues from DMOs CBP have fin­ished ini­tial ​‘Pre­par­ing to Open’ work­shops and the frame­work for com­mu­nic­a­tions is almost ready to sign-off after final com­munity engage­ment meet­ings this week. This approach is likely to be a case study with Vis­itScot­land, who may also pick up on the key mes­sages. Mark has been Inter­viewed about re-open­ing by BBC Scot­land for The 9 tonight, along with Land­mark adven­ture park.

In Moray Spey­side there remain con­cerns that large busi­nesses are still fall­ing through gaps in sup­port. Recov­ery groups meet­ings are planned with the loc­al Cham­ber of Com­merce, and Laurie is encour­aging Moray coun­cil to engage with com­munit­ies on re- open­ing. Moray Coun­cil will be send­ing bid levy invoices in early July.

The Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire focus is look­ing intern­ally to get the team up and run­ning again to sup­port busi­nesses and plan future mar­ket­ing activ­ity. The con­sumer sur­vey will close in the next couple of days and find­ings will be shared.

Vis­itScot­land Over­view VS are work­ing with the oth­er UK Nation­al Tour­ist boards on a new con­sumer sen­ti­ment sur­vey. They have recently run webinars about their mar­ket­ing plan and insights research, and will be organ­ising oth­ers on mar­ket­ing tips for busi­ness, and events. They are aware that there lots of oth­er webinars are also hap­pen­ing, but keen for sug­ges­tions for future top­ics later in the pro­gramme. (Chris F sug­ges­ted a webin­ar on the state of the travel trade industry in the cur­rent cir­cum­stances) They are work­ing on tones, themes and mes­sages for future

mar­ket­ing phases and will run those past part­ners in future weeks. The out­come of applic­a­tions for des­tin­a­tion & sec­tor group fund­ing have now been decided.

A ​‘Good to Go’ scheme paper will go to Vis­itScot­land board to agree if Scot­land wants to take part in this UK-level approach, which is an online check­list plat­form that busi­nesses use to self-cer­ti­fy. The scheme is due to be launched on 15^th June at UK level, so a decision should be taken before then if Scot­land is to be involved, but sec­tor­al guid­ance will not be avail­able until the 18^th which may be an issue.

Mur­ray and Janet gave an update on the European per­spect­ive on Cov­id-19 recov­ery from a Euro­parc webin­ar. Mur­ray gave a present­a­tion on our work for which there was a lot of interest and sup­port. All des­tin­a­tions are deal­ing with the same issues, but at a dif­fer­ent level. There is a feel­ing that there is not enough nature for people at the moment and we need to provide more green space and act­ive travel close to home.

Busi­ness Sup­port update High­land Coun­cil have still been pro­cessing grants but num­bers are tail­ing off. 6400 grants totalling £61 mil­lion have been paid. A new scheme launched this morn­ing for ten­ants / occu­pi­ers of build­ings rather than rate-pay­ers but num­bers are not expec­ted to be high, and the new B&B scheme launches next week.

High­land Coun­cil are look­ing into the re-open­ing of pub­lic toi­lets. Colin will find out more about the times­cale and oper­a­tion­al issues, and pass inform­a­tion back to CNPA, ideally for the vis­it­or man­age­ment meet­ing on Wednesday.

Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil are also gear­ing up for the new B&B/self-catering scheme for those without a busi­ness bank account, with fund­ing diver­ted from newly self-employed fund. They are also sup­port­ing busi­nesses with advice for re-open­ing, includ­ing look­ing at pave­ment widen­ing and road clos­ures in areas.

HIE con­tin­ue to work on com­munit­ies fund (much already paid out to anchor organ­isa­tions) and busi­ness funds. The Pivotal Enter­prise resi­li­ence fund applic­a­tions are tak­ing longer to pro­cess than expec­ted, but staff are try­ing to pro­cess as soon as pos­sible. There will then be an appeals process.

Rhona also gave an update on Cairngorm Moun­tain, where 26 staff are fur­loughed, 13 work­ing from home and 5 work­ing on the moun­tain. They have stored winter kit and are now doing main­ten­ance work. A re-open­ing date is depend­ant on busi­ness case, and the options apprais­al will include options for when to re-open. They are work­ing towards likely winter sea­son open­ing. If the funicu­lar is to be repaired they will want to move quickly so work­ing with con­tract­ors on plan­ning for the work if it gets the go-ahead. Mas­ter­plan­ners are work­ing with CNPA and oth­er part­ners on second stage con­sulta­tion online prob­ably in July, so the work is likely to con­clude Aug-Sept.

1. RESET Over­view of con­sumer insights and oth­er research — Heath­er The latest research reports are avail­able at: VS mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence 03/06/20 https://​www​.vis​it​bri​tain​.org/​c​o​v​i​d​-​1​9​-​c​o​n​s​u​m​e​r​-​s​e​n​t​i​m​e​n​t​-​t​r​acker

Heath­er is pulling togeth­er a draft brief to com­pare vis­it­or sur­vey ²⁰¹⁹⁄₂₀ with emer­ging data around vis­it­or sen­ti­ments in the wake of the Cov­id-19 Lock­down. There are two ele­ments to the work: 1) What are our usu­al vis­it­ors think­ing? The CBP sur­vey gives us a really good sense of that; 2) What new vis­it­or audi­ences are we more likely to see? Heath­er has reques­ted data from VisitScotland’s new track­er and Mark will liaise with 56 Degrees over data from their Scot­tish Tour­ism Index. It may also be pos­sible to include SNH sur­vey data if it is avail­able in time.

The draft vis­it­or sur­vey report has arrived and will be dis­cussed at a meet­ing next Wed­nes­day 17^th June. Draft 2019 STEAM data has also just arrived, but has not yet been signed off.

1. RESTART Vis­it­or Man­age­ment Plan­ning and Issues Last week­end was much quieter than the pre­vi­ous, due largely to the poor weath­er. This week­end looks to be bet­ter weath­er and plans for vis­it­or man­age­ment will be dis­cussed at a meet­ing on Wed­nes­day morn­ing. CNPA will be inter­view­ing tomor­row for sea­son­al rangers. There had been a small amount of feed­back on loc­al social media that access mes­sages were too neg­at­ive. Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are look­ing at coun­tryside capa­city for phase 2, and CNPA has fed back inform­a­tion about key sites and likely vis­it­or numbers.

Com­munity Engage­ment Meet­ings Com­munity meet­ings to dis­cuss the com­mu­nic­a­tions frame­work and re-open­ing plans have gone fairly well so far, and there has been an appre­ci­ation of the work done to date. The con­cerns raised are gen­er­ally the same as we’ve been address­ing. Two of the meet­ings have taken place, with anoth­er two to go.

Com­mu­nic­a­tions work After the final com­munity meet­ings, the Com­mu­nic­a­tions Frame­work will be agreed, with the hasht­ag #cairngorm­s­to­geth­er. CBP are organ­ising webinars with com­munity busi­ness and tour­ism asso­ci­ations through­out the park to dis­trib­ute it more widely. It will also be avail­able for Thursday’s eco­nom­ic steer­ing group meet­ing which will include chairs of loc­al busi­ness associations.

1. RECOV­ER The CNPA Green Recov­ery Plan is now in the pub­lic domain and will be dis­cussed by CNPA board on Friday.

2. Any Oth­er Updates There is a Badenoch Great Place Pro­ject board meet­ing this afternoon.

3. Date of next meet­ing. Monday 15^th June. It was noted that meet­ings were often tak­ing longer than an hour, and agreed that updates should focus on any new or import­ant details, with oth­er inform­a­tion cir­cu­lated in writ­ing where necessary.

RESPOND (March 2020 – May 2020) Imme­di­ate pro­vi­sion of inform­a­tion and sup­port to businesses

RESET (June 2020 – Septem­ber 2020) Sup­port, plan­ning and pre­par­a­tion for restart RESTART (June 2020 – Feb­ru­ary 2021) Sup­port and guid­ance for safe re-open­ing RECOV­ER (Septem­ber 2020 – Decem­ber 2022) Guid­ance and sup­port for oper­at­ing in a new post COV­ID-19 environment

Remit of Group: The group has been set up to provide con­sist­ent and com­pre­hens­ive ana­lys­is of the implic­a­tions of Cov­id-19 for tour­ism, to coordin­ate com­mu­nic­a­tions with the tour­ism industry, ensure close work­ing between key agen­cies and the private sec­tor, to gath­er, share, facil­it­ate, inter­pret and dis­sem­in­ate inform­a­tion and agree rel­ev­ant actions and deliv­ery plans. Mem­ber­ship: The Group con­sists of rep­res­ent­at­ives from Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship, Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire, MoraySpey­side, Vis­itScot­land, Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, The High­land Coun­cil, High­lands and Islands Enter­prise and CNPA (Chair).