Notes of Cairngorms Tourism Emergency Response Group Meeting

Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group Meet­ing Note 11^th May 2020

1.Welcome and intro­duc­tions Present: Geva, Mur­ray, Janet, Pete, Mark, Colin, Alistair, Chris F, Laurie, Chris T, Grant (from 12:00) Apols: Rhona

There was a gen­er­al dis­cus­sion on recent gov­ern­ment mes­sages, and in par­tic­u­lar poten­tial con­fu­sion between Scot­land & UK gov­ern­ment advice. Nation­al Parks in Eng­land will effect­ively now be open this week as travel for exer­cise is per­mit­ted in Eng­land. It was agreed that con­sist­ent clear mes­sages needed to come from Scot­tish gov­ern­ment and cas­cade through gov­ern­ment agen­cies and DMOs to make it clear that exer­cise should still take place close to home and without unne­ces­sary travel.

Grant joined towards the end of the meet­ing, hav­ing been in the first STERG coun­tryside sub-group meet­ing with Scot­tish gov­ern­ment, Vis­itScot­land, SNH and NPAs where these issues had been dis­cussed. An agreed clear mes­sage about access to the coun­tryside will be agreed with min­is­ters today. Future meet­ings will look at the ques­tions that need to be answered before restric­tions on access to the coun­tryside can be relaxed, and how this might hap­pen, for example a phased approach to the dis­tance that it is accept­able to travel. There are also plans for wider meet­ing includ­ing groups such as Scot­tish Land and Estates, SportScot­land and Envir­on­ment LINK.

2.RESPOND Busi­ness Sup­port update

High­land Coun­cil have, in the last week, launched the mul­tiple prop­erty scheme, but there has been no great surge in applic­a­tions. There are 3 – 400 applic­a­tions to pro­cess this week, which should be pro­cessed with­in 10 work­ing days. They are mostly straight­for­ward, but need govt cla­ri­fic­a­tion on some issues, not­ably around the require­ment for self-cater­ing prop­er­ties to gen­er­ate 30% income. Of a total of 4200 grant applic­a­tions, 90% have been paid already. Half of the out­stand­ing applic­a­tions are wait­ing on more inform­a­tion, some are ineligible and there are a tiny minor­ity where there has been an error on the part of the council.

Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil. The newly self-employed grant scheme has had few­er applic­a­tions than anti­cip­ated, and there have been quite a few incom­plete applic­a­tions that need more inform­a­tion. Alistair flagged up that there has been a total of £621 mil­lion paid across coun­try on the £10/​25k retail and hos­pit­al­ity grants.

Laurie updated that Moray Coun­cil had paid out £12.38 mil­lion through ||17 approved grants.

HIE. Rhona sent apo­lo­gies, but gave an email update (included below at end of meet­ing note).

Key issues from DMOs / Vis­itScot­land All DMOs are find­ing an issue with the require­ment for busi­nesses such as B&Bs to have a busi­ness bank account to be eli­gible for sup­port. Although they should have a busi­ness account, in prac­tise, many don’t, and the gov­ern­ment have shown no flex­ib­il­ity on this to date. DMOs will con­tin­ue to lobby on this with FSB.

CBP had a call for mem­bers with Kate For­bes / Fer­gus Ewing last week. The call was not recor­ded so here is no form­al record, but mem­bers indic­ated they found it use­ful. Busi­ness sur­vey find­ings were high­lighted in the brief­ing note to ministers.

CBP have the res­ults of the Busi­ness baro­met­er QI which closed ²³⁄₄ with around 100 responses. As expec­ted short/​medium term con­fid­ence is at its low­est level ever, but long term con­fid­ence (look­ing 2 years ahead) was sur­pris­ingly close to long term average.

Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire are ana­lys­ing the res­ults of their busi­ness sur­vey. Busi­ness work­shops on Thursday will guide their work ahead for the year. They echoed the need for con­sist­ency on stay home mes­sages, with a dif­fer­ent loc­al mes­sage about tak­ing exer­cise loc­ally vs a wider mes­sage about not trav­el­ling to oth­er destinations.

VisitScotland’s DMO sup­port fund went live on Thursday last week in recog­ni­tion of the fact that DMOs are per­form­ing a crit­ic­al role at the moment, but are also small vul­ner­able organ­isa­tions that need sup­port. The scheme has a simple light touch applic­a­tion pro­cess and quick turn­around. Chris Taylor is happy to speak to DMOs in advance of applic­a­tion, but stressed that there is no need to gath­er huge amounts of sup­port­ing information.

Chris T also gave an update on the STERG work on devel­op­ing guid­ance for busi­nesses on safe re- open­ing. A VS webin­ar series with lead­er­ship team will start tomor­row with a ses­sion on recov­ery plan­ning with Rid­dell Gra­ham which will be fol­lowed by a mar­ket­ing update with Vicki Miller in 2 weeks.

3.RESET:

• Over­view of con­sumer insights and oth­er research. The latest VS mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence ⁰⁶⁄₀₅ report is now available.

Heath­er ran through some key stats from STEAM 2018 and vis­it­or sur­vey 2019 to give an indic­a­tion of what a nor­mal sum­mer hol­i­day sea­son (July / Aug) looks like:

Total num­ber of vis­it­ors in July & August: 574,000 Aver­age daily vis­it­or num­ber: 18 500 (75% in Badenoch & Strath­spey) Aver­age daily eco­nom­ic impact: £1.27million Total FTE employ­ment sup­por­ted: 7,700 jobs Day trip vis­it­ors: 19% / Overnight: 81% Domest­ic: 68%. Of domest­ic vis­it­ors: Scot­land: 66%; Eng­land: 32%; NI: 1%; Wales: 1% Of Scot­tish Vis­it­ors: 50% near vis­it­ors (Highlands/​Aberdeenshire/​Perthshire) 95% of domest­ic vis­it­ors were happy to give their post­code details, which we now have.

Cur­rent com­mu­nic­a­tion pri­or­it­ies Most mes­saging remains the same, with the excep­tion of the increased oppor­tun­it­ies for loc­al exer­cise, and this should be rein­forced in light of recent changes. Fran­coise van Buuren will be attend­ing CTERG next week for fuller dis­cus­sion on communications.

4.RESTART Scen­ario Plan­ning for Vis­it­or Man­age­ment. A draft paper was cir­cu­lated in advance of the meet­ing, plan­ning for the worst case scen­ario of hav­ing to man­age recre­ation pres­sures in the coun­tryside as lock­down is eased. This was dis­cussed with CNPA board on Fri­day, with sup­port for CNPA quickly employ­ing sea­son­al rangers to help where neces­sary. A fol­low-up meet­ing with key land man­agers and CBP will take place on Fri­day. Pete to share ranger recruit­ment details with CBP to pro­mote posts as they will need exper­i­ence and loc­al know­ledge. All to email any oth­er com­ments to Pete or Murray.

It was agreed that we should include weekly updates at the meet­ing on how likely we think we are to have a sud­den explo­sion of vis­it­ors. Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire are run­ning a webin­ar with a con­sumer insights spe­cial­ist on Thursday, which will look at con­sumer beha­viour trig­gers. All are wel­come to attend, con­tact Chris F for details. CBP are see­ing pent up demand for vis­it­ing the area show­ing on

social media, from repeat and near vis­it­ors, and will be run­ning a vis­it­or sur­vey in the next couple of weeks to get an idea of cus­tom­er demand. They are work­ing with MoraySpey­side, Vis­it Inverness Loch Ness and Out­door Cap­it­al UK on the ques­tion­naire to allow com­par­is­on between destinations.

CBP ran work­shops over 2 ses­sions look­ing at the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ing with open­ing in a way that gives com­munit­ies, staff and vis­it­ors con­fid­ence. Fol­low-up ses­sions are planned to take for­ward some of the work­shop out­comes. Heath­er and Mark to agree CNPA input to the groups.

1. RECOV­ER Cairngorms Nation­al Park Recov­ery Plan was pre­vi­ously cir­cu­lated as a draft paper. It should be signed off at June board meet­ing, but will remain a work in pro­gress. Grant will be draft­ing a new ver­sion later this week and asked for any com­ments ASAP.

2. Any Oth­er Updates None

3. Date of next meet­ing. Monday 18^th May, focus on communications.

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).

HIE email update:

Pivotal Enter­prise Resi­li­ence Fund Addi­tion­al alloc­a­tion of money to this fund is encour­aging for those busi­nesses who have sub­mit­ted applic­a­tions. A very high num­ber of applic­a­tions into the fund and HIE work­ing night and day and through­out the week­end to assess.

VS new DMO fund – Chris T likely to update.

HIE con­tin­ues to feed into STERG – agenda and minutes of that are avail­able on VS site. Most recent agenda covered:

1. Scen­ario plan­ning — led by Scot­tish Gov
2. Industry sur­vey – VS pro­pos­ing anoth­er industry sur­vey maybe in June
3. Action Plan for STERG – con­tin­ued devel­op­ment-phase 1&2 online VS​.org already

4. Des­tin­a­tion sup­port – VS new fund

5. Pre­par­ing for open­ing — STA lead­ing work with UK Hos­pit­al­ity and oth­ers re con­sist­ent approach to reopen­ing (social dis­tan­cing rules, modi­fic­a­tions, clean­li­ness stand­ards, self- cer­ti­fic­a­tion etc)

6. Fund­ing pack­ages update – PERF, Hard­ship, Self Employed etc
7. Com­munity con­cerns around expos­ure to COV­ID-19 from visitors

Cairngorm Moun­tain update COV­ID-19 As you will know, the COV­ID-19 lock­down has tem­por­ar­ily closed Cairngorm Moun­tain (Scot­land) Ltd and most staff are cur­rently fur­loughed. The eco­nom­ic impact of the pan­dem­ic is being felt across all of Scotland’s busi­ness sec­tors and com­munit­ies and is cur­rently the prime focus for High­lands and Islands Enter­prise. HIE remains open for busi­ness through­out the region, with staff able to work from home. Inform­a­tion on gov­ern­ment sup­port for busi­nesses and com­munit­ies affected by COV­ID-19 is avail­able at www.findbusinesssupport.gov.scot

Busi­ness case / options apprais­al HIE staff are con­tinu­ing to do as much as pos­sible to pro­gress an options apprais­al and busi­ness case for future invest­ment at Cairngorm, though the times­cale for com­plet­ing this work has been affected by COVID-19.

Funicu­lar strength­en­ing plans HIE’s applic­a­tion to carry out an extens­ive pro­gramme of strength­en­ing works to address struc­tur­al fail­ures in the Cairngorm funicu­lar infra­struc­ture is due to be con­sidered at a vir­tu­al meet­ing of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity on 22 May. Plan­ning doc­u­ments and com­ments from stat­utory con­sul­tees and the wider pub­lic can be viewed on the CNPA website

It had been HIE’s inten­tion to carry out the strength­en­ing works dur­ing 2020, sub­ject to plan­ning and oth­er stat­utory con­sents being gran­ted, a full options apprais­al and approv­al of a detailed busi­ness case, as pre­vi­ously repor­ted. How­ever, uncer­tainty caused by the COV­ID-19 out­break means that this times­cale is cur­rently being reviewed. Mas­ter­plan­ning The spe­cial­ists com­mis­sioned by HIE to carry out a wide-ran­ging mas­ter­plan­ning exer­cise for Cairngorm expect to share find­ings from their ini­tial engage­ment ses­sions and online sur­vey shortly. Vir­tu­al meet­ings are being planned with key stake­hold­ers this month, with wider pub­lic engage­ment due to fol­low in June. More than 1,600 indi­vidu­als and busi­nesses sub­mit­ted responses to the sur­vey in Feb­ru­ary and March. Audit Scot­land Audit Scot­land is pro­gress­ing the detailed Sec­tion 23 review of Cairngorm Moun­tain, cov­er­ing the peri­od from 2014, when HIE pro­cured a new oper­at­or, to 2020. The aud­it­ors have con­duc­ted extens­ive research, includ­ing inter­views with many stake­hold­ers. HIE is con­tinu­ing to engage with the audit team and has provided full access to all the inform­a­tion we hold cov­er­ing the peri­od in question.

Vis­itScot­land Email Update (from Jo Robinson)

Updates from VS this past week:

• Vicki’s most recent mar­ket intel­li­gence report attached. • We announced a Vis­itScot­land led fund­ing pack­age for des­tin­a­tion and sec­tor organ­isa­tions. This is being fun­ded out of VisitScotland’s core budget and the object­ive is to mit­ig­ate some of the losses of mem­ber­ship income that many tour­ism organ­isa­tions will exper­i­ence over the com­ing months. We have had a good geo­graph­ic spread of applic­a­tions so far, with over 100 down­loads of the guidelines and 45 of the applic­a­tion form.

• A pro­gramme of live webinars with Vis­itScot­land Dir­ect­ors begins tomor­row, with a line-up of Rid­dell Gra­ham (my dir­ect­or in Industry & Des­tin­a­tion Devel­op­ment), fol­lowed by Vicki Miller (Mar­ket­ing & Digit­al), Paul Bush (Events) and Chris Green­wood (Insights). • We’ve seen many more vir­tu­al events and train­ing around the coun­try tak­ing place for busi­nesses; col­lated here, includ­ing a Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire webin­ar on Where next for tour­ism in North East Scot­land? • Digit­al Tour­ism Scot­land: the con­tent cur­rently avail­able on digit​al​tour​ismscot​land​.com has been moved to Vis​itScot​land​.org/​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​i​n​g​-​y​o​u​r​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​/​d​i​g​i​t​a​l​-​s​kills. Any­one vis­it­ing the old site will be redir­ec­ted to this new page. This move will help to ensure that digit­al advice con­tent is avail­able to sup­port industry at each stage of the COV­ID-19 crisis and to sup­port with recov­ery when the time is right. As appro­pri­ate we’ll be link­ing it to our ded­ic­ated COV­ID-19 advice, which will see more digit­al con­tent and webinars added in the com­ing month. • A sub-group of STERG is look­ing at advice for busi­nesses and organ­isa­tions relat­ing to clean­li­ness, safety and social dis­tan­cing. They met for the first time last week. You have may have heard/​seen an announce­ment by Vis­it­Bri­tain last week regard­ing their kite­m­ark pro­pos­al for busi­nesses. The kite­m­ark option is not favoured by some tour­ism part­ners, so we will con­tin­ue to con­sult across the tour­ism sec­tor through the STERG sub-group, to devel­op an agreed approach. • Help­ful fund­ing flow­chart shared by our Engage­ment team attached. • Some fur­ther sources of tour­ism insight/​innovation that have been shared with me this past week: Ο Tour­ism after COV­ID-19 Ο Webin­ar about des­tin­a­tions hand­ling the future tour­ism uncer­tainty Ο 7 top tips for des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing and invest­ment pro­mo­tion dur­ing the cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic Ο Travel-in-the-time-of-coronavir­us • Steps out of lock­down – what’s next for safety in the out­door Ο BMC launches Cov­id 19 recov­ery plan for climb­ing and hill­walk­ing Ο Vir­tu­al tour­ist in the Faroe Islands. Explore the Faroe Islands as a Vir­tu­al Vis­it­ors by inter­act­ing — LIVE — with loc­al Faroese, who will act as your eyes, ears and body on a vir­tu­al explor­at­ory tour of the des­tin­a­tion. www​.remote​-tour​ism​.com