Notes of Cairngorms Tourism Emergency Response Group Meeting

Cairngorms Tour­ism Emer­gency Response Group Meet­ing Note 18/05/2020

Present: Janet Hunter, Heath­er Trench, Grant Moir, Mur­ray Fer­guson, Pete Crane, Mark Tate, Chris Taylor, Colin Simpson, Chris Foy, Rhona Fraser, Laura Delaney, Geva Blackett

Apols — Laurie Piper, Alistair Reid, Belinda Miller

1.Welcome and intro­duc­tions Janet wel­comed Laura Delaney and Fran­coise van Buuren to their first meeting.

2.RESPOND: Busi­ness Sup­port update High­land Coun­cil have now giv­en out over £50 mil­lion in fund­ing. HIE have re-opened the paused Pivotal Enter­prise Resi­li­ence Fund but it will close tonight at 5pm for good along with Cre­at­ive, Tour­ism & Hos­pit­al­ity Hard­ship Fund. Some busi­nesses have been told that they’ve not been suc­cess­ful in apply­ing for PERF and should instead apply for the CTH­HF, but that doesn’t mean oth­ers have been suc­cess­ful, as applic­a­tions are still being assessed. Loc­al Author­it­ies are liais­ing with HIE over fund­ing to check that double sup­port isn’t giv­en. DMOs flagged an issue whereby PERF fund­ing of £25k was declined as a £10k grant had already been issued by loc­al author­it­ies. Dis­cus­sions are ongo­ing to try to resolve this issue, per­haps by author­ising pay­ment of the addi­tion­al £15k where appropriate.

DMO update (not covered else­where on agenda) Vis­it Aber­deen­shire have run sec­tor­al work­shops on key issues which par­tic­u­larly flagged up the need for clear con­sist­ent advice esp around hygiene, and reas­sur­ance to vis­it­ors. They have also run a webin­ar on cus­tom­er motiv­a­tions look­ing at the 3 ​‘M’s – money, motiv­a­tion and means to travel. Chris will cir­cu­late the slide deck from the event later this week.

Vis­itScot­land Over­view Con­ver­sa­tions are ongo­ing about re-open­ing and hygiene advice for busi­nesses and STERG are look­ing at oth­er exist­ing advice such as provided by UK Hos­pit­al­ity. Vis­itScot­land advice should be avail­able soon. Rid­dell Graham’s webin­ar last week was filmed and is avail­able on vis​itscot​land​.org. There is also dis­cus­sion about the need for anoth­er sur­vey about busi­ness impacts but that is unlikely at this stage as there have been many sur­veys already. Instead, oth­er loc­al­ised sur­veys are being passed to, and ana­lysed by VisitScotland’s Insights team

3.RESET: Vis­it­or man­age­ment plan­ning & land man­ager dis­cus­sions Last Fri­day saw a meet­ing with key land man­agers and pub­lic sec­tor part­ners, and good feed­back was received on CNPA’s Scen­ario plan­ning doc­u­ment. Fol­low up work is now hap­pen­ing, and meet­ings should be tak­ing place this week to dis­cuss prac­tic­al­it­ies of traffic, vis­it­or man­age­ment and facil­it­ies in two par­tic­u­lar geo­graph­ic areas Deeside & Glen­more. Sea­son­al ranger recruit­ment is going ahead and will be advert­ised tomor­row. A STERG coun­tryside group Q&A has gone out to key part­ners and a fol­low up meet­ing will take place this after­noon with a range of envir­on­ment­al NGOs. Ideally there would be a sig­ni­fic­ant lead-in time to plan issues such as facil­it­ies, hygiene, fur­loughed staff etc., but this is not likely and may be a max­im­um of 7 – 10 days. There is no clear mes­sage from gov­ern­ment yet around travel restric­tions and when they may be lifted.

It was agreed that mes­sages need to be simple, clear con­cise and pos­it­ive, and con­sist­ent at a nation­al and loc­al level. Nation­als Parks in Eng­land have already had to put out mes­saging, ask­ing poten­tial vis­it­ors to give com­munit­ies time to pre­pare for visits.

Over­view of con­sumer insights and oth­er research Heath­er flagged up recent research, in par­tic­u­lar the new Scot­tish Tour­ism Index while will gath­er data in the first week of every month going for­ward. It echoes pre­vi­ous research about the return of close domest­ic vis­it­ors for day trips ini­tially. Vis­it­Ab­er­deen­shire are plan­ning a webin­ar with the sur­vey con­sult­ants. [VS mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence 13/05](VS mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence ¹³⁄₀₅) [Scot­tish Tour­ism Index](Scottish Tour­ism Index)

4.RESTART Com­mu­nic­a­tions dis­cus­sion Fran­coise gave an update on CNPA com­mu­nic­a­tions which have been rein­for­cing the ini­tial gov­ern­ment ​‘Stay at Home’ mes­sage, and offer­ing ways to exper­i­ence the Cairngorms from home eg. through the Cairngorms Nature 10 days at home.

Now look­ing at the ​‘reset’ phase, the focus needs to be on how to access the out­doors safely. Nation­al Parks UK have a simple 4 point message:

• Know and fol­low the latest gov­ern­ment advice
• Plan ahead — check the latest loc­al information
• If it feels too crowded, it is too crowded.
• Be kind out there

But each park has its own issues and needs its own mes­sages that echo the above in a way that addresses loc­al issues. CNPA is also try­ing to work with SNH, forestry, and LLT­NPA to ensure that mes­saging is not fix­ated on Nation­al Parks and includes oth­er parks and coun­tryside areas.

In dis­cus­sion it was agreed that:

• Changes in restric­tions could hap­pen very sud­denly and we need to be ready with con­sist­ent mes­sages. Already there is anec­dot­al evid­ence of people trav­el­ling more loc­ally, and 190 people were dis­persed by police in LLT­NP this weekend.
• We can­not focus only on the out­doors but need to link busi­nesses to mes­sages about a safe vis­it­or exper­i­ence in the widest sense.
• There are lots of good examples of clear visu­al com­mu­nic­a­tion of the issues, we shouldn’t re- invent the wheel.
• We need very prac­tic­al inform­a­tion about eg. toi­let facil­it­ies and in what order they are likely to re-open, capa­city of car park­ing at vis­it­or hot­spots etc. Re-open­ing of pub­lic toi­lets will be chal­len­ging in some cases, and there could be a role for loc­al author­it­ies to work with busi­nesses and landown­ers to identi­fy oth­er appro­pri­ate toi­let facilities.
• The pri­or­ity for any com­mu­nic­a­tions is com­munit­ies, staff, and then vis­it­ors. It is likely that ini­tial vis­it­ors will be very loc­al, prob­ably won’t see them­selves as vis­it­ors and are unlikely to check vis­it­or chan­nels of com­mu­nic­a­tion. A small paid social media cam­paign, in con­junc­tion with loc­al media stor­ies is prob­ably the best way to get mes­sages across. This can be tar­geted depend­ing on the geo­graph­ic­al eas­ing of lock­down, but as it’s a com­munity / reg­u­lar vis­it­or audi­ence, the tone must be right.
• There is also an oppor­tun­ity to tar­get spe­cif­ic mes­sages to com­munit­ies of interest through rel­ev­ant web­sites and groups, as reg­u­lar activ­ity par­ti­cipants are likely to be keen­est to return. How­ever, we may also find that the cur­rent cir­cum­stances open up the coun­tryside to new audi­ences who may require more safety inform­a­tion. It is reas­on­able to expect most vis­it­ors to have a more cau­tious atti­tude to risk.
• Fran­coise would work with the DMOs to get draft press releases and social media mes­saging agreed in advance of a likely announce­ment of some changes by the gov­ern­ment on Thursday, and likely changes at the next lock­down review on ²⁸⁄₀₅. These will be cir­cu­lated and dis­cussed at next week’s meeting.

Update on CBP work­ing groups

Work­ing groups are up and run­ning, includ­ing: ‑Sec­tor groups to con­sider 1) nation­al guid­ance for sec­tor, 2) gaps in nation­al guid­ance, if any­thing 3) busi­ness co-oper­a­tion to provide good vis­it­or exper­i­ence. -‘Code of con­duct’ group which will cir­cu­late a draft doc­u­ment for dis­cus­sion his week. ‑Vis­it­or ques­tion­naire group to dis­cuss the ques­tions form­ing the vis­it­or research planned for the next couple of weeks.

5.RECOVER No busi­ness was discussed.

1. Any Oth­er Updates CNPA have been approached by research­ers from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity on a poten­tial pro­ject look­ing at mod­els for Cov­id eco­nom­ic recov­ery in Nation­al Parks includ­ing 1) mod­els for respons­ible social dis­tan­cing 2) capa­city of coun­tryside areas 3) work with stake­hold­ers on man­age­ment tools. CNPA has agreed to be a part­ner but there is no fin­an­cial com­mit­ment and lim­ited time com­mit­ment. Also included are Loch Lomond, Snow­do­nia, New Forest and the Broads. Mur­ray will cir­cu­late pro­pos­al and a meet­ing is sched­uled for Wed­nes­day. If fund­ing is alloc­ated next week, it will be an 18 month program.

Rhona has cir­cu­lated the first Tune into Tour­ism pod­cast, fea­tur­ing Simon Calder.

7.Date of next meet­ing. Monday 25^th May

RESPOND (March 2020 – May 2020) Imme­di­ate pro­vi­sion of inform­a­tion and sup­port to busi­ness es 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).