Paper 5 Sustainable tourism action plan

Form­al Board Paper 5 28 March 2025 Page 1 of 5

For inform­a­tion

Title: Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan Update Pre­pared by: Heath­er Trench, Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Officer Gav­in Miles, 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: α) Note pro­gress in deliv­ery of the Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan 2022 — 27.

Stra­tegic context

1. In 2022 the Board approved the five-year Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Action Plan (STAP). The actions with­in the STAP set out the con­tri­bu­tion of the wider tour­ism industry to the deliv­ery of rel­ev­ant Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 4 (NPPP4) object­ives, as well con­trib­ut­ing to Scot­land Out­look 2030, the nation­al tour­ism strategy. Over­sight of the STAP lies with the Cairngorms Tour­ism Part­ner­ship, cur­rently chaired by Park Author­ity Board mem­ber, Jack­ie Brier­ton. Deliv­ery of the actions with­in the plan are car­ried out by a range of part­ners, who have all con­trib­uted to the com­pil­a­tion of this 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 five- 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. The Charter was offi­cially re-awar­ded in Novem­ber 2023 after an on-site veri­fic­a­tion vis­it. The Charter, and all the con­nec­tions we make though the Euro­parc Net­work, sig­ni­fic­antly con­trib­utes to the repu­ta­tion of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park in Europe.

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Stra­tegic policy considerations

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 recent devel­op­ments in Nation­al Tour­ism Policy that are worthy of note: α) Tour­ism Legis­la­tion and busi­ness oper­at­ing envir­on­ment — Recent years have seen sev­er­al pieces of legis­la­tion affect­ing the accom­mod­a­tion sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar. Since 2022 loc­al author­it­ies have been required to imple­ment short term let (STL) licens­ing schemes, and Scotland’s second STL con­trol zone came into oper­a­tion in 2024 in Badenoch and Strath­spey. 2024 also saw the intro­duc­tion of the Vis­it­or Levy (Scot­land) Act which allows loc­al author­it­ies to imple­ment a per­cent­age charge for overnight accom­mod­a­tion. Research sug­gests that this legis­la­tion, along­side an upcom­ing increase to employer’s Nation­al Insur­ance Con­tri­bu­tions, are impact­ing levels of busi­ness con­fid­ence. b) Vis­itScot­land — The focus of VisitScotland’s work has con­tin­ued to shift to a ​‘digit­al first’ approach, ceas­ing to oper­ate their Qual­ity Assur­ance schemes, and clos­ing the last remain­ing i‑centres in 2025. With­in the Nation­al Park, the Aviemore i‑centre will close on 30 Septem­ber and Bal­later on 03 Octo­ber. The Park Author­ity will con­tin­ue to sup­port the exist­ing net­work of Loc­al Inform­a­tion Centres, and we are work­ing with Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil and oth­er part­ners on future plans for Bal­later Roy­al Sta­tion and Sta­tion Square. VisitScotland’s work will focus on get­ting inform­a­tion to vis­it­ors at the earli­er hol­i­day plan­ning stage to influ­ence decision-mak­ing. c) Tour­ism Fund­ing — The Rur­al Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture Fund was set up in 2018 and is admin­istered by Vis­itScot­land. After a hiatus in ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅, the fund is now open again in ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆. Des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment fund­ing from High­lands and Islands Enter­prise to sup­port Des­tin­a­tion Man­age­ment Organ­isa­tions came to an end in 2024 and this has affected staff capa­city for pro­ject delivery.

Key Areas of Activity

1. A sum­mary of pro­gress across the full range of actions is included in Annex 1, but there are a few key areas of activ­ity to note against each of the key out­comes. α) Nature — The Cairngorms Busi­ness Part­ner­ship (CBP) con­tin­ue to pro­mote the ​‘Love Nature, Love Cairngorms Nation­al Park’ cam­paign to encour­age busi­nesses to share enga­ging mes­sages about respons­ible beha­viour. There

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has been par­tic­u­lar interest in, and engage­ment with a series of videos by comedi­an Ed Byrne. CBP have also expan­ded their cyc­ling map­ping pro­ject, which pro­motes sug­ges­ted routes that min­im­ise dis­turb­ance. b) People — Tour­ism busi­nesses were among the loc­al employ­ers that atten­ded the suc­cess­ful ​‘Your Future Here’ event to pro­mote loc­al career oppor­tun­it­ies to a range of poten­tial work­ers includ­ing young people from loc­al schools. The recent res­id­ent sur­vey will also give us valu­able inform­a­tion about the exper­i­ence of the loc­al work­force in tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity, as well as oth­er sec­tors. c) Place — The Where Winter Comes to Life cam­paign is now in its third year, build­ing on mar­ket­ing research car­ried out in 2020 with the aim of boost­ing vis­it­or num­bers in the tra­di­tion­ally quieter months of the year. The main focus this year was a PR cam­paign to raise aware­ness of the Cairngorms as a winter des­tin­a­tion and pro­mote busi­ness own­er­ship of, and involve­ment in, the cam­paign. Now in the later stages of the cam­paign, the focus has switched to digit­al pro­mo­tion, and prize draws to cap­ture data. There has been sig­ni­fic­ant interest from busi­nesses in involve­ment in future campaigns.

Research and Monitoring

1. We com­mis­sion a range of research to allow us to track key trends in the vis­it­or eco­nomy and mon­it­or pro­gress against key indic­at­ors in NPPP4.

2. Nation­al Con­text — As well as com­mis­sion­ing our own loc­al data, we mon­it­or nation­al data to under­stand the wider con­text of domest­ic and inter­na­tion­al tour­ism. The latest wave of the quarterly Scot­tish Tour­ism Index high­lights a slight dip in domest­ic hol­i­days in 2024 as more Scots star­ted to travel over­seas again after sev­er­al years that saw an increase in domest­ic hol­i­days in the wake of the Cov­id pan­dem­ic. There are early signs that 2025 may see an increase in domest­ic vis­its, but this is tempered by eco­nom­ic uncer­tainty and cost-of-liv­ing pres­sures. For inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors, Vis­it­Bri­tain is estim­at­ing that 2024 was the strongest year on record for inbound tour­ism, with Scot­land recov­er­ing par­tic­u­larly well com­pared with 2019 figures.

3. Vis­it­or Volume and Value — We com­mis­sion annu­al data from the Scot­tish Tour­ism Eco­nom­ic Activ­ity Mon­it­or (STEAM) mod­el which gives us an estim­ate of monthly vis­it­or num­bers and the value of the loc­al vis­it­or eco­nomy. The most recent data

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8. 9. we have is for 2023 which showed vis­it­or num­bers of 2.15 mil­lion, the first time since 2019 that vis­it­or num­bers have exceeded 2 mil­lion. When com­pared with 2022 data, growth is not­ably strongest in the quieter off-peak months. The eco­nom­ic value of tour­ism was estim­ated at £419 million.

Vis­it­or and Res­id­ent Sur­veys — The fifth Cairngorms Vis­it­or Sur­vey has been run­ning since May 2024, with final inter­views due to take place in April 2025. The data will then be ana­lysed, with report­ing expec­ted in sum­mer 2025. The research includes data on vis­it­or motiv­a­tions, demo­graph­ics, activ­it­ies and sat­is­fac­tion, cap­tured largely by face-to-face inter­views at 35 key sites across the Nation­al Park, but sup­ple­men­ted for the first time by an online sur­vey. Along­side the vis­it­or research, for the first time we com­mis­sioned an online sur­vey of people who live and/​or work with­in the Nation­al Park. Ana­lys­is of those res­ults is tak­ing place now.

Busi­ness Sen­ti­ment — The Park Author­ity con­tin­ues to sup­port the Cairngorms Busi­ness Baro­met­er run by the CBP. The sur­vey now runs twice a year rather than quarterly and the last avail­able data cov­ers the peri­od from May – Octo­ber 2024. While many have repor­ted an increase in turnover dur­ing 2024 and are optim­ist­ic for fur­ther growth into 2025, a sig­ni­fic­ant minor­ity (over one in four) repor­ted decreases in turnover and have a neg­at­ive out­look for the next 12 months. While con­cerns over rising costs have eased to some extent since Autumn 2023, they con­tin­ue to be a sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenge, as do con­cerns over rising bur­eau­cracy and wider tour­ism trends.

1. High­lands and Islands Enter­prise have also recently pub­lished res­ults from their annu­al busi­ness pan­el sur­vey. Con­fid­ence in the eco­nomy dropped in this sur­vey, to its low­est repor­ted level since Octo­ber / Novem­ber 2022. Over the past six months, most busi­nesses had either per­formed well or had been fairly steady, but more than a quarter had struggled.

Next Steps

1. The next annu­al update on STAP deliv­ery will take place in March 2026 and will include a wider mid-term review of the plan, which may include amend­ments to actions where appro­pri­ate in light of the chan­ging tour­ism landscape.

Form­al Board Paper 5 28 March 2025 Page 5 of 5

Gav­in Miles 13 March 2025 gavinmiles@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Heath­er Trench 13 March 2025 heathertrench@​cairngorms.​co.​uk