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Hidden Britain
....Leading the way in discovering and developing responsible rural tourism |
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| February 2011
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| At last, some sunshine!
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The sun is finally out in our part of Britain and it's surprising how much of a boost this gives to all of us! This issue is all about support of a much more tangible nature.
We know that in the ‘Big society’ there will be no more huge handouts and that we will all have to focus a great deal more on supporting ourselves. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any help or funding available... it simply means we might need to look harder for it and think differently about the help we want.
This month, we’ll be focusing on a few of the different kinds of help community groups have access to and showing you exactly what others have done with that help.
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Where can we get support?
Even in tough times there are still a number of resources available to community and business groups who want to develop their tourism potential. In fact, there are many organisations working incredibly hard to make their budgets go further to continue to support rural and market town economies – here are just a few examples.
ACRE (Action with Communities in Rural England) aims to help develop and sustain vibrant rural communities and shares its expertise across a number of key areas including:
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Lobbying government on behalf of communities
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Giving advice on lots of key areas eg; how to meet climate change issues, how to manage community assets like property, how to go about the Community-Led Planning process
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Supporting business and community groups who want to work together
AiRS (Action in Rural Sussex) is just one example of a Rural Comunity Action Network organisation working alongside ACRE to deliver tangible benefits locally. Their wide range of support includes:
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Supporting and promoting village shops and farmers markets
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Administering community care grants
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Hands-on support throughout the community planning process
You can find your local RCAN organisation through ACRE, or if you're in the South East head over to SERCC
National Parks brings together the UK’s various National Park Authorities and as well as providing lots of visitor information which communities can copy and leverage for their own use, it also offers the following among its services:
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Loads of research and statistics on tourism, visitors to and residents of the UK National Parks
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Administering Sustainable Development Fund grants
This list certainly isn’t exhaustive and we aren’t recommending any single organisation over another, these are just some of the helpful examples we’ve come across recently. And of course, there’s Hidden Britain!
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.
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Help to help ourselves
“Giving a man a fish feeds him for the day but helping him make his own net and teaching him how to use it feeds his family sustainably.”
This is the philosophy behind sustainable support and more and more of the help available is going this way.
Providing sustainable support has long-been at the heart of Hidden Britain’s services and we try to help the communities and businesses we work with to be as self-sufficient as possible. For example, we’ve identified several areas where groups could manage and deliver activities themselves, rather than have to pay others to do it for them.
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Creating and implementing a destination marketing plan is fundamental to successfully attracting visitors. Working alongside Action for Market Towns, we’ve created a workshop programme which incorporates the basics of how to put these plans together and what techniques and tactics are most likely to generate success. The next Kent session on 30th March is likely to be oversubscribed so if you’re interested, please take a look.
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Using social media represents a huge opportunity to attract visitors and leverage their experiences to market to other, potential visitors. But it can seem a bit of a minefield so we’ve developed a tailored programme of social media training sessions to help our communities learn the basics, plan how to use the tools and then get on and make them a successful part of their marketing activity.
In fact, if you’re in Kent on the 24th March, you’re welcome to come along to the next session!
Over the coming months we will also be launching a number of online training services to make it as easy and cost effective as possible for us to help communities to help themselves to be genuinely sustainable.
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.
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Using a helping hand in Dorchester-on-Thames
Hidden Britain’s key objective is to support local stakeholders to actively own and lead on tourism development. But successful projects often rely on support from more than one source.
The community group in Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, saw the need to improve their local economy and manage tourism more effectively in the village. Their first step was to complete a Parish Plan in 2004 to ascertain how existing visitors behaved. The group prepared a visitor survey that was administered and analysed by the research unit at Tourism South East. The survey was also part funded by TSE as it was a chance to pilot a tool normally used in much larger towns.
The survey showed what local residents and business had suspected; that the majority of visitors were day trippers involved in walking or general sightseeing. They arrived by car, stayed for only a short period and spent on average only £3.50 per person.
This high-volume but low-spend audience was visiting the Abbey (free), wandering around the village (free) and enjoying the Thames path and countryside (free). Consequently, the impacts were certainly outweighing the benefits!
The results gave the group their key aim of delivering better visitor management and informed their action plans accordingly.
They looked at signage to ease parking issues and highlight local businesses, provided circular walking routes to increase the length of stay and worked hard to turn the historical buildings into an asset to gain more benefit from visitors. This included introducing touchscreen Visitor Information Points with Hidden Britain’s help.
The group has continued to develop their community plans, in particular the Dorchester Festival and their forthcoming Midsommer Murders guide, interpreting the area and its filming locations for visitors. Both are well worth a look.
Find out more at www.dorchesteronthames.co.uk or view our Dorchester case study.
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HB Hints & Tips
How to give your group the best chance of being able to help yourselves:
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Start out by working with teams like Hidden Britain who can save you lots of time by identifying the priorities you can focus on which will have the most positive impacts and by pointing out other sources of help available.
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Join forces with organisations across your community – compete with the outside world and not each other. Share expertise and experience to attract more visitors for everyone.
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Give someone in your group the specific role of finding available sources of support and reporting back to the group regularly.
There are plenty more great hints, tips and advice on developing all aspects of a tourism project or idea at the Hidden Britain website. Click here to find out more
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