Peace Parks, Mountain Communities and Tourism

I was honoured recently by a request from the Balkan Peace Park Project, a charity with which I have had some dealings in recent years, to be the key note speaker at their AGM which was held in London last weekend. My brief was, well, brief. "Talk about something relevant", I was told.

Fortunately, many years ago and in a prescient bout of literary high-mindedness, I had bought a copy of  Kadare's 'Broken April', a novel set in Albania and that has many evocative descriptions of the way of life in mountain communities in that part of the Balkans in the middle of the last century. From there it was a short stretch of my imagination to pick out some relevant passages from Roger Hutchinson's 2006 book 'Calum's Road', which tells the story of one man's endeavours to construct a road to connect his remote croft with a metalled road some miles away on the small Scottish island of Raasay.

Reading both of those books reminded me of the struggles faced by rural communities and of the ways in which individuals and groups can overcome many of these challenges where they can see a resulting benefit. And that in turn took me to Village Ways, an amazing initiative that was set up to support a handful of communities on the periphery of India's Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary in their efforts to develop responsible hiking tourism.  Funded partly by a UK philanthropist but run very much on business grounds, the company now operated in several locations across India as well as elsewhere in the world.

In each case, the principles are the same - the community dictates how much tourism can happen, where tourists can walk when around the village and what the nature of any face to face engagement should be. Teams from every participating village provide trained guides, porters, cooks and cleaners. Hikers stay in purpose-built guest houses that are basic but comfortable, and walk from village to village through stunning scenery. All stakeholders in each community receive a small financial benefit from every bed night sold in their village, with some of the receipts being distributed to individuals and families, and the rest collectively for the benefit of the village (one community we visited had spent its money on an electric fence to keep boar and deer out of their crops).

So my talk focused on the Village Ways experience as a template for what could be achieved in the mountainous areas on the borders of Albania, Kosova and Montenegro where the B3p project is working. I hope that by sharing a success story from another continent, I was able to help the Trustees, officers and members of the Balkans Peace Park Project with some guidance on how they could begin to build on the capacity building work they've been doing in recent years.

For more information on these two great initiates, see:

www.villageways.com

www.balkanpeacepark.org

What makes a great destination?

So, the main news of the week from a tourism perspective was the fact that Yorkshire, the county I have called home for the last 13 years, was honoured with the award of European Destination of the Year at the World Travel Awards in Antalya, Turkey. This is obviously great news for the region (we can't really call it a county as it is a composite of counties and unitary authorities - gone are the days of the old Ridings!) and apart from anything else is a reflection on the great work that a wide range of public sector bodies, trade organisations, tourism businesses and host communities have done in recent years.

I moved to North Yorkshire in 2000, tired of commuting between my home in the market town of Haddington in East Lothian and the business I had taken over in Malton, another market town nestling on the edge of the Howardian Hills. At the time I was reluctant to move, having enjoyed more than 10 years of life in the East of Scotland with its magnificant beaches, quiet moorlands, small historic burghs and of course cosmopolitan Edinburgh. 

I wasn't a stranger to Yorkshire, having been brought up just to the north in County Durham - day trips to places like York or the Northern Dales were always fun; visits to relatives in Leeds a compulsory part of the journey to or from my grandparents' house in the Potteries.  But when I moved south that July morning in 2000, I don't think I really appreciated quite what an amazing place I was coming to.  And the attributes that make it such a great place to live are also those that make it such a great tourist destination. 

In my job at Leeds Met University, where I have taught on the MSc in Responsible Tourism Management for more than 5 years, we spend quite a lot of time helping our students develop their thinking on this topic - how to create destinations that are attractive places for people to live in; to make sure that the host communities are able to benefit from tourism in ways that they want, and to make sure that the competitive advantage of these destinations is such that the destination is able to attract tourists who really appreciate what is on offer.

So what do I think is so special about Yorkshire?

• the sheer variety of landscapes - from the gentle curves of the Wolds, via the sheer cliffs at Flamborough and the flatness of Spurn, to the wild heather moorlands of the North Pennines
• our archaeological and built heritage - every period of our history is well represented in the portfolio of properties protected and managed for access by English Heritage, the National Trust and a whole host of volunteer and charitable groups. In particular, everyone should know our 2 World Heritage Sites - Rievaulx Abbey and Saltaire
• our wildlife - Yorkshire is at the forefront in developing wildlife tourism in England through the Yorkshire Nature Triangle project, for instance
• our arts - performing, fine, public
• the food - we have seen massive developments in local sourcing of food in recent years, particularly seafoods and game
• the opportunities for outdoor recreation - some years ago I was privileged to lead the team that prepared an adventure tourism strategy for North Yorkshire, looking for opportunities to invest in a range of activities including mountain biking, surfing, caving, rock climbing and airsports
• the people - quirky, funny, proud and welcoming
• our events - from Leeds Fest to the current Bird Migration Festival at Spurn Point, from the Leeds West African Carnival to the Bradford Mela and of course, next year's Grand Depart 2014

Without this rich variety within a destination, it is much harder to develop initiatives that can succeed in an increasingly noisy and fragmented tourism marketplace. So raw materials are essential, but they only become part of 'tourism' when they are packaged and sold. So we must credit the work of Welcome to Yorkshire and its partners (as well as its predecessors the Yorkshire Tourist Board and Yorkshire Forward) in galvanising the sector and raising our profile to the extent that it is almost a surprise when we don't win an award from an international tourism body.

So my final comments, for those of you who are reading this and who haven't every visited Yorkshire.  If you want to experience a sample of what we've got, get in touch when you're here and I promise I'll take you for a pint of beer or a cup of tea. And if you want to know how we did it, come and study tourism at Leeds Met University !