Boosterism - is it always desirable?

Last week Visit York - the body responsible for promoting tourism in York - announced plans  to more than double the value of the industry to £1 billion in the coming decade or so. There is much talk of hitting high-spending market segments such as the growing Chinese market, the usually dependable US market and also business travellers.

On the face of it, there is nothing wrong in being ambitious but I am particularly concerned at what some of the negative impacts of such growth might bring. Latest figures I have seen suggest that annual hotel occupancy in York is around 80% which is certainly higher than the UK national average.  Thus there is already limited capacity to accommodate a significant growth in overnight tourists as there is nowhere for them to stay for much of the time.  Is our product really so attractive that we can attract significant numbers of international visitors in the damp rainy days of February or on cold November evenings, which is when there is some bedspace capacity.  And if we are going to build additional hotels to accommodate more overnight visitors in the peak summer months, where will these be? There is nowhere within the historic core available to build a sizeable new hotel.  Plans are in place for a hotel as part of the multi-use development at the old Terry’s factory off the Bishopthorpe Road but any additional hotel developments are likely to eat into the green belt.  So is it possible that future tourism growth may bring with it further development pressures that, if accommodated, may diminish some of the appeal of this wonderful historic city (which as the photo below shows, I've been visiting for more than 50 years!).

Visit York are of course being canny, in that included in the target revenue figure of £1 billion are the hundreds of millions of pounds already earned from day visitors. And as anyone who has ever been Christmas shopping in York knows, the city is already a magnet for retail tourism. Within the coming months a new John Lewis store will open on the outskirts of the city at Monk's Cross, but will that be enough to compete with the new Trinity Centre in Leeds with its 120 shops and mix of entertainment and eating venues? Or will there be pressure to build more in and around York, to compete for this segment? Once again, I wonder whether there is the physical capacity to accommodate a significant increase in day visitors (for it is certain that all the hoped-for growth will not be delivered by overnight tourism alone).  City centre parking gets full very early and the park and rides are often operating close to capacity at peak periods. Whilst there is a new park and ride facility close to completion out on the Tadcaster Road, will we need even more investment in public transport infrastructure? And again, if so, where will it go? Will we lose more green belt?

York already has a thriving though at times troublesome nightime economy. As research by my colleague Stuart Moss has shown, the economic role of this aspect of the leisure industry can be very significant in urban destinations. But it also brings with it problems. The Micklegate Run is already notorious for the challenges it brings to local business and residents, and sadly the tragic implications of young people who have enjoyed an evening drinking in a riverside location are being played out as I write with the search in the River Ouse for Megan Roberts , who is presumed to have fallen into the river accidentally whilst under the influence of alcohol.

Both extraordinary policing events such as this, as well as scheduled investment like the increased police presence required at York Station from late afternoons most Saturdays where there is a need to manage large groups of people coming into the city for a night out, bring with them very real financial costs to local communities.  And this is one aspect of tourism that is too rarely considered in the media.  With all the emphasis on the positive side (increased revenue for local businesses, new jobs created or existing jobs saved) there is too little attention paid to the impacts of tourism on the many people in the host community who bear the brunt of the negatives and who see little of the positive benefit.

Yesterday the historian Bettany Hughes presented a delightful programme on the history of hospitality as a concept, reminding us that evolved initially as a tradition of mutual respect between host and guest.  Are Visit York perhaps in danger of skewing the relationship too much away from the local community? 

So, the publishers of Lonely Planet have named Yorkshire in the top 10 tourist regions for 2014, where it shares the spotlight with destinations like New Zealand’s West Coast, Texas and Mallorca.  To be frank, this isn’t really surprising. As I have blogged before, Yorkshire certainly has it all, including quiet beaches, windswept moorlands and pretty agricultural landscapes;  quaint villages, historic towns, busy cities and seaside resorts; mysterious ruins and stately homes through to cutting-edge venues for performing and visual arts.  As a resident for well over a decade, I’ve barely scratched the surface of Yorkshire’s tourism product. Although that can be explained partly by the fact I live right on the coast and thus not in the heart of the region, it also demonstrates the wealth of what is on offer and, more importantly perhaps, the considerable effort that has been made in recent years by the public, private and third sectors in developing a tourism economy that is able to compete at the highest levels.

Aspirations across the sector are high – for instance, we have award winning restaurants and pubs not resting on their laurels, but instead encouraging their local suppliers to ‘up their game’ as well, so that they can guarantee the highest levels of quality of ingredients across the year. By strengthening local supply chains, Michelin starred restaurants like the Star at Harome, and more modest businesses like Scarborough’s amazing Eat Me café, are not only supporting their local economies but are also promoting a vision of Yorkshire as a place where quality matters. 
Celebrations of place by the many artists’ networks across Yorkshire are another dimension of the growing confidence in the region’s cultural product – events such as York Artists Open Studio Days remind tourists and residents alike of the wide variety of high quality visual and decorative art being produced locally.  And the performing arts are not losing out either – whether it is established venues like the Stephen Joseph Theatre still celebrating the work of Alan Ayckbourn, or the lesser known Pocklington Arts Centre delivering a broad programme of events that appeal to both locals and tourists, we are blessed with a richness of cultural product.
Today’s announcement by Lonely Planet was timely in that it coincided with a trip to Scarborough  -one of the UK’s leading tourist destinations – by 8 students from Leeds Metropolitan University’s MSc programme in Responsible Tourism Management (photo shows Rashad from the USA, and Diana from Uganda, plus three former residents of the town).  We had arranged the trip to let them see at first hand the challenges and solutions associated with 21^st century tourism in a resort that first began attracting tourists way back in the 17^th century and that for a long time didn’t need to work too hard to attract visitors.  However,  the emergence in the 1970s of cheap package holidays to the Mediterranean took away the town’s core business.  After a couple of decades doing very little the Borough Council finally got its act together just over a decade ago and together with trade partners and external agencies such as the now defunct Yorkshire Forward , have embarked on a strategic plan that is refining the target market, bringing the product up to the necessary quality levels and, crucially in my view, is working with the host community to make sure that we get the type of tourism that we want.   With the students representing countries as varied as Vietnam and Peru, Uganda and Spain, this was a great opportunity to share how one small part of Yorkshire’s internationally renowned tourism product is tackling the challenges of developing and sustaining its competitive advantage.
So even the initial presentation on the history of tourism in the resort by Nick Taylor, the Council’s Investment Manager, wasn’t held in the Council building but in a local café so that from the start we were also benefiting a local business. Lunch in another café was followed by a stroll through the Old Town up to the Castle and an examination of how English Heritage is investing in product development and events to make sure that this scheduled ancient monument plays its role in delivering a high quality tourist experience for much of the year

(photo shows a living history event at the castle a couple of years ago – I’m proud of this shot and have been waiting for ages to use it!).  A walk along the seafront to see what a traditional resort still offers was an eye opener for the group, most of who hadn’t been to the UK seaside before. The final port of call before the train back home was the Grand Hotel, where staff laid on a fascinating tour of what was, when it was built, the largest brick-built structure in Europe!

So ... what did they learn today that will stand them in good stead when they take up careers in other destinations striving to retain a relevance in today’s highly competitive global tourism industry?  In general terms, I hope that they understand the importance of a strong and committed public sector that is prepared to take the lead in driving forward strategic planning for tourism, and the need for sustained investment by the private sector to make sure that plans are actually implemented.  More specifically, I hope they appreciate that even on the eastern margins of one of the World’s top 10 tourism regions, we are working hard to deliver the variety and high quality of experience that is necessary to survive as a thriving destination.

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 !

How tour guides can make or break a visit

Tour guides are an integral part of the visitor experience in many destinations and often make the difference between a good experience and an outstanding one or, sadly, what potentially could have been a good experience and one that instead lives on in the memory for all the wrong reasons.  I have recently returned from a holiday in the US where I had the misfortune to experience three examples of tour guiding that, for various reasons, showed that there is still a long way to go in terms of delivering an excellent experience that really meets the tourists’ needs.


The first example was at a small historic house in Annapolis, Maryland. The house, like so many in the US, is run by a charitable organisation that has deep roots within the community. And as a result, it is reliant partly on young ‘docents’ from the local college and partly on retired citizens for whom the property and their engagement with it is an integral part of their life. Our misfortune was to be show round by a (very) elderly lady who admitted that it was her first tour in a year as she had been incapacitated for several months because of a hip replacement.  Fair dos to her – she was keen and knowledgable, and eager to please, but the tour itself was an unconstructed stream of consciousness that was long on her personal opinion (e.g. “I like this clock”) and short on context.  A little refresher training on how to present a coherent tour that is pertinent to the audience’s interests (my wife and I were the only people on the tour and she had quickly ascertained we were from the UK) would have enabled us to get much, much more from the visit. As it stood, when we left we felt we had briefly become part of Cameron’s much vaunted (and now forgotten) ‘Big Society’, transferring our care for the elderly across the Atlantic to Maryland.


Two days later we booked on to a so-called ‘eco-kayak tour’ of the inland waters between Chincoteague and Assateague Islands on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay.  Although the water was calm and the sounds we went through rarely more than 1m deep, I was astonished that there was no safety briefing from the operator before we even stepped into the kayaks. We were issued with life jackets and as we were putting them on a young guy sauntered over to us and announced, in an amazing southern drawl “Hi. I’m Skippy, and I’m your guide”.

Of course, anyone of my generation (born 1960) automatically thinks of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, the popular tv programme from the 60s and 70s. So I was always going to find it hard taking him seriously from the outset. But about 2 minutes into the trip, whilst my wife and I were still getting to grips with paddling a double kayak (I’ve canoed a lot in the past, she never has), he admitted that he wasn’t a proper guide, but was filling in for someone who hadn’t turned up. In fact, he told us, he was a professional cage fighter based in Ohio and was just in Assateague for a few days visiting family. So we had paid well in excess of $100 to rent a kayak for a couple of hours and spend it, not getting an informed insight into the ecology of the wetlands and backwaters, but instead trying to decipher the drawl of someone who had obviously been kicked in the head one too many times.  His lack of biological understanding became evident when, on seeing a Tern, Skippy tried to convince us that the Tern family are basically a cross between an Albatross and a sparrow! I must admit, I’ve not checked this out with David Attenborough or anyone else from the BBC Wildlife Unit, but I’m pretty sure that if this was the case, ‘Life on Earth’ would have made this clear. So we went from random information overkill to nonsense information overkill.

Hoping for a more satisfactory experience we headed south to Williamsburg and the myriad of heritage sites along the James River. We decided to visit Historic Jamestowne, a site managed by the US National Parks Service, global leaders in interpretation and an organisation dedicated to delivering customer satisfaction. We booked onto the 10.00 tour and waited for a smartly clad, uniformed ranger to show us round the archaeological remains. Instead we were greeted by a youngish lady dressed in early 17th century clothing who spoke to the group in a cod-Shakespearean English accent straight out of am-dram acting. On and on and on she droned, asking us where we’d travelled from, what we did for a living and translating this information into a narrative that implied we were all there to help build the settlement. It was AWFUL. First-person costumed interpretation is difficult to pull off at the best of times, but although the presentation appeared to be being lapped up by the Americans in the group, it reminded me of every 1940s movie set in Merrie England. Unfortunately we could only gain admission to the site museum as part of the group so we couldn’t make a break for the border too early. When we did, we vowed that we would do no more tours that holiday.

Why have I been rabbiting on about this? Well, we spent around $150 between us on admission tickets for these three experiences, and apart from catching the sun during the kayak trip and getting bitten to buggery by mosquitos and other bugs on the Jamestown tour, we’ve got nothing to show for that investment. Apart from a couple of impressions that we can use at dinner parties to entertain friends. Oh, and we’ve already told anyone who will listen which historic properties in Annapolis and Williamsburg NOT to visit, and which company NOT to use for an ‘ecotour’ around Assateague. It was the end of the season, perhaps site operators were getting lazy or complacent. But there is no excuse not to deliver the highest standards of tour guiding to every party. Otherwise, all you get is bad press!

World Travel Market - seminar on visitor payback

World Travel Market is one of those events that I look forward to with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. The former feeling because I am never sure whether or not my feet will stand the pace of wandering around the Excel Centre for 2 days, and whether my memory is still good enough to allow me to put a name to every familiar face I see there. Excitement because it is one of the foremost opportunities every year for my colleagues and I at Leeds Met and at ICRT to spread the word about Responsible Tourism.

This year’s RT awards were as powerful as ever in terms of raising awareness of the great stuff that is being done around the world to help communities benefit more from tourism, and to help tourism businesses work more smartly in terms of delivering the highest standards of customer experience without trivialising the cultures their guests are visiting, or damaging irrecoverably the landscapes they are passing through. So all thanks to Professor Harold Goodwin, Justin Francis and the WTMRTD team for their hard work promoting, judging and presenting the awards.

But for me, the real work gets done in the breakout sessions that we offer, exploring different themes associated with Responsible Tourism. This is the fourth year that I have had the privilege of chairing one of the sessions. Last year we looked at managing visitors in World Heritage Sites, and this year we explored the concept of visitor payback initiatives – how to move beyond levying an admission charge but instead raising funds from tourists and tourism businesses and investing these resources in initiatives that really benefit the host destination and the resident community.

My three speakers were excellent and sadly, we ran out of time for a longer debate on some of the challenging issues they raised. But I know I’ll be thinking about what they all said and introducing key points into forthcoming lectures so that my students – undergraduate and postgrad – begin to appreciate what we as an industry can do to progress still further the spirit and the aims of the Cape Town Declaration.

Kath Bateman from Caledonia – a specialist language and dance tour operator based in Edinburgh and operating mainly in Cuba – spoke passionately about all the little things she does in terms of putting together packages that are true partnerships with the host community.  Employing, for instance, one dance tutor for every holidaymaker rather than one for the whole group. Limiting group sizes to 15 so that the impact on the host community is not overwhelming and so that the internal group dynamics don’t fragment too much. Utilising homestays rather than government-run hotels, so that the additional income goes straight into the pockets of the community. All small steps but when taken together, having a real benefit in the destination.

Hetty Byrne from the Forest of Bowland AONB spoke about a range of initiatives they are engaged in to promote a more sustainable and responsible approach to tourism in this hidden corner of Lancashire. Partnership again was a word that came up, both in terms of publc:private sector relationships but also between local tourism SMEs. She talked about two businesses who promoted an attractive walking route between the two locations, so that guests staying in one place could spend a day rambling through the AONB before ending up in a guest house offering a similar standard of experience. It might not deliver a major increase in business to either partner, but even if it stimulates a handful of extra bednights each season, that is income that otherwise would not have been earned. Incrementalism was another theme of Hetty’s talk – she mentioned a local inn that asked for a voluntary 20p donation on every bill, with the money to go towards improving access to the countryside for people with mobility problems. Some eighteen months later, thousands of pounds had been raised to purchase an electric buggy suitable for people with impaired mobility and to treat some of the routes around the inn so that they were fully accessible. Twenty pence on a bill of £20 or £30 is marginal to the customer, but added up those individual 20 pences have made a major difference in the destination.

The final speaker, Ruth Kirk from Nurture Lakeland, picked up on the theme of visitor giving and talked about some of the strategies for extracting funds from tourists. Voluntary donations are an obvious one, but she also mentioned how other businesses are also acting as conduits for funds that are collected and used to provide match-funding for major conservation projects such as footpath repair initiatives. One of the cruise operators running ferries on Ullswater asks for a small donation as part of the ticket income and some accommodation providers do the same. In the 18 years that the Lake District has had some form of visitor payback initiative, more than £2 million has been raised to invest in conservation projects.

In the short but spirited Q&A session at the end, perhaps the most challenging question was one that forced to address once again an issue we hadn’t really answered during the presentations. The title of the session had asked “Do tourists pay enough for accessing our heritage”? An audience member from Australia posed the simple question “Do they”. We had talked about strategies used by the public, private and voluntary sector to try to increase tourist contributions, but was it ‘enough’. The most straightforward and honest response came from Kath who said that tourists can never pay ‘enough’, because there is always something that needs to be done. Whether in Cuba, where she operates and where living standards remain lower than one would like, or in the North West of England where there is a legacy of erosion on the hillsides to treat as well as a major programme of investment needed to avoid future damage.

So rather than asking are tourists paying enough, perhaps we should be asking, “are enough tourists paying?”  In other words, should we be rolling out these initiatives that we know work for some people and extending their reach so that everyone is involved. Rather than a voluntary donation on top of your room charge, that could mean a bed tax. Rather than an optional top-up on your bar or restaurant bill, that could involve a local sales tax with revenues ring-fenced for re-investment in projects that benefit the host community.  But this would almost certainly require legislation at a time when government is seeking to remove as much red tape as possible because it is seen to stifle growth. So whilst some of us understand the  importance of understanding and responding to the polluter pays principle, both from an industry and consumer side, I’m not sure that the rest of the world is ready to play ball. Yet.

And in terms of my memory. Apologies to Rosie, for forgetting where I know you from (now I remember – a night out on the Senegambia strip and some very good whisky and cigars).

Am back in Addis Ababa working on the next phase of the Entoto Cityview project, a feasibility study for a major new tourist destination on the ridge of hills immediately to the north of the city. Our Phase 2 report has been accepted by the client so we are now embarking on the refinement of our initial proposals.  These include a lodge, restaurant visitor centre to interpret Ethiopia’s rich cultural heritage and a craft area where visitors can view handicrafts being produced.  Other components could include a high altitude training centre for athletes (our site is at 3,000m) and a backpacker hostel.

Sadly the rainy season has arrived and it has been difficult trying to get the client out of the office so we can talk through our ideas onsite. Though given the torrential downpours we’ve seen over the last few days, the ground conditions are likely to make any detailed site investigations difficult in any case.

So instead I’ve been doing some research on a couple of topics of relevant to the business planning phase of our work – potential demand for the backpacker hostel, and local handicraft initiatives with whom we could partner.  Interestingly, whilst there are some really good mapping studies showing backpacker flows around Australia, South East Asia and South Africa I’ve come across nothing on the volume or profile of the market in East Africa. So if anyone knows of any work I might have overlooked, please let me know. 

As for the handicraft sector, tomorrow I’m meeting key personnel in the Ministry of Tourism & Culture with responsibility for a number of initiatives across the country. Hopefully I’ll come away from the meetings with enough information to allow us to determine the size of that part of the development and also, who we could partner with. I am particularly keen to get the Beza Community Outreach project involved – they work with women infected with HIV, training them in jewellery production and providing them with an opportunity to earn a living. Their designs use coffee beans, silver beads and also the bronze casings from bullets, combining innovative design with recycling, something that is more and more common in the sector.  So to inspire you, here are two photos of recycled handicrafts – one of necklaces made by Beza here in Ethiopia, and the other a picture made from Coke cans from the Gambia. Enjoy.

Place friction and community economic development

One of the nice things about spending a couple of weeks working overseas is the opportunity to catch up on your reading. I am currently in Addis Ababa working on the Entoto City View Development Strategy, and in my spare time am re-reading Professor Nabeel Hamdi’s fascinating book ‘Small Change’.  An architect by training, Hamdi has worked on low cost housing projects  all over the developing world, using the principles of participatory action planning to help slum dwellers upgrade their living conditions.

One of the chapters in his book is entitled ‘The Bus Stop: Cultivating Community’. In it he describes the impacts that were achieved in one of his projects simply by rerouting a bus service that used to run around the outskirts of a deprived area to run through the centre of the slum where it intersected with another route. At this crossing point a small shaded area was provided as well as a water standpoint.  Because bus services were irregular, people would sometimes have to wait for a considerable period before they were able to leave for the main city centre.  As a result, an informal market developed with micro-enterprises being established by local people to service the needs of the waiting travellers.  A couple of street lights were installed to facilitate the operation of the market and associated informal activities into the evening so that the role of this location as a hub for community activities increased still further. And this then encouraged an NGO to locate a small health centre in the same place. So the simple act of diverting a bus route and creating a new stop led to the creation of a whole new economic and social infrastructure.

I was reminded of this chapter on one of our field visits for the Entoto project when we stopped off at the Maryam Church on Entoto Mountain. This is the location of a holy spring and is a major pilgrimage destination for Orthodox Christians, as well as being located right next to the former palace of King Menelik II, one of the most famous Ethiopian rulers. As a destination for cultural tourism, this location on a ridge above the city is ideal for development.  But the challenge for us as a team, if we select this site rather than one of the other locations we have looked at along this 20 km ridgeline (a decision yet to be made) is how to integrate into our proposals the thriving informal economic community that has grown up in recent years around the church.  As well as food sellers and cafes, gift shops and souvenir stalls, there are (very) low cost accommodation providers for pilgrims wishing to stay more than a day and even tailors who will alter or mend your clothing or make you a new suit or dress.  Given that these micro-businesses are providing a major service to pilgrims it would not be appropriate to move them in any attempt to ‘prettify’ the place for international heritage tourists. Our role, should we use this site, will be to ensure that they can provide additional services to a new market rather than lose their livelihoods altogether. Over the coming days, my colleague Dr Roberto Durero and I will be exploring these opportunities with community representatives in order to identify appropriate development strategies for the site.

This demonstrates the significant impact of what one could term ‘place friction’ – as you provide a space where people must slow down or stop, it becomes easier to sell them things and to encourage them to consume services.  It’s a simple concept, and was of course well known in the past – think of all the medieval markets that were established immediately outside cathedrals and abbeys so that they could capture the spend of pilgrims and worshippers attending services on Saints’ days.  So whether or not we do select the Maryam church site for our development, it has been fascinating for me to be able to relate my experiences in Addis this week both to the work of one of the world’s leading development academics but also to processes that we experienced centuries ago as our own economies were developing.

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Meetings Sector

For the last few months I’ve been part of a team based in the International Centre for Research in Events, Tourism & Hospitality (ICRETH) at Leeds Metropolitan University undertaking a major survey on the meetings industry’s attitudes towards, and engagement with, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In a double-header event this week, my colleague James Musgrave and I are releasing the latest findings at Confex and ITB respectively. I get the delights of a 3 day trip to Berlin where I’m part of a panel involved in ITB’s CSR day on 7^th March, whilst James heads down to London for the day .

Our research has involved analysing questionnaires from more than 1,100 meetings industry professionals worldwide – including venues, meeting planners and suppliers – and backing this up with in-depth interviews with another 70+ contacts from around the world. We are almost at the end of the data gathering phase and are now able to launch some of the headline findings in advance of producing the main study report in April.

One of the main things that we’ve found is that around 9 out of 10 meeting industry businesses are now actively engaging with CSR, with 1 in 4 saying they are very active. Reasons for doing this vary but in the main people are NOT driven by the profit motive – few people believe that being active in CSR improves overall bottom line performance.  But many of our sources have told us that having a formal CSR policy is important in getting them onto tender lists and approved supplier lists. Indeed, more than 30% of respondents said that they already give preference to suppliers who have a demonstrative commitment to CSR.

As well as developing business performance with suppliers, having a CSR policy also demonstrates credibility and trustworthiness to clients and, to some extent, still provides some market differentiation. However, external pressures are such that it is likely that engagement with CSR will grow across the sector in the next 5 to 10 years with more and more people following the current industry leaders. This in turn is likely to be the ‘tipping point’ needed for the more committed organisations to convert their current approach to engagement, which tends not to be recognised with external accreditation, into something that is recognised by one of the several accreditation initiatives. We certainly expect the launch of ISO 20121 later this year to focus people’s attention on the benefits of accreditation and there are some in the sector who feel that unless the industry as a whole engages more with voluntary standards, then there may be the risk of enforced regulation, particularly regarding environmental and social policies.

One final point that is of particular interest to the team, working as we do in Higher Education, is the emerging belief across the meetings industry that without a formal and coherent approach to CSR, employers may find it increasingly difficult to hire the best candidates. This generation, more than any other, is increasingly committed to finding employers whose ethics and world view reflect their own. Quite simply, if they don’t like the way you treat the environment and the community around you, they are unlikely to want to work with you either.

For more details of the project, please contact me on s.c.woodward@leedsmet.ac.uk

Pet tourism

As a dog owner I am sometimes limited in the places I can visit when out for the day. Many locations (understandably) don't allow dogs other than assistance dogs to enter their premises. So it is always nice to find somewhere that not only lets them in, but actively thanks you for supporting their business. So I present to you the Oliver's Mount cafe in Scarborough, a basic little place on the side of a hill overlooking the town. Dogs are welcome in the cafe, there is lots of space outside for them to scamper around and, best of all, they get a treat for visiting. In fact, it looked so good I almost ate one myself but didn't, sticking instead to my cup of Bovril!

A friend in New Zealand, the driving force behind http://www.caninespirit.co.nz/, is researching the topic of pets and tourism for her PhD. So expect more blogs on this topic in the future. And in the meantime, think about what you could do to help develop this niche market!

Universities and destination development

I was recently asked to write a book chapter on the subject of universities and their contribution to tourism. Surprisingly little has been written on the subject  - in the late 1990s one academic wrote a bit on the use of university accommodation and in 2000 UNESCO published a whole journal about university museums.  But I have been struggling to find more detailed research on the role of universities in place making for tourism, or in destination development.  So the next few weeks are going to involve a lot of primary research, an intensive literature review and some rapid writing up.  That’s not an excuse for me not updating the blog on a regular basis, but bear with me and I’ll be able to share some interesting stuff in a month or so. In the meantime, here is a picture of the James Graham Building at Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK - this campus will be hosting a training camp for the Chinese athletics squad competing at the 2012 Olympics this summer - sports & events tourism  based at university campuses is surely one area that is worthy of further investigation by someone.

Students as tourists or residents

I have spent the day engrossed in a literature review associated with some research I'm doing in partnership with Dr Elizabeth Carnegie of the University of Sheffield, looking at student engagement with the World Heritage Site in Durham.  We are interested in whether or not living and studying within a WHS has an impact on their attitudes to heritage in general, and to the values of the WHS in particular.

There is a growing body of research that looks at how tourists engage with (or don't) World Heritage values in destinations, and other researchers have focussed more on how communities react to, and are affected by, WHS status. But no-one has yet looked at how students engage with WHS - they are short-term residents, spending 9 to 12 weeks at a time in the area, several times a year for 3 or 4 years. So according to UNWTO definitions, they are tourists.  But their motivations for staying in the destination are very particular, and it is unlikely that WHS status had anything to do with their decision to travel to the city in question (whilst we are looking at Durham, there are many other WHS that have universities and colleges in their core). 
Thinking of Durham in particular, the heritage of the peninsula, that part of the city ascribed WHS status, plays a key role in creating the atmosphere that is valued by many university students.  Already, we have anecdotal evidence that students living in one of the colleges that looks on to the great East Window feel inspired by the view when looking at it from their rooms, whilst we know that the opportunity to graduate in a ceremony held within the cathedral is valued by some university alumni.
Our first phase of primary research will start next week, with the first public presentation of our findings being at a conference Liz is attending in the Caribbean in January. That will be followed by another presentation at a one-day seminar on Communities and World Heritage we are hosting in Durham in March, and finally a paper that will be submitted to a leading academic journal some time in the spring.

Responsible Tourism around the Mediterranean

Have been pondering on a couple of the points made by Justin Francis, CEO of www.responsibletravel.com, at a recent evening seminar for ICRT students and alumni. He was talking about the 10 things that will change tourism, for good or for the worse, in the coming years and two of his 'top ten' were the Arab Spring and the economic crisis facing the PIGS. It is clear, even from the events in Tahrir Square and in Sirte last night, that the repercussions of the Arab Spring are still being worked out across the MENA region and it will be some time before destinations like Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia see their visitor numbers returning to anything like 2010 levels. Meanwhile, what will be the impact on destination marketing and management budgets of government cuts in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal as they struggle to bring their budget deficits under control?

I am a geographer by academic background and what really interests me about this situation around the Mediterranean is what impact there will be on tourism flows? Will there be a major increase in outbound tourism to Turkey as Europeans continue to search for their two weeks of sunshine? Or will the emerging destination of the Azores take up some of the demand diverted away from the MENA region in particular? And where will Morocco go? It gets a lot of business from Spain but with a major recession there, it may see numbers fall. Yet it too has experienced some unrest and analysts believe that it too may still see changes. And what the tourism sector needs is certainty, not uncertainty.

So - it is going to be an interested few months and we should watch the early UNWTO returns for 2011 with a lot of interest, to see who really has benefited from these major changes happening around the Med. One thing we know for sure though, is that the residents of these countries will feel these changes far more than we ever will.

Family holidays in the Lake District

Not having kids ourselves, we have been spared the trauma that goes with so many holidays - "where to go so that there is enough to do to keep them occupied so they don't moan about missing their friends", and "where can we go that doesn't cost an arm and a leg"? Well, we are just back from a week in the English Lake District having had a great week with our American friends and their three teenage kids.

True, having a 19 year old and 2 16 year olds meant that nothing much happened before mid-morning apart from 3 of the four adults (plus dog) going on a 4 mile run up the valley from where we were staying. And it also constrained a little the level of cultural activity (tho' we redressed that after they left on thursday to go down to Sussex for a wedding, with a trip to the amazing Arts & Crafts house at Blackwell - see photo of one of the windows above). But I had completely forgotten (a) how beautiful the Northern Lakes are in early summer and (b) how much investment there has been in good quality tourism products.

The town of Keswick, near our base of Bassenthwaite Village, is selling itself as the outdoor capital of the UK (I know - Fort William begs to differ) and there is certainly an outdoor equipment shop on every corner and in quite a few locations in between. Properly kitted out, we were ready for a walk around the shores of Derwentwater, a climb up Cat Bells (beloved by many as the home of Mrs Tiggywinkle and a hill I'd not climbed since 1972, at the age of 12 - this time I was able to take the dog), a canoeing trip across Derwentwater and, best of all, an afternoon exploring the slate mines of Honister using the Via Ferrata, zipwires and even a couple of old mine workings.

This mix of paid-for and free access recreational provision is what makes the Lake District such a good family holiday destination - every evening we collapsed around the table in our lovely cottage garden, teased each other about the day's disasters (the nine month old labrador jumping out of the Canadian Canoe just as we launched, requiring several trips back to the shore to get him in was but one mini-crisis) and planned the next adventure.
At a time when budgets are squeezed, and when the UK tourism sector is seeking to strengthen awareness of its potential as a destination for a main holiday, those in charge of developing and marketing the Lakes have much to be proud of. True, there were a few blatant attempts at price-gouging (£14.95 for a DVD with 80, mainly blurry, photos of the Via Ferrata trip was a rip off - shame on you Honister!) but by and large everything was good value. The weather was OK and the company great. For my first 'main' holiday in England since 1977, I couldn't have chosen a better place.

P.S. I didn't forget about work and the responsible tourism movement whilst I was there - lots of evidence of environmentally and socially sustainable action across the board. But in writing this blog I decided to focus on the fun element of holidays and tourism, something we professionals often forget!

An 'Evening With' ICRT students and alumni

Just back from London where I spoke to a small but enthusiastic group of ICRT students, alumni and a prospective student (thanks for coming along Caroline - hope you enjoyed it!) about some of the consultancy work I have been doing. My last blog covered much of what I was speaking about: how we need community passion behind any attempt to develop heritage-based tourism, but that without the public sector's ability to mobilise and mediate between different stakeholders (and often also to provide core funding) such projects often fail. What was interesting to me was how the conversation towards the end of the evening took a quite unexpected turn, coming around to the issue of whether or not there is ever a business case for investing in heritage conservation from a tourism perspective. Having analysed the issue from a number of sides, we came round to the decision that whilst there is very rarely, if ever, a BUSINESS case, there is quite often a broader economic development case. In other words, the public sector's role is to intervene in a situation where there would be conventional market failure in order to ensure the broader benefits are delivered. My problem is that I know I've read all this before, but can't remember where. So it's off to the library for a load more research before I start updating my teaching materials for next year!

ICRT 'Evening With'

For several years it has been a tradition for ICRT staff, students and alumni to meet on the second Wednesday of the month to catch up with one another, share ideas and generally try to find ways to progress the Responsible Tourism agenda. Tomorrow evening's meeting at the Vintry, a wine bar near Bank underground station, will be no exception. From my perspective, however, it will be slightly different as I am the 'guest speaker' and will spend an hour or so talking about three recently completed consultancy assignments.

The first project is the Cycle Hubs project that we have just completed in Northumberland, working for 18 months to set up a suite of routes radiating out from the two market towns of Wooler and Haltwhistle. At a time when the UK government is very keen to push more and more responsibility onto communities as part of its'Big Society' movement, it has been very instructive to compare and contrast the differing attitudes in the two towns towards the creation of a legacy group that can take the project forward now that our initial seed funding has been exhausted.

The second project was the preparation of a business plan for the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Fife, a small but important museum with a nationally recognised collection relating to the fishing heritage of Scotland, and particularly of the East Coast fisheries which once employed tens of thousands of people. The museum has existed for some 30 years, has a core of local authority financial funding and yet still relies on volunteers for much of the labour needed to care for and present the collections to the public. There is a good cohort of volunteers at the moment including ex-fishermen, academics, accountants and marine engineers. But what is interesting is the way that these men (and they are almost exclusively men who are volunteers at the museum) gravitate towards the 'sexier' jobs of restoring and conserving fishing boats and sailing the boats (particularly Reaper, a historic sail-powered 'Fifie' fishing boat) to other ports up and down the East Coast. There is far less interest in the unglamourous jobs of staffing the till in the shop or catologuing the photograph collection. So even when there is volunteer support, it is not always easy to direct it in the most effective direction - I know many museum curators who are afraid to do anything that might upset volunteers and drive them away - better some input than none!

And the final project I shall be discussing is an evaluation I carried out for UNWTO of the Saudi Council for Tourism and Antiquities Urban Heritage Programme. In many ways this seems totally different from the others but there are similarities. In one of the flagship projects, Rijjal Al Maa, a village of four and five storey stone-built houses in the mountains of Aseer, a community-based group has been investing its own resources in the conservation of the historic core of the village in order to protect and preserve the traditional urban form. They recognise that this is not only their own heritage, but also that without their involvement, they run the risk of the state party diverting its attention towards other, equally worthy causes. In two of the other historic villages participating in the scheme there are other interesting issues arising - at Al Ghat north of Riyadh, much of the leadership has come from one family (related to the Saudi Royal Family by marriage) who have the resources to be able to invest in the restoration of their original home in the village, thus setting an example (and challenge) to others in the area. And in Dhi'Ain in Al Baha province, ownership of the whole village has been transferred into a trust so that the conservation and re-presentation of the village for tourism purposes can be delivered effectively and to the highest standards.

No matter where I work as a consultant, I constantly am faced with new permutations of the community:state party relationship, and feel that there is still much that we can do in this country to learn how to make the most of community passion for heritage.

Valuing cultural heritage

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about how to demonstrate the value that some groups in society place on their cultural patrimony. My interest in this topic was re-awakened by reports last month that the protestors in Cairo’s Tahrir Square had set up a protective zone around the Egyptian Museum next door to prevent looting and damage to the priceless assets contained therein. Although there was some minor damage and a small number of statuettes were stolen, this seems to have happened in only one incident. Recent reports from the former head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, suggest that there has also been some damage around the ruins at Saqqara and in some other locations. But in the main, the Egyptian people have respected the legal protection afforded to some of the richest archaeological remains in the world.

One compares this with the situation a few years ago in Iraq, when there was widespread looting in the national museum in Baghdad, with many items still missing and presumed destroyed or sold on the black market. And the damage to the ruins of the ancient city of Ur by US marines who used the site as a base to oversee the downfall of Saddam Hussein was not only a violation of trust but also a clear illustration of the lack of awareness, appreciation and understanding of the enormously rich heritage of the region still prevalent amongst many people.

News coming out of Libya also gives some cause for concern, with reports that some archaeological sites are being damaged in the struggle between pro- and anti- Gaddafi forces. In all three cases, there are fundamental issues of national identity and political power being worked out and yet only in the Egyptian case have the protagonists gone out of their way to protect their patrimony. One wonders whether this is in part because they recognise the enormous contribution that such assets make to the development and sustainability of a responsible tourism sector that celebrates rather than diminishes cultures and their heritage. Perhaps we will never know what drove those Egyptian protestors in Tahrir Square to protect the treasures of the Egyptian Museum. But we should remember to thank them.

Fundraising at a sacred site

Am just back from a really positive committee meeting at Durham Cathedral where we heard that in the first two years of operation, we have raised some £1.6 million for various activities across the Cathedral. These include funds for the conservation of the historic fabric, money to pay for adaptation works to make some of the spaces fit for purpose (as well as the regular pattern of worship, the building also attracts some 500,000 tourists a year), and resources to pay for education and outreach work and the music programme (a particular source of pride locally, not least because the current BBC Young Choristor of the Year was trained at Durham).

One tends to think of those working in religious buildings as having very little to do other than light a few candles and preach the occasional sermon. But since the Dean first invited me to join the embryonic development committee back in 2007, I have become much more aware of the enormous range of responsibilities and activities. Current thinking includes developing a strategy to link in with the Government's 'Big Society' agenda (whatever you might think politically, the pragmatist sees money in there for organisations like the Cathedral to work with different groups within society) and, on a joyous note, thinking about how to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Cathedral's inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986. At present, we are thinking of a celebratory event in early November, possibly linked with an academic conference looking at the challenges of managing multi-use historic buildings. So watch this space.....

The contribution of handicrafts to livelihoods in package holiday destinations

Working in partnership with ICRT students Louise Dixey and Yvette Evers and my colleague Lucy McCombes, I am commencing a desk-based review of the contribution that handicrafts make to the livelihoods of communities living in and around popular package holiday destinations. The research is being funded by the Travel Foundation, the charity funded by the UK’s main tour operators, and the findings will be used to establish what can be done in these destinations to increase the contributions that crafts make to local economies. Some of the destinations we are studying include Tobago, St Lucia and Jamaica in the Carribean; the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, the area around Bodrum in Turkey and the Red Sea and Sinai resorts of Egypt.

A full report will be submitted to the Travel Foundation in early April 2011 and will include guidelines on specific projects that can be implemented in some of these destinations to enhance the quality of crafts available, improve market access for local producers and strengthen local linkages between suppliers of raw materials, the craftsmen and women themselves and the vendors who tend to sell the products on to the tourists.

Running in parallel with this work is another project that ICRT is undertaking on behalf of the Travel Foundation, this time focusing in on handicrafts in the Gambia. This work includes the first ever economic impact study of the sector in the country, an exercise that will allow us to examine which groups of craftworkers are most vulnerable to disruption and whose incomes suffer the most when tourist numbers fall off at the end of the season.

If you want to know more about the work that ICRT is doing in the traditional handicrafts sector, don't hesitate to get in touch

Heritage conservation in Saudi Arabia

In 2001 the Supreme Commission for Tourism (SCTA) in Saudi Arabia commissioned a team of more than 60 consultants to assist in the preparation of the first national tourism strategy for the Kingdom. I was fortunate enough to be part of that team, working for nearly two years on several aspects of the strategy including assessing the likely social impacts of the emergence of a strong tourism sector in Saudi and leading the team that looked at how the Kingdom’s rich and varied cultural heritage assets (tangible and intangible) could be developed. One of the recommendations that we put forward in the first strategy was for a co-ordinated programme of conservation across the country, focussed on protecting, preserving and adapting for tourism usage of a representative sample of historic villages and towns.

Between 2006 and 2008 I led the team that prepared masterplans for the historic cores of four small cities on the coast, plans that although well received have yet to be implemented because of a lack of funding. So it was with considerable satisfaction that I have finally been able to see progress on the wholesale conservation of a historic village in Saudi Arabia. I have been asked by UNWTO – the World Tourism Organisation – to advise the successor organisation to the SCT – the Saudi Council for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) on what international awards their Historic Villages Conservation programme might be eligible for. Other than the internationally respected Aga Khan Awards (www.akdn.org) there are very few heritage or conservation awards for projects in the Arab World. My research has thrown up several awards for new architecture (inspired no doubt by the massive urban expansion across the GCC area but little that could, if awarded, bring to this innovative programme the international attention that it merits.

The photos are of a couple of the restored buildings in Al Ghat, a small town of around 12,000 people on the fringe of the Najd desert, some 250 km north of Riyadh. The traditional mud-brick houses and public buildings were abandoned around 30 years ago but because of the arid desert environment, have remained in fairly good shape since. In order to secure the support and participation of the community, a co-operative has been established by all of the property owners to take ownership of the project (all property rights have been transferred into the co-op) and to raise the funds necessary for the conservation of the buildings and their adaptation for tourism uses. A signature, pilot project has been funded directly by the SCTA, converting the former Amarah (governor’s palace) into a local history museum and the municipality has ensured that all essential services (water, electricity, sewerage, telecoms) are installed. Finally, a loan of SAR 7 million (more than £1.15 million) has been obtained from the government to kick-start conservation works across the whole village. One house, the traditional home of the Sudairi family, has already been completed and furnished as an 8 room lodge. More will follow as the village is developed and marketed as a destination mainly to the domestic market. Other attractions in the area include a new national park, many date farms (Al Ghat is famous for its high quality dates) and some amazing sand dunes.

On Sunday I head off to the mountains of Aseer in the west of the country to see Rijjal Al Maa, a village I first visited back in 2001 and where there has been sustained investment for a number of years, mainly by the community but also by the SCT/SCTA and also the municipality. Built from stone and decorated with quartz, the tower houses of Aseer are very different from the mud brick (adobe) buildings of the Najd and represented very different conservation challenges. But the opportunities for introducing tourism uses into the buildings are the same, and I will be interested to see what changes have been made since my last trip in 2005.

For more information on the SCTA’s work on conserving architectural heritage, visit http://www.scta.gov.sa/sites/english/Antiquities_and_Museums/InternationallyRegisteredSites/Pages/conference_on_heritage.aspx