Boat of Garten Loo to close!

Highland Council is to shut 14 public toilets and restrict opening times at others to help it save more than £320,000 over the next two years. Boat of Garten in the Cairngorms National Park will shut.

Fire damages Blair Castle clock tower

Fire crews are investigating the cause of a blaze which damaged part of a 13th Century Scottish castle in the Cairngorms National Park. The fire, which broke out at about 2035 GMT on Thursday evening, ripped through the clock tower at Blair Castle near Blair Atholl, Cairngorms National Park. Firefighters contained the blaze and prevented it from spreading to the rest of the building.  Blair Castle is the ancient seat of the Dukes and Earls of Atholl and dates back about 740 years. Seven fire crews battled to extinguish the blaze at the height of the blaze and three fire engines are still at the scene. A Tayside Police spokesman said there was a "significant amount of damage" to the clock tower.  He said no-one was injured and the cause of the fire had not yet been determined. A spokeswoman for Tayside Fire and Rescue Service said the roof and second floor of the clock tower had collapsed into the first floor. www.blair-castle.co.uk

 

 

 

Vladimir, the Amur Tiger departs the Kincraig Wild life Park. Cairngorms

On 24th Feb, Vladimir, Amur tiger, was transferred to a new tiger facility at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park. This move was recommended by the European breeding programme coordinator for Amur tigers, who is based at London Zoo. At almost 2 years old, Vlad was at the right age to be moved to another zoo as he was becoming more independent and a move at this time mirrors what would happen in the wild. His new companion will be a female from a Bulgarian zoo who will be arriving in Yorkshire shortly. Vlad’s move leaves us with his mother, Sasha, and two sisters, all of whom seem very relaxed about his departure. There is no intention to bring in another potential breeding male just yet as Sasha is past breeding age, and her daughters are not old enough....more info

 

Royal Deeside £100 million golf and leisure development get backing

Plans for a £100 million golf and leisure development on Royal Deeside have secured the backing of local councillors who rejected the recommendations of senior planners that the scheme should be refused.

Members of the Marr area committee of Aberdeenshire Council voted five to three in favour of the development of the major complex, including a luxury hotel, which would be centred on the existing championship course at Inchmarlo Golf Club on the outskirts of Banchory.

Although the plans by developers Frank Burnett Ltd had been backed by both Scottish Enterprise and VisitScotland as a key development in boosting tourism in the area, planning officials recommended refusing permission as the application was “significantly contrary” to the wider strategy of the local development plan.

The full council will meet on 10 March to make a final decision.

It ain't your grannies trifle!

FOOD ON FILM 2011 KINGUSSIE 3RD-6TH OF FEB

 

The Annual Cairngorms Food Festival held in and organised by the village of Kingussie and local high school kick off today.

 

A feast of local food, celebrity chefs, short films, documentaries and feature films to make you laugh, make you think and make you hungry!

 

 

Kingussie’s annual winter festival – FOOD ON FILM – brings the big screen to the beautiful Highlands of Scotland in a unique way, to celebrate and explore the world of food. With filmmakers and food producers gathering to share their passions and skills, a Food Hall showcasing the best of Highland produce and a red carpet Film Award – it’s a recipe for a fabulous weekend! 

 

A new film starring Scots actor Dougray Scott and chef Gordon Ramsay will debut at Kingussie's Food on Film Festival.

 

No Ordinary Trifle's director and writer James Hacking will also be among the guests at the annual celebration of movies and cuisine.

 

He will be joined by actor Lee Boardman, who also stars in the film which will not be released at UK cinemas until later this year.

 

The Food on Film Festival will open on Thursday. More info on the Festival and other celebrations of food in the Cairngorms National Park check - http://www.cairngorms-park.com/Cairngorms-Farmers-Market/

 

Time for UK Tourism businesses to get real

Despite encouraging talk in the early days of the new Coalition Government about the importance of Tourism to the economy, the reality is that the Government Spending Review has impacted on most UK tourism support structures including areas such as quality, training, sustainability and research.

 

The Regional Development Agencies who often led on Tourism are going and are being replaced by more localised Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). Now Tourism finds itself pitching along with every other sector for representation and funding and however that pans out area by area, one thing is for certain, at best budgets will be cut.

 

Lower down the chain the recently introduced Destination Management Organisations, which took over from traditional Tourists Boards seem to be also fighting for survival and/or working on much reduced budgets. But is this a such a bad thing for Tourism? Or simply time for businesses in this sector to get real?

 

In reality a well run business, as many are, should already been on top of issues such as quality, training, sustainability, research; they are after all the core issues any service led business must manage in order to be competitive in a free market. In any event much assistance has been on offer in all these areas for those looking for support over the past 10 years!

 

Government intervention should only be required or be warranted where there is a clear market failure, not as a matter of course.  Indeed, under the previous government, a market failure in tourism was addressed in terms of providing affordable online booking and therefore a route to online consumers for small business via the creation of Englandnet.

 

Englandnet is a destination management system which drives the publically funded Visit Britain, Enjoy England websites and many locally council funded DMO websites and enables all graded  accommodation providers to make their property available online and thus compete on equal terms with larger scale businesses. Additional software was also made available for free or highly subsidized rates to accommodation providers that enabled them to push their availability to major online booking sites.

 

Given it now exists and small businesses and sole traders can push their offer out to various booking portals such as lastminute.com, means it really is up to businesses to employ this tool. That they choose not to is now a business choice, not a mandate as many would argue for further intervention or support. Indeed even this intervention has been subject to challenge by some within the tourism industry as being anti-competetive; and viewed as state aid by those businesses who invested their own money and time developing their own systems to reach online consumers. So it seems the Government is damned if it does or damned if it doesn't!

 

Equally, if a business chooses not to invest in quality and training that surely is a business decision. Most in business normally complain about government interference, however tourism has become rather dependent on government intervention, some would say too dependent. As such well run business are seemingly at a disadvantage as market forces are being skewed the other way and intervention and state aid is enabling less well run ones to keep going and where intervention has been well meant such as with online booking it has been met by both apathy and anger in many quarters. For those that believe in a free market and business self-determination, should the government be propping up failing businesses or leaving the market to decide which ones offer value for money? Especially when some within the industry challenge such interventions; this alone must lead many who look after such interventions to question their merit!

 

So the cuts may be a blessing in disguise!

 

If nothing else it will show which aspects of the tourism services traditionally offered by LA's are truly valued by local businesses.

 

Tourist Information Centres are an interesting point in case as they seem to divide trade opinion and go to the heart of the problem with public funding. There are many well supported private TIC's up and down the country that manage to survive through trade subs and smart retailing, no doubt established because of an identified need by local businesses to enhance the visitor experience. However and interestingly, in those areas where there have been publically funded TICs, which are now under threat of closure because of budget cuts, it seems they are less valued. Whilst many in those areas are up in arms about the loss of such a 'vital service' and actively lobby to keep them publically funded; there is little actual appetite from local businesses to take on the overheads to retain the service.

 

Perhaps one reason is those TIC’s are not cost effective due to never having to trade on commercial lines.

 

It seems that where a service has been funded, rather than developed through an identified local need, they have less value to businesses and public funding may actually inhibit co-operative local working.

 

So perhaps the cuts will mean that more tourism businesses work together, identify real needs, see each other as potential allies rather than competitors and take charge of their destinations future, building it from the bottom up together.

 

By David Rutherford

 

Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) has been looking for park residents to register their interest in growing produce in allotments.

It said Highland Council had looked at the potential of also using care homes and hospital gardens in the area.

The efforts form part of the Cairngorms Food for Life project.

It was launched in September 2010 to reduce food miles and increase consumption of locally-grown and made produce.

Earlier this month, the project secured £58,300 of European funding.