Step 3 - Identify Key Issues

Overview

In this step you relate tourism to your local area and begin to identify the key issues and opportunities.

Why is this step important?

Like most projects you need an idea to start with and having a starting point will make it much easier to engage other people and take a project forward. Equally you need to know what others think, as they will have a stake in how your destination and project develops, even if they aren’t actively involved in the delivery.

Identifying the issues

Initially you don’t need detailed research on local trends or in-depth analysis of all the potential issues affecting your community. What you do need is a broad grasp of what really needs addressing as a starting point. With this understanding you will find it much easier to engage people, attract members and support to your group, and decide the direction your work will take. To do this you need to get people’s views.

Consultation and participation are buzzwords that have been in use in work with communities for over 20 years and can put people off. However, there is a lot of experience and many useful techniques out there that can help to bring a wide group of people together to take part in decision making and get their views heard. This can bring greater support to a project and make it more likely to succeed.

The process

Start by informally discussing with several of the key stakeholders in your community such as; accommodation providers, restaurant owners, pub landlords, attraction managers, the Chamber of Commerce or traders organisation, or prominent local retailers. Get a feel for how these people see tourism locally and what they would like to see as improvements.

Also talk to those with a remit for tourism in your area, such as; your local authority tourism officer, your regional tourist board, or Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) units.

At this stage it is often useful to bring all the potential stakeholders together in a consultation exercise. There are a number of useful resources on the web that describe activities you can use to encourage participation, these include a SWOT analysis. This is simply getting together to make a list of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats relating to your place and tourism there, as you see them. The SWOT analysis helps you to identify where you are, what you have that is good and you can build upon and what may be missing, that you may need to work on.

Use a technique like a SWOT analysis to concentrate everyone’s thoughts in a structured way and then follow-up with a less structured brainstorming session. This is an effective and simple way to get everyone involved in thinking about what you actually could or need to do. It is also useful within the brainstorm to think about who visitors to your place are likely to be, as identifying your target markets will form a key pillar on which your project is based.

When holding meetings with a larger group of people, make sure you plan the activities to involve everyone and get a variety of views, not just from those with the loudest voice, and remember to record people’s views as accurately as possible. Advertise your meeting well in advance as widely as you can with posters, in local newspapers and magazines, information on community websites, flyers in shops and businesses and perhaps personal invitations to as many groups, individuals and businesses as you think may be interested.

After the event take some time as a group to review the findings and try and distil them down to the key issues affecting your locality. Write up a short report on the views and thoughts expressed along with your distilled list and circulate it to all those who attended and any other relevant stakeholders.

Where can I get more information?

For a good overview of consultation in a tourism context look at:

Tourism Guidance for Market Towns by Tourism South East (pdf file 4mb) >>

Rural Area Tourism Guidance Notes by Tourism South East (pdf file 900kb) >>

For a guide describing a number of useful tools and activities for participation, and how to choose which one to use, see:

Particpation Works! From www.neweconomics.org (.doc file 356kb) >>

For a description of brainstorming, see:

www.mindtools.com/brainstm >>

A useful example of a SWOT analysis can be found at:

www.breconbeacons.org >>

There is more on target markets on pages 11 & 12 of the Hidden Britain South East marketing guide:

Download the HBSE Marketing Toolkit as PDF (1.5mb) >>

Your local Rural Community Council has community development workers who may be able to assist with community meetings and have many skills in facilitating group consultation & particpation techniques. Visit:

www.sercc.org.uk >>

www.acre.org.uk >>

Downloads & More Help

If you require advice or guidance on any stage, why not consider working with Hidden Britain?

Go to Contact Form >>

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