Cairngorms National Park gearing up to welcome return of visitors
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Preparations are well advanced in the Cairngorms to welcome back visitors, two leading organisations have revealed.
The Cairngorms National Park Authority and Cairngorms Business Partnership has said this will be done in a way that gives confidence to communities, employees and visitors.
The Scottish Government yesterday announced at Holyrood a target date of July 15 to reopen the tourism and hospitality sector in Scotland.
The CBP and the CNPA said for many weeks now they have been working with a wide variety of businesses, partners and stakeholders to ensure the area is as ready as possible to welcome visitors safely.
Under the banner #CairngormsTogether, the initiative is based on four key principles for communities, visitors and businesses to consider: Know the guidelines, Plan ahead, Be flexible and Be kind.
Mark Tate, CBP chief executive, said: “Visitors are an essential part of our life in the Cairngorms, we have missed them.
"The impact on businesses, employees and communities of not having them here has been devastating; it will take time to recover and some businesses will be unable to do so.
"Planning to welcome visitors back has been at the centre of our thinking for over two months now and from the very start it has been clear to us and our members that when we do so, we need to do it in a way that gives confidence to our communities, our employees and our visitors.
"We have been working with businesses, on a sector and cross sector basis to figure out how we can do this.”
Mr Tate continued: “We recently conducted a visitor survey and the response was overwhelming, we have an incredibly loyal and trusting visitor base who want to come back.
"They want to protect the communities that are an essential part of their experience and they want to help businesses.
"They share our fears about people respecting social distancing and staying safe and they have fears that their favourite experiences simply won’t exist because businesses here have been so badly hit.”
CNPA chief executive Grant Moir said they were working with partners to re-open facilities ASAP including car parking, toilets and litter bins.
He said : “Over the past difficult months the response of communities in the Cairngorms has been truly humbling from delivering food and essentials for those shielding to organising litter picks to keep the place we all love looking as special as ever. "Communities pulling together is so important to get us through this and CNPA is doing all it can to help and get things done.
“Alongside working with the CBP we are working, through our visitor management group, with public and private sector partners to help them get essential facilities such as car parking, litter collection and toilets up and running as soon as possible.
"We have also employed seven seasonal rangers to support existing ranger services who will be on the ground ensuring that people have the right information, based around the four communication principles, to stay safe and do the right thing.”
Over the past fortnight Mr Moir, Mr Tate and Janet Hunter, CNPA board member and chair of the Cairngorms Tourism Emergency Response Group, have held a series of community consultation meetings.
In these, they have talked about the #CairngormsTogether framework and heard directly from local residents, community councils and local Highland councillors about their hopes and fears for reopening.
Ms Hunter said: “Our communities clearly have concerns about welcoming visitors back; they want to be sure that critical facilities will be open and that visitors will follow the guidelines on social distancing when shopping for example.
"Many of the visitors are likely to be coming to the Cairngorms National Park for the first time and so we are working hard to promote both responsible behaviour and responsible access via the Outdoor Access Code.”
The CNPA has a Covid-19 information and advice webpage which is updated regularly and the CBP is developing websites and information sources that will be available to visitors to see at a glance what facilities, attractions, restaurants, bars and cafes are open.
It will also highlight what restrictions might be in place to protect communities, employees and visitors.
The two organisations are also working on real time information sources to enable people to be flexible and find their own safe and responsible space in the UK’s largest national park.
