The North Pennines – a regenerative destination?
- Thursday 13 October 2022: 10am to 3pm (arrival, registration, tea/coffee from 9.40am)
- Melmerby Village Hall (Cumbria), £10 attendance cost (includes lunch and refreshments).
What does sustainable tourism mean to you? What about responsible tourism? Nature tourism? Activity tourism? There’s now a new ‘kid on the block’ with Regenerative Tourism as the new buzz word in tourism circles.
At our 2022 Tourism Forum we’re asking if a regenerative approach is the way forward for the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and UNESCO Global Geopark? And if so – what does that mean for destination management? For business operation and future development?
This will be the first face-to-face North Pennines Tourism Forum since we went ‘digital’ in 2019 in Blanchland. It promises to be a thought-provoking event, packed with networking opportunities and chances to influence future thinking.
Keynote speaker
Our keynote speaker is Vicky Smith – Founder of Earth Changers. Vicky has worked in tourism since the mid-90s, and sustainable tourism since the mid-00s, in destinations, marketing and ecommerce. She’s headed up operations abroad and online for major tour operators like Tui and Virgin Holidays, online travel agents and media, in package and specialist holidays, ski, tours, charity challenges and voluntourism, NGOs and sustainable tourism accreditation organisations.
She’s a qualified ranger in Africa, charity challenge tour leader, and acclaimed academic for her published MSc Responsible Tourism Management thesis on the online marketing and greenwashing of volunteer tourism. In 2019 she was invited to be an Ambassador for the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Year of Green Action and won the Travelmole UK Responsible Travel & Tourism Best Website. She currently sits on the Trustee board for charity SEED Madagascar, and helps the development team for the Global and European Ecotourism Networks.
Her sustainable tourism start-up, www.Earth-Changers.com, features the life-changing places, world-changing people and extraordinary experiences with purpose of some of the best positive impact, sustainable, regenerative tourism around the globe.
Dr Emma Pope will look at regenerating our relationship with nature through tourism. Emma has a PhD in Transformational Adventure Tourism and is passionate about the meaningful and memorable experiences that can happen through tourism and recreation. She uses the perspective of nature connection to explore how time spent outdoors can contribute to personal wellbeing and create an ongoing sense of care for the places and nature that provides this. The industry response will be provided by Sue Clarke from Cumbria Tourism.
There will also be an opportunity to find out more about recent and future tourism work from the North Pennines AONB Partnership – including the Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme.
Get involved
The day will include an opportunity to directly contribute to our collective thinking on how the North Pennines could adopt a more regenerative approach to tourism. We will do this in a number of small breakout groups.
The 2022 North Pennines Tourism Forum is supported by the AONB Partnership’s Fellfoot Forward Landscape Partnership Scheme. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
