National Forest destination management plan

Client:

National Forest Company

The challenge:

In 2014, the National Forest Company commissioned TEAM Tourism, in partnership with Amion Consulting and Hotel Solutions, to prepare a destination management plan and an accompanying implementation plan.

The brief was to develop a plan that provided a long term vision of what the National Forest as a destination should be offering. This was focused on positioning in the UK market place (in terms of its markets and the essence of its offer and brand) and the product development needed.

Services provided:

To provide the economic, social and cultural context for the strategy, TEAM undertook desk research into product offer and the performance and profiles of potential target markets. A programme of stakeholder engagement, through one-to-one interviews and strategy development workshops, was organised.

TEAM ran an online survey of tourism operators in the National Forest and held a number of detailed strategy planning discussions with senior management of the National Forest Company.

Outcome:

A destination management plan that presented ideas for how best to develop the visitor economy in the short term, making the most of existing assets. This was then translated into a three-year Implementation Plan that outlined key projects, lead organisations, budgets etc.