During lockdown, Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) set up a Tourism Commission of visitor economy businesses to advise on a series of short and medium term recommendations, subsequently allocating £12m of support to the visitor economy sector, £11.5m in the form of grants to businesses and £500,000 to deliver those recommendations. A whole series of product development has been instigated, with key initiatives outlined here.
Green Tourism Toolkit
Launched in March 2022, the Lincolnshire Green Tourism Toolkit is designed to help tourism businesses with their sustainability journey, one step at a time. Green or sustainable tourism is about making better places for people to live and visit, and addresses changing consumer trends, attracts staff, reduces operational costs and negative environmental impacts, helping to ensure the local area thrives. After all, who needs to look after Lincolnshire more than the visitor economy sector?
Increasingly our visitors are seeking accommodation and attractions that are sustainable and aware of their carbon footprint and there is a huge opportunity to increase revenue through satisfying changing consumer preference.
The toolkit, together with videos, case studies and downloadable templates can be found here together with our other business support to the sector.
Lincolnshire Bird Trail
The great outdoors, particularly walking and cycling, is a strong theme for Lincolnshire and working in partnership, LCC have been leading the way. Visit Lincoln is leading on cycling and LCC on walking. For a long time, it has been known that Lincolnshire is one of the most under-watched counties for bird watching and with a vast array of feathered beauties residing along our shores, lakes, woodlands, and gardens, we are about to shout loud about the birding opportunities.
With the initial support of Lincolnshire Bird Club, the Greater Lincolnshire Nature Partnership, the LWT and RSPB, LCC's first offering will be a Coastal Bird Trail to be launched at Easter.
Appealing to a Springwatch audience, and by working with the people who really know the best kept ornithological secrets, we will be giving an insider’s view as to where to go, when to go and what you will see. The Lincolnshire coast is a migration super-highway, particularly during the autumn, winter and spring, so having local birding knowledge gives our visitors a special experience.
A new bird watching area of Visit Lincolnshire is also being created with the Little Egret chirping as the striking brand logo.
WWW.VISITLINCOLNSHIRE.COM
As included in another section of this edition, lockdown was the catalyst for this site being redeveloped, with developing ongoing and new areas such as the bird watching launch described above going live at Easter and forms the consumer facing website. Another resource is www.business.visitlincolnshire.com which is designed to support businesses in this sector as a response to businesses struggling to access grants. It is tailored to the hospitality and tourism sectors and went live in late 2021 featuring over 60 video master-classes checklists, fact sheets and downloadable templates to support businesses at all stages of their journey. New areas to follow include business tourism, pub diversification, pitching/presentation skills and a teachers resource pack on careers in tourism.
