Discover Thurso Update
Occasionally in this world of community development so we can make sure that we get the future right, we need to go a little quiet while we assess and plan towards the future. As many of you will know our tourism project Discover Thurso was only funded with a Tourism Development Officer until the end of October last year. As an organisation we then had Christmas, Christmas lights and a lot of work to do to try and secure our main Development Officer role. So outwardly where tourism was concerned it might appear not much has been happening.
Inwardly, we have been working very hard on the internal mechanisms to support the Discover Thurso going forwards. The issues such as how we build it into a sustainable product that isn’t reliant on funding so it is always there promoting the town. We’ve been very fortunate to currently be working with Just Enterprise on Website review, early business planning advice and a general review of where we are up to this date. Just Enterprise is delivered across Scotland by a partnership of third sector organisations. Started in 2011, Just Enterprise provides fully-funded business support to the enterprising third sector. In other words, as we recently had a wee debate on our Facebook page about what the third sector are, Just Enterprise provide business support to those of us who are trying to build businesses that are not for profit, their profits are for social purpose.
The upshot is that we are reviewing all of our strategy and making sure we are ticking all the boxes we need to be. We are pretty sure that we are and Scott, our Tourism Development Office until October left us in good shape, but planning, planning, planning and double checking is really worth doing at this stage so we can create the maximum benefit for tourism in Thurso and the wider Caithness area.
You may have also noticed over on social media that Joan has been popping up on the Highlands and Enterprise social media pages for being part of the first cohort on a programme run by the Social Enterprise Academy called Community Leaders in Tourism. This is a fairly intensive course with 3 residentials and online learning with supplemented webinars. The plan in this programme developed by HIE, Scottish Tourism Alliance and Social Enterprise Academy is to have a three cohorts of Community Leaders training, recognising the key role communities are taking in Tourism. So far Joan has been to Skye, Loch Lomond and in March will be visiting Stranraer. (We make sure she works on the train so has no excuses of a jolly!) The learning has been really valuable in forming our future plans and we’ll be taking some of it to all of you in some new workshops we have coming up. All of the key themes but a little more in depth, partnership working - it has never been more crucial for us to work together, slow tourism, promoting ourselves and really looking at who we are as a destination. We’re putting together a small working group to look at all these issues and make sure we have them really nailed down, as well as speaking to partners and potential partners. Being ambitious for the north in the tourism sector.
It isn’t all tea, cake and nice trips….checking out Public Toilets and pressure points at Loch Lomond
Our last bit of news on Discover Thurso is that thanks to Highland LEADER we have been able to access a small amount of additional funding. This means we can run our localisation workshops again, reprint the Discover Thurso booklet and also run a small mentoring scheme for businesses and organisations on how to promote, get those free tourism listings on Visit Scotland and how to put adverts and posters together along with the all important social media.
We’re putting the final touches and confirming dates and then it is all systems go. With so many Development Trusts and community organisations across the North now looking to tourism, now is a really exciting time for us to be promoting Thurso. and the wider Caithness area.
If you need a reminder of our draft Tourism Development plan you can find it below. If you would like to get in touch to talk all things or anything tourism or have an interest in workshops and the mentoring scheme please get in touch with Joan on 01847 867050 or via email to joan@thursocdt.co.uk