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A new face! Or well, new? Perhaps not to everyone, because I have been working in the hospitality domain for about seven years now. Until recently I worked for a consultancy firm in Utrecht, but my love for Zeeland won out over distance and so in April this year I started as a researcher at HZ Knowledge Centre for Coastal Tourism. From the collaboration within CELTH - the Centre of Expertise for Leisure, Tourism & Hospitality - I stepped into the process of the Leidraad Bestemmingsmanagement, which was in the making at the time. The previous edition of R&T Magazine featured an extensive article on the guideline, which was published in early October.
An important starting point of the Guideline is an integral approach, which explicitly seeks the connection with policy fields that touch on tourism and leisure. By deploying the hospitality domain in the right way, the sector can, on the one hand, make an important contribution to all kinds of social issues, such as health and broad prosperity, alternative earning models for the agricultural sector, the sustainability transition, climate adaptation and preservation of facilities, heritage and nature. On the other hand, we must also actively lobby for the inclusion of the interests of the hospitality domain in tasks and plans of other policy fields, such as mobility, nature & landscape and spatial planning.
A question I regularly get from policy officials is: how do I achieve this integrality? Let's be honest: that doesn't happen overnight, of course. Yet there are municipalities and provinces that are already well on their way in this respect, and they too started somewhere. I have given some thought to where you could start, fuelled by the conversations I have had with governments in recent years. Some suggestions:
- Plan a few 1-on-1 meetings with colleagues from adjacent policy fields to get acquainted and hear what is going on back and forth. With any luck, you will immediately discover common ground on which you can build.
- Make clear what recreation and tourism can bring to other policy fields (what's in it for them), and also why it is important to include the hospitality domain in their own tasks.
- Are you engaged in a vision creation process? Invite other policy fields to provide input as well. In this way, it becomes more and more natural to seek each other out and make connections.
- The same applies vice versa. Make sure you know what is going on in other policy fields. Will there be a new mobility vision, or sustainability policy? Invite yourself to join it. A great opportunity to actively look for linking opportunities!
- Use integral processes such as the environment vision as a steppingstone. What common goals do we pursue and how can we jointly contribute to them? But also: how do we organise our instruments so that we can realise the goals of multiple policy fields?
- And last but not least; make sure you get your director on board. So that the integral ideas not only land on official soil, but are also supported by the administration.
Integrality is a challenge we all face as destinations. In conclusion, therefore, my appeal is: let us exchange experiences more often, so that we can learn better from each other. So also ask your fellow official from another municipality or province: 'Say, this integral approach, how do you achieve it now?'
Daniek Nijland
Theme manager Living Environment at CELTH (duo with Jeroen Klijs of BUas) & Researcher at HZ Research Centre for Coastal Tourism
