Our key messages include:
- Farming and profitable farm businesses are essential for rural tourism.
- Rural tourist marketing activity is shaped and informed by local farming activities, such as farmer’s markets and festivals; and characteristic local food.
- Tourism can help people understand farming and food provenance. It can help them appreciate the countryside, country life and rural traditions.
- Farms need to benefit more from rural tourism spending; farmers maintain the landscapes, footpaths and countryside people enjoy both within and outside tourist hotspots.
- There is potential to increase tourism activities on some farms, but this needs infrastructure (broadband and Wi-Fi) and access to targeted funding and marketing support.
- Local businesses need to be supported rather than taxed, with other funding such as tourism taxes investigated.
- Year round tourism can be useful for supporting rural businesses and services, farm shops offer such services.
- There is extensive footpath access to the countryside, with potential for better links to rural tourism opportunities and to ensure walkers can respect and enjoy the environment.
- Planning rules need to be flexible and sufficiently positive to encourage year round tourism.
- Government departments, in particular Defra need to promote farming and ensure farmers and growers have more of a say in plans for the countryside.
Tourism facts:
- 340m day trips were made to English countryside areas in 2014 with a total spend of £8.4bn.
- 25% of all day trips made in England were to the countryside.
- 32.6m overnight holiday stays were spent in rural England in 2014, valued at £2.2bn.
- 5% of farms host tourism accommodation or catering and 12% of farms sport and recreation activities.
- There are some 4,000 farm shops in the UK with turnovers ranging from £1,000 to more than £6 million per annum.
- Farmers care for around three-quarters of the British countryside and maintain, in in areas of open countryside, over 200,000km of public footpaths.
- Source of information: Visit England, (Defra Farm Business Survey 2014-2015).National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association
The NFU has produced a Pocket guide to the Iconic British Hills and Uplands.
Farmstay.co.uk (www.farmstay.co.uk) the only cooperative farming marketing brand/farm member based tourism marketing body.