Alison Caffyn

Alison is an experienced tourism consultant who specialises in:

• Tourism development and management
  From writing a new tourism strategy or developing new tourism products
  to addressing visitor management challenges.

• Rural regeneration and market towns
  Integrating tourism as part of a rural regeneration strategy or improving the visitor product and welcome in market towns.

• Sustainable tourism
  Encouraging tourism businesses to go greener, developing sustainable
  forms of tourism, greener tourism transport and marketing.

• Outdoor leisure and recreation
  Developing and marketing walking, cycling and riding holidays, making the
  most of rights of way and access, managing recreational conflicts and impacts.

• Urban and rural interdependencies
  Strengthening links between town and countryside, urban-rural tourism
  and leisure trips and spatial patterns.

• Slow tourism
  The recent trend towards tourism which makes real connections between people, places, heritage, food and the environment.

Alison is based on the Herefordshire/Shropshire border, with easy access to the West Midlands and Wales. She has worked in research and development for two Regional Tourist Boards, as a local authority tourism development officer and as a lecturer in tourism and leisure at the University of Birmingham. She has nearly 10 years consultancy experience and has worked for a wide range of clients including Advantage West Midlands, the Countryside Agency, many local authorities, Yorkshire Dales National Park and the European Union, as well as individual businesses and local tourism partnerships. She has a particular interest in partnership approaches and involving local communities and businesses in regeneration and tourism projects.

Alison has a degree in geography from the University of Durham and a masters degree in tourism and leisure form the University of Birmingham. She is a member of the National Trust’s West Midlands Regional Committee and on the Partnership Board of the Shropshire Hills AONB. She has been a member of the Tourism Society for 15 years and is a member of their Tourism Consultants Group which operates a code of practice for consultants.