2023 highlights from the Acorn Tourism team

It’s safe to say that 2023 was a busy year for the team here at Acorn Tourism Consulting and Acorn T-Stats, a year that overall saw a continuation of several long-term large projects. We also worked on several smaller projects for both UK and international clients alongside completing a record of 24 market intelligence reports for the Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries (CBI).

But before we talk about our project work, we were delighted to hear that after five years of Green Tourism certification, in February we were awarded with a Gold award for our efforts towards sustainable development within the tourism sector. Not only this, but we also published our Carbon Action Plan as part of the requirements as a signatory for the Glasgow Declaration, setting measurements, goals and targets to support our journey in carbon reduction.

Our Director, Alison Burgh also completed her first full year as the Sustainability Lead for the Tourism Management Institute (TMI). As part of her role, she successfully set up a sustainability working group, developed an extensive resource library, and produced a carbon action plan for the institute. Alison also hosted several different webinars concerning sustainability, all of which received positive feedback and great interest from TMI members.

Additional to these events for TMI, our directors had a busy events schedule, representing clients and Acorn at several speaking events.

Some of Alison Burgh’s event highlights included:

• Hosting a Wellness webinar for CBI attended by tour operators from 15 countries
• Attending ITB as a panellist speaking about adventure and cycling tourism
• Panellist on achieving the vision of responsible travel in the Near East, at the ATTA Adventure Elevate Near East trade event in Amman

Some of Kevin’s event highlights included:

• Representing T-Stats at the TMI annual conference presenting to members on interpreting data.
• Running a three-day tourism statistics workshop in Sierra Leone to help the country develop its understanding of the sector.

Now on to an overview of some our ongoing project work from 2023!

UK based projects

We love working for clients within the UK and supporting them in building a sustainable tourism sector in the country where we operate from. This year we have completed or have been working on a number of UK based projects that have included:

• Sustainability tourism landscape in England – certification and support
• Developing short breaks in Chesterfield
• Staffordshire Sustainable Tourism Action Plan
• Creating the Cumberland place story
• Scoping and feasibility study for their 10-year vision for RHS Garden Rosemoor
• Market needs assessment for Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation

International projects

Additionally, we have completed several projects internationally, including a couple of long-term projects that are still ongoing.  These have included:

• New sustainable tourism destinations in selected regions of Uzbekistan 
• Implementation of inbound visitor survey and TSA for Tunisia 
• Development of a strategic plan for sustainable tourism for Sierra Leone
• Feasibility study for the development of a cultural heritage research and visitor centre on the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia
• Sustainable Marketing and Communications Manual for National Tourism Boards for Tourlink and ECEAT
• Colombia community social media marketing workshops (end of project), Tourism Routes for Forests and Peace
• Jordan Sustainable Tourism Programme, 2021-25 for the CBI

T-Stats update

It has also been a very busy year for the T-Stats team, with lots of travelling around the UK to meet with current platform users, which included trips to Newcastle, Lincoln, East Suffolk, and the Falkland Islands.

We also undertook a comprehensive Feasibility Study for a Data Hub system in Devon and Somerset. Additionally, our team hosted two Client Forum sessions, providing the opportunity to update clients and users on new developments to the software and allowed for conversations and best practice sharing.

Both Acorn Tourism Consulting and T-stats have some very exciting new projects that we will be announcing over the next couple of months so do keep tuned in for more information!

Please feel free to contact us and discuss any of the work we have been doing, or ways in which we might be able to support some of your ongoing or new projects. Our contact details can be found here.