What we want to achieve:
The National Park has a wide variety of well promoted and managed outdoor recreation opportunities providing for a range of abilities and interests.
There are more opportunities to enjoy water-based recreation and sporting activities across the Park’s lochs, rivers and coasts while maximising safety for all users and protecting the quality of water environments.
The Park’s visitor economy is thriving with more businesses and organisations working together to create a world-class destination.
The most popular parts of the National Park which experience pressures are managed to ensure that the quality of environment, visitor experience and community life are protected and enhanced.
People from a wider range of backgrounds are enjoying, valuing and helping manage the National Park. It is used more as a place for people to realise the personal health and wellbeing benefits of connecting with nature and being active in the outdoors.
National Parks are major tourism attractions in countries around the world. Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park itself attracts millions of visitors every year because of its world-renowned natural beauty, extensive outdoor recreation opportunities, its close proximity to the large population centres of central Scotland and accessibility by road and rail.
This volume of visitors presents us with both great opportunities and some significant challenges. Traditionally, the National Park’s visitor profile is predominantly high numbers of day visitors in periods of good weather.
Historically this has meant a highly seasonal, weather dependent visitor economy that creates significant visitor pressures in some of the most popular areas of the Park.
Without appropriate management these pressures have a negative effect on the experience for visitors to these popular areas. They can also affect the quality of environment, economy and community life.
In recent years significant progress has been made in placing Loch Lomond & The Trossachs on the world stage as a ‘must visit’ National Park. The previous National Park Partnership Plan 2012-2017, raised both the level of ambition and the quality of visitor experience in the National Park.
The visitor economy has benefited from the provision of a wider range of excellent tourism offerings and recreation opportunities, as well as the introduction of better management of areas facing pressures from significant visitor numbers. Businesses in the Park will need to keep adapting to changing expectations of both domestic and international visitors to continue to grow.
This plan aims to build on these achievements and further develop our focus on raising the level of ambition to ensure that the quality of visitor experience in the National Park is truly world class.
To realise our Visitor Experience vision we recognise that:
Reduce proportion arriving by car from 2015/16 Visitor Survey baseline of 85%
Reduce proportion exploring by car from 2015/16 Visitor Survey baseline of 62%
Increase proportion exploring by foot, water and bike from the 2015/16 Visitor Survey baselines of 39%, 26% and 8% respectively
Increase from 2015/16 Visitor Survey baselines of 24% for active sport and 54% for low-level walking
Increase from 2016 STEAM baseline of £340m by 2023
Increase in proportion of people reporting a good quality experience
Increase by 20% from the 2017/18 baseline by 2023
At least 2500 young people per year over the Plan period