Fresh Air is Free

Sustainable tourism charity launches new Lakeland campaign to reduce car travel from 50 miles a day

Sustainable tourism charity Nurture Lakeland has recently launched an new campaign called ‘Fresh Air is Free’ to reduce car travel in tourism in the Lake District. The campaign will provide local accommodation providers with free information to help their guests give their car a holiday during their stay. 

Currently most visitors to the Lakes drive an astonishing 50 miles per day on average once they have arrived for their holiday. Yet 48% of holiday makers say that they would prefer to give up their car entirely when they arrive in the Lake District. So why do visitors travel so many miles?

Fresh Air is Free has found that in most cases this is down to a lack of information about the wonderful places they can visit right on the doorstep of their accommodation.

To remedy the problem Fresh Air is Free project staff will be working with local hoteliers, B&B owners and campsite managers to identify what it is their visitors love to do. Nurture Lakeland will then produce bespoke mini-guides to help visitors do those things without using their car. The mini-guides will be produced for environmentally aware accommodation providers who are supporting conservation, entirely free of charge.

Fresh Air is Free provides a unique solution to reducing visitor car travel and their carbon footprint, as it reaches tourists within their accommodation and provides solutions appropriate to them and most importantly, desirable to them. Working with accommodation businesses is an excellent location for delivering resources such as these, because, as Amy McLoughlin from Nurture Lakeland says: "They have a vested interest in the environment, in carbon reduction, congestion reduction and could be the most effective way of disseminating information to guests and providing sensible alternatives to car travel".

The campaign is working with businesses in the four popular tourist hubs of Ambleside, Keswick, Bowness-on-Windermere and Coniston. Sustainability staff from Nurture Lakeland will be working with a collection of accommodation providers from each area, providing them with free bespoke resources to help guests explore the area by the best means possible – on foot, by boat or bike.

The aim of the campaign is to reduce visitor car travel by 20% within participating businesses. The local benefits from this will help protect the beautiful landscape that draws millions of people each year, safeguard Cumbria’s delicate environment and improve the visitor experience by reducing congestion.

The campaign, along with other sustainable tourism initiatives, recently received international recognition and won Nurture Lakeland the high profile Virgin Holiday’s Responsible Tourism Award for Best Destination. This prestigious award was granted for the dedication of Nurture Lakeland to promoting sustainable tourism throughout Cumbria, safeguarding the environment and the economy.

Valere Tjolle
  Valere Tjolle is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite 2011 – latest news on the suite at
 www.travelmole.com/stories/1145712.php