Taking Time Out – Dartmoor National Park
Here’s a short test. As you read this, stop and contemplate the plans for your day – what you’ve done so far, what you’ve yet to do and what you need to do but probably won’t have time to do. Does anything in your day involve ‘taking time out?’ And by that, I don’t mean […]
Local Travel On A More Personal Level
There are trends and cycles in tourism just as with other areas of influence. One of the current shifts is towards a more authentic experience. It’s there in these three tag lines – ‘travel like a local’, ‘don’t just visit, live it’, and ‘be where you belong’. All from three quite major tour or accommodation […]
The Beginning – Take Small Steps And Eventually You’ll Get There
As part of my business philosophy, I always try to meet with our guests when I am in Mongolia. True, I often look quite mad – arriving on foot or by mountain bike (when it hasn’t been stolen). Slightly red faced as I’m usually late. I guess I don’t come across as a boss or […]
Making & Embracing Mistakes
As someone who works in the tourism industry, I’m often struck by the power that negative TripAdvisor reviews have over bookings. It seems that many companies are terrified of receiving negative feedback—scared that a mistake will drive potential customers away. But here’s the thing: I’ve always believed that without mistakes, we cannot learn. It’s human […]
Eternal Landscapes Dartmoor – How An Idea Was Born
The management plan for Dartmoor National Park is the single most important plan for the future of the park. It is the strategic plan which will guide decisions affecting Dartmoor’s future over the next five years. Look at it and you will see that listed are key drivers and challengers under three sections – Sustain, […]
Dartmoor National Park – Your Introduction
Dartmoor National Park (DNP) is a glorious wild open space of 368 square miles. It has extensive wild and open (and windswept) moorland – a large part of which (65%) is made up of granite. The moor is capped with many exposed high granite hilltops known as tors. There are over 160 tors on Dartmoor […]
Supporting Local – Why is it important to support local businesses?
Let’s start this post with a recent experience I had. I’m originally from the rural county of Devon in the UK, based in a small town on the edge of Dartmoor National Park. I return there when I’m not in Mongolia, and it was during one of my visits that I had an eye-opening moment […]
Managing Menstruation in Extreme Environments: A Conservation By Jess
Menstruation. It’s not a topic that typically comes to mind when you think of adventure travel or even Mongolia, but that’s exactly where this blog post is heading. You might wonder why I’m bringing this up, especially in the context of our work here at Eternal Landscapes Mongolia (EL). The MMiEEP (Managing Menstruation in Extreme […]
Combatting overtourism in Mongolia
Overtourism is a term that hit the headlines in the summer of 2017 – look for articles on the internet by media and the travel industry on the consequences of tourism on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, the effect of Airbnb on communities in Barcelona, the impact of cruise ship tourism to Venice and Dubrovnik. Even Iceland has expressed concerns.