Farming today is more than simply growing your product and taking it to market.
There is a growing incentive for farmers and landholders to ‘value add’ to their agricultural product to increase on farm returns. Utilising land to its best advantage through sustainable tourism is one way to do this.
As the sustainable tourism market expands, so too does the support available to help farmers and landholders become a part of this growing market. Two online services to help farmers understand sustainable tourism and enter the market are YouCamp and Earth Check.
YouCamp can be considered the AirBnB of camping. Providing a platform for finding and booking camping sites on private land, YouCamp offers a convenient management system for farmers who are wanting to open up parts of their property for private camping.
Behind the YouCamp platform are website founders James and Prue Woodford, who say the idea was born around a campfire on the edge of a forest on private land. Realising that private properties provided a great alternative to commercial van parks and national parks, they set about creating a space that would become a private land sharing community.
The opportunities available through private land camping are not restricted to land holders. A recent article on Australian Farmers explores the possibilities for not just land owners but others in the community to support a sustainable tourism industry through camping on private land.
Earth Check is a dedicated website for working sustainably. It offers a broad range of resources and certifications for sustainability in tourism. They are self described as:
“the world’s leading scientific benchmarking certification and advisory group for the travel and tourism industry.”
They offer a wide range of products and services, and research to support tourism businesses to operate sustainably. Their products and services include accreditation programs, benchmarking, research and auditing.
