Scenarios for VVV Waterland van Friesland

Five years after its establishment, VVV Waterland van Friesland aims to renew its strategic policy document and gain inspiration for its future development through a scenario study conducted by the European Tourism Futures Institute, with 2035 as the time horizon.

What is the motivation for the project?

The project was initiated because the policy period of the current strategic document ends in 2025, its implementation is well advanced, and therefore, the document needs renewal.

What problem does the project address?

The project does not aim to solve a problem but rather to provide inspiration for the management of VVV Waterland van Friesland.

VVV Waterland van Friesland has expressed the desire to generate inspiration for the further development of this Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) through a scenario study. Key questions include: what kind of organization does VVV want to be? How does it foresee the future of its current core tasks (namely, networking, marketing, information provision, and hospitality)? The focus is on 2035. Since the interests of its members are central, it is desirable to involve them closely in this study.

Who is the project team?

The project team consisted of Albert Postma, Ben Wielenga, Noël Middelhoek, and Jorrit van de Waal. No students were involved in the project.

How does the project team approach this?

The project followed these steps:

Identifying key developments influencing tourism and recreation in Friesland, the so-called driving forces of change.
Ranking these driving forces by their level of influence and unpredictability for 2035, as assessed by the board and members of the VVV, to determine the key uncertainties—driving forces with both the greatest influence and the highest uncertainty.
Defining and elaborating on four future scenarios for 2035—four extreme sketches of recreation and tourism in 2035.
Evaluating the robustness of current policies in light of each of the four scenarios (so-called wind tunneling) and identifying necessary actions to make the core tasks of the VVV more future-proof; this evaluation took place in two workshops, one with the board (Pollepleats Westhem) and one with VVV members (Lokaal55, Sneek).
Integrating and translating the identified actions per core task into a coherent advisory report.
Reporting and evaluation meeting.

What are the main (or preliminary) results?

Two key uncertainties emerged:

Climate Change: One extreme outcome could be that South European holidaymakers increasingly seek destinations further north, or that nature and landscape conservation policies in the province significantly influence regional recreation and tourism.

Digitization/Mobile Society: One extreme outcome could be that technology becomes increasingly centralized with one or a few major players, or that technology remains highly decentralized and is used in a fragmented manner by individual businesses and their customers.

The combination of these extremes results in four possible future scenarios that define the probable playing field for the VVV:

Busy and Dynamic
Natural Limits
Luxury Landscapes
Cooling Entertainment.

Foresight through scenarios was used to evaluate how the core tasks of information provision, hospitality, networking, marketing, and development relate to the future and what measures are needed to enhance their resilience if necessary. Actions were defined for each core task to help the VVV prepare for this future landscape.