Rural tourism in the Heart of England

Abstract

Although in many respects, the Heart of England region can hardly be called “peripheral”, it nevertheless displays many of the features of out‐of‐the‐way rural destinations. Describes the outcomes of a research project into training provision for the small rural tourism business operator. It has identified that the training and support on offer to the rural operator tend to be parochial, fragmented and unco‐ordinated. The research was instigated by Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies, a specialist in the provision of hospitality and tourism studies and ultimately aims at the development and implementation of a co‐ordinated training programme for this sector. By pointing up the poor quality of such provision in an essentially central location, the paper invites the questions: how much worse the situation must be in truly peripheral locations, and what action can be taken to improve the situation.