The Galloway & Southern Ayrshire Biosphere Partnership has announced that it will be running its popular Biosphere Guide Training Course again in 2025, following previous years’ success. The course aims to support small business start-ups seeking to offer guided or tour-based visitor experiences within the UNESCO Biosphere region; two days of training will be held at St John’s Town of Dalry on 27th & 28th April and the course is free to attend.
Designed for local people who are passionate about Biosphere life, guide training has already helped launch a wide range of experience providers, building on their own local knowledge with learning on topics such as customer engagement, planning itineraries, and interpreting natural and cultural sites. All those completing the course will be able to use a new logo designed especially for Biosphere Guides, which incorporates the familiar sundew motif of the UK’s largest UNESCO Biosphere. As per the Biosphere’s remit to promote Global Goals there will be a strong focus on how to run a creative guiding enterprise that balances people, planet and profit, the ‘three pillars’ of sustainability.
The GSAB Partnership is a key player in destination marketing for the south of Scotland, working with a range of organisations including VisitScotland and the SSDA, as well as core funders South of Scotland Enterprise, D&G, South and East Ayrshire Councils. Existing Biosphere Guides and Biosphere Experiences have attracted international attention especially in recent years; Galloway and Southern Ayrshire is part of the award-winning Scotland’s UNESCO Trail, and just in the last two years has featured in both Rough Guides’ and National Geographic Traveller UK’s annual ‘must-see’ destination lists.
St John’s Town of Dalry is one of fourteen designated ‘Biosphere Communities’ which have an especially close relationship with the GSAB Partnership and are supported by the Biosphere’s officer team in local sustainable development initiatives, including community-led tourism. In the past Dalry has hosted Mhairi McAllan MSP for the launch of the State of the Biosphere Report, and a visit from the UK Ambassador to UNESCO, Anna Nsubuga, who stopped off to see the GCAT Donald Watson Trails as part of her regional tour in 2023.
April’s guide training course will be led by Stef Lauer of Hands On Consulting, who delivered Biosphere guide training pre-Covid and again at Kirroughtree and Straiton in 2022, then in Glentrool and Girvan last year. New Biosphere Guides receive a Certificate of Completion and when their businesses are ready to launch, will get a free listing in the online directory of Biosphere Experiences. There is also the opportunity to collaborate with local businesses awarded the Biosphere Certification Mark to create extended tours tailored for clients of international travel trade buyers, experiences which are already attracting tour operators from Europe and further afield.
Jenna Cains, the Biosphere’s Communities & Business Manager, says, “Since the Galloway & Southern Ayrshire UNESCO Biosphere came into being we have been striving to promote tourism as a force for good, with the potential to create meaningful connections between people and place as well as a raft of economic opportunities for our villages, towns, and businesses in all sectors. Our Biosphere Guides Training Course is a wonderful aspect of this, empowering local people to incorporate their passions into their jobs and helping new local enterprises tap into the ever-increasing visitor interest in the south of Scotland.”
Anyone interested in the Biosphere Guide Training Course is invited to email [email protected] to request more details and/or an application form. Applications will close on 28/03/25.
More information about the GSAB Partnership and the UNESCO Biosphere is available at www.gsabiosphere.org.uk.
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