The last full day of the Better Conversations Bus Tour began, like many other days, with a Business Breakfast – this time in Ullapool. The meeting was well attended and had a different feel to other similar meetings. The group was diverse and each participant came with a different set of experiences and knowledge of business initiatives and prospects in and around Ullapool. This was combined with an awareness of some of the challenges businesses and the community in Ullapool face going into the future. These challenges were approached with a sense of entrepreneurialism and participants were ready to talk to one another about what could be done in the near future to solve some of them.
After this meeting, the bus continued to Gairloch where the evening was spent talking about the market for tourism in the Highlands, a conversation that, like others we had had during the week, kept returning to the belief in the great potential for tourism in the Highlands. One of the questions that occupied participants in Friday’s events was how to create a sustainable and diverse economy linked to tourism in the Highlands. There was a sense of encouragement in approaching this challenge, not alone, but with others within each community and with other communities in neighbouring areas, where ideas of best practice in the region might be developed.
