Sustainable Tourism
News and Events
Rural Economic Development: Calyx has formed a joint venture with the Institute for Washington’s Future to work on rural economic development and its connection to agritourism, nature-based tourism, local food hub development and Latino social justice. IWF is a well respected NGO in Washington, having accomplished a great deal over 15 years in renewable energy for farms, Latino social justice, and sustainable rural strategies. Calyx just completed a farmland acquisition strategy for IWF and the team is gearing up to work on a five county tourism planning project in South Central Washington (contingent on initial grant funding).
Linking Walkable Communities with Tourism: We are pleased to have found Lisa Quinn from FeetFirst, an energetic non-profit dedicated to creating walkable communities. Calyx and Feet First are partnering to identify how walkable communities can help advance sustainable tourism, experiencing place with a new set of eyes while tapping into better health and using residents as tourism ambassadors.
Scales of Tourism: Calyx continues its work with the West Seattle Chamber and Sustainable West Seattle to explore new models for neighborhood level tourism. We are seeking funding for our sustainable tourism strategy which will create more permeability between visitors and residents, reduce pressure on Alki as a tourism destination and create a more resilient community for emergency preparedness.
Market Models for Working Lands: Calyx is in early stages of development of a Snoqualmie Valley project with the Cascade Harvest Coalition and Northwest Natural Resource Group that will use a combined market-stewardship-tourism approach to protect working lands while creating new revenue potential through direct marketing. This could be a groundbreaking approach for preventing land conversion to development in inappropriate areas.
Parks Programming and Architecture: We have developed a practice area of helping cash strapped parks develop innovative programming that can be used for both local residents and tourists. These programs dovetail nicely with landscape architecture, sustainable architecture and using land as a revenue source without capital investments.
Trade Association Development: We worked for over 18 months with EverGreen Escapes to create the PURE Travel Collaborative, a regional sustainable travel trade association. Calyx worked from the beginning to craft mission, vision, operating documents, and outreach strategies and is currently working on an environmental assessment tool for membership.
Innovative Tool: We have also recently acquired the exclusive license for Washington, Oregon and Northern California for a program designed to offer Virtual Tours of numerous places (such as a winery, historic sites, restaurants, hotels, etc.) all on a single web page. This makes viewing what your town, region, or business offers simple for visitors to navigate without hopping back and forth between web pages. The page will reside on any organization's own web site. It is so easy to create and update that it will save organizations lots of time and money.