Projects

Durbuy is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Walloon Region. The smallest town in the world benefits from a strong private-sector presence and meets its public throughout the year, including at Christmas, with a welcoming craft market!

Challenge

The local authority hired IDEA Consult in association with Baumans Deffet as architect and town planner to :

• Make the town’s current facilities coherent and easy to understand;
• Guide future developments (accommodation, attractions, shops, etc.)
• Develop an events policy.

The observation was made that there is too much tourism in the old town and in connection with Adventure Park, resulting in a growing imbalance between tourist beds and resident beds in the villages of the area. The challenge is therefore to protect the daily lives of local residents while inviting visitors to discover this magnificent region. The local authority wants to transform the destination into a sustainable one.

Approach & results

The assignment was carried out in a fairly traditional way, with a diagnostic phase to refine and enrich the issues identified by the local authority at the outset, followed by a phase to draw up a strategic plan, broken down into a prioritised action plan.

This work was supported by a major involvement of stakeholders, through bilateral meetings and then co-production workshops. Meetings were held with local and supra-local public tourism bodies as well as representatives of the private sector, both in terms of accommodation and attractions.

The strategy that has been put in place focuses on 3 priorities:

• Identity and positioning: ‘Grand Durbuy , nature territory in transition’, to encompass the entire territory while retaining the flagship brand, to highlight its major assets and also its ambition to preserve it, improve accessibility, etc. Repositioning also involves embodying the brand for selected target audiences, particularly local residents.

• Spatial project: The spatial project has been drawn up with a view to concentration (by focusing on projects already in progress), making the most of what is already there, responding to environmental issues and reducing the negative effects of tourism, including mobility. The Ourthe is presented as the backbone of a more sustainable form of mobility, with the Barvaux station linked to the redeveloped town centre by a stronger link with the water, and a doubling of the Durbuy-Barvaux Ravel towards autonomous shuttle mobility, which would eventually reduce the number of car parks in the town centre. The spatial project embodies the new positioning, in terms of the link with nature but also in terms of welcoming visitors, with the proposal to create in the centre of Durbuy, in one of its iconic heritage buildings, a real experiential visitor centre that inspires and makes you want to discover the rest of the area.

• Organisational project: this has 2 main objectives
  • Improving promotion and reception: currently divided between three tourist boards, essentially run by shopkeepers and private tourism operators, who do not work together, it is necessary for the municipality to regain control of its project.
  • Supervising tourism: somewhere between mediation and control, with a role for the local development agency in supporting projects and, at the same time, very clear positions to be taken by the municipality: in favour of events in line with the positioning, against projects that set up in forest or agricultural areas, etc. A quota of tourist beds in the villages has been set up, which should be increased, and the issue of second homes being converted into cottages should be dealt with.

The three priorities are broken down into 14 action sheets detailing the project.