Texel as Host

1. General Introduction
2. Current socio-technical system

Texel is a small island in the Dutch Waddenzee, where each year in summer every second person on a island is a tourist. This puts a lot of strain onto the natural resources of the island. The local people, or Texelaars, live quite an environmentally friendly life. They are used to the limited resources and are very proud of the beautiful nature on the island, so they do quite a lot to sustain the environment.

Presence of tourists on the island however, means that they needed more resources from the 'overkant'(mainland): the other side of the Waddenzee. They needed to import fresh water and food in order to satisfy the needs of the island population.

However, the tourist sector now makes up about 80% of Texels income.

This situation challenges the people on Texel and involves economic, ecological and socio-cultural challenges.
3. Future of socio-technical system
4. Transition from current to future
To make the transition from current sub-system to the future sustainable one, following aspects have to be taken into account:
1. Existing sources available on the island that can be used to make transitions happen;
2. Willingness of companies to participate;
3. Involvement of tourists
5. Final Proposal

Yannick

Our solution will be a mobile application. It will be a digital map and all the different themed bicycle routes are in there, like the Lammetjesroute, the Jan Wolkersroute. So people don’t have to buy all the different routes anymore and can choose on the day itself which route they feel like doing. The tourist information is already planning to get rid of the paper vouchers and make it digital, so this idea resonates. In the year statistics of 2013 it appears that 86 percent of the visitors has been before on the island and 70 percent claims that they will come back for sure. So Texel is a place where people come regularly, they will keep the app on the phone and the next time could start cycling again without having to go to the tourist information. Whichever route they choose, the tourists will follow the route via their smartphone and along the way there will appear dots on their screen which means a restaurant, farm, shop or other place with local products. When people click on the dot they will get a small informative screen with in the case of a farmer shows the companies he delivers his cheese to.

There could appear a small video where the farmer explains how he treats his sheep. The other way around the cyclist can click on the button of a restaurant and will get information about the opening hours and see the connections with all the farmers he gets his products from. Also the videos of the farmers will appear again, so that people can see where the cheese came from they just ate and how the cows are treated, maybe they will decide to visit the farmer or find a place where they can buy the cheese themselves.

The goal is to make tourists aware of all the local food chains, show them how beautiful it is to use local products and show how satisfying it is to eat so pure. They will get more feeling with the products, products of the season, and differences in taste. This knowledge, feeling and awareness they will take with them to their normal everyday lives and be more aware of what they buy in the supermarket.
6. Overall Conclusion

Yannick

A group as big and diverse as tourists on Texel that do so many diverse activities is hard to make sustainable. It would be necessary to make all the activities they do and all the places they visit energy efficient. The only way to do this is to start with the core, the mind-set of people. Tourists need to be aware of sustainability. The answer to this is letting them experience the value of using local products.

On Texel a lot of companies are already sustainable and using local products, this should only be more visible to tourists so that they will notice and take this information back home. The visualisation of local use will be realised by making a digital cycling app showing all sustainable companies and connections between producers and sellers. Hopefully they will continue a bit of this local-use lifestyle in their everyday lives.