Free tours in wind farms. Wind tourism is already here.
Can you imagine including in your vacation plans a mandatory visit to one of the wind farms in your destination city? As if we were talking about the obligatory and almost "necessary" visit to the Eiffel Tower when traveling to Paris, or as if it were a trip to the Disneyland of engineering.
Nowadays, more and more cities are joining the bandwagon of including in their cultural offer a visit to one of their wind farms, either offshore by boat trip or onshore by a planned bicycle tour. Sounds appealing?
If it does, in Scotland you are able to mountain bike and hike around an onshore wind farm, while in Denmark you can even climb a wind turbine with a small group of friends. Or if you are curious about offshore, UK is also offering the opportunity to sail right under the blades of a turbine.
At the present time, wind power is a growing source of electricity generation. Especially offshore wind farms are expanding due to the renewable sustainable development objectives, and the attractiveness it has in terms of technological development and employability.
But wind projects often affect local communities directly, and conflicts arise when fears of the visual impacts of wind turbines take place, among others. The size and scale of the wind turbines, which can be more than 240 meters high and spin at up to 320 kilometers per hour, are often used against them.
On the other hand, tourists see this as the main attraction. Just to imagine how such huge pieces were transported to the construction sites is mind-boggling. Some travelers even compare them to spaceships. Plus, the fact that windy sites are often wild, beautiful, and difficult to access.
This is where tourism comes in as a possible solution to potentiate innovation and engage with local communities. There are a number of companies that are offering a tour around their wind farm to those who are curious about how wind turbines work and what they look like up closely. The aim of these tours is to maintain a close interaction with the public and their concerns, while achieving tourism benefits to the local economies. As in the end, tourism brings wealth to the localities.
Soon we will be able to see the free tour companies organizing trips to the wind farms in our community. Wind tourism is already here and is becoming a trend.
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