Cairnfield Advisory was founded on a simple observation: most destination strategies fail not for lack of ambition, but for lack of follow-through. A plan is commissioned, a consultant delivers a glossy report, and two years later nothing has changed on the ground. We exist to close that gap. Every engagement we take ends with written recommendations, a sequence of steps, and a clear account of who needs to do what next.
The team
Elise Moreau works from Lyon and leads on sustainability and heritage. She has spent fifteen years helping historic destinations manage visitor pressure without hollowing out the places that make them worth visiting. Her work sits at the intersection of conservation practice and tourism operations, and she is unusually comfortable telling a client that a proposed intervention will damage the asset it is meant to promote.
Daniel Osei is based in Accra and covers destination development and investment. He helps public and private clients structure projects that outside financiers will actually fund, and he reads a business case with the same care he brings to a site visit. Before consulting he worked on both the operator side and the municipal side, which means he understands why a recommendation that ignores either will fail.
Rachel Lindgren joins from Gothenburg and leads strategy research and evaluation. She designs the evidence base for our engagements: visitor surveys that get answered, baselines that can be measured against, and evaluation frameworks that do not collapse the moment real data arrives. She is the person who asks whether anyone has checked the numbers, and she is usually right to ask.
How we work
We open most engagements with a short diagnostic, typically two to three weeks, focused on a single question the client needs answered. This is not a scoping exercise for a larger fee; it is a genuine piece of work with a defined output. Where useful we then spend time in the field, walking the destination with the people who manage it, because a strategy written from a distance is a strategy written from nowhere.
What follows is always written: findings, options, and recommendations with costs, dependencies and risks stated plainly. We present in person or by video, and we stay available for questions as the work is implemented. We do not sell retainers that outlive their usefulness.
What we refuse to do
We decline vanity master plans: documents commissioned to justify a decision already taken, written to be admired rather than used. We also decline token consultations, where a community is invited to endorse a process that was designed without them. If the engagement cannot produce a real recommendation, or if the consultation is decorative, we will say so and step aside.
We take a limited number of new engagements each quarter so that each one receives proper attention. If your destination is at a decision point and you want advice that will hold up under scrutiny, write to us.