Scottish Tourism Week 2006

From 27 to 31 March 2006 The Scottish Tourism Forum introduced a week of events across the country to raise the profile of tourism as Scotland's most important and sustainable industry, and awareness of opportunities for Scottish businesses.

The week's events touched 1,000 individuals from across Scotland. We are proud that the week has reached many who may not have had such a positive awareness previously of the tourism industry in Scotland.

Indeed, the messages that have come out of this week of events, which also included the MSP Challenge and the Forum Reception at the Scottish Parliament, have been noted in articles in the Herald, Scotsman and the Sunday Times and several local papers.

The week culminated with more than 40 MSPs agreeing to visit tourism businesses across Scotland on behalf of the MSP Challenge, which aimed to raise awareness and understanding of tourism issues and enabled MSPs to see how businesses operate - please see below for more about the challenge.

The Forum reception at Scottish Parliament was attended by 41 MSPs including the Minister for Tourism, Patricia Ferguson.

Thanks again to all those who participated in the week's events: please download the Tourism Week Outline Summary (PDF, 29Kb) for details of all the scheduled events.

Sponsors

We would like to thank our sponsors who supported Scottish Tourism Week:

MSP Challenge

More than a quarter of MSPs took up the challenge to go to the coal face and hear at first hand from tourism businesses during the first ever Scottish Tourism Week.

Scottish Tourism Week was developed to bring together the private sector, public sector and elected sector to develop a higher awareness of the importance of the tourism industry to Scotland and the potential it has, across the country, as an employer and generator of economic wealth.

Alan Rankin, Chief Executive of STF explained: "If we can get the decision makers in government to be more aware of the key issues that affect what is our largest sustainable industry, we can then look forward to legislation that will promote and support economic growth in our sector.

"What we want to do is to get our members closer to their MSPs - and MSPs closer to the real issues affecting tourism today and in the future."

Mr Rankin added: "Businesses are desperate to grow and invest in a growing sector. The signs are there that the quality of Scottish tourism is in demand as we are outperforming the rest of the UK. However we need to see an absolute determination within government to grow tourism profitability, and that can only be done if businesses can free up time and resource to invest in better product and service levels.

"Too much time is spent in businesses complying with rules and regulations that are not there to grow business but are seen as red tape from overly burdensome bureaucratic layers. The new Tourism Framework for Change is a huge step in the right direction as it is based on partnership between the private and public sectors; we hope that Scottish Tourism Week will bring MSPs closer to tourism issues and become even more aware of the importance of the industry as a core economic driver."

The Forum highlighted some of the key questions it would like to see businesses discuss with their local MSPs:

  • Planning and business development assistance
  • Greater partnership in developing local tourism initiatives
  • Reliance on overseas staff and the skills shortage in the industry
  • Provision of visitor information services
  • Are the new Area Tourism Partnerships pulling together?
  • Transport and infrastructure for tourists and staff
  • Better use and take up of IT in the industry
  • Impact on hospitality from the Smoking Ban commencing 26 March 2006
  • Business rates and increasing legislation
  • Private Drinking Water Bill - impact on rural businesses

Thanks to all who participated in this excercise which we believe proved most worthwhile.

The voice of the tourism industry