The pattern of late has been two steps forward, one step back, but is the Scottish tourism industry growing wings?
Given that it comprises 10% of our economy and employs 200,000 people, this matters.
To the outsider, observing a "bottom-up" reorganisation of the private-sector Scottish Tourism Alliance, it looks like the industry is getting uplift at last.
While major improvements in the Scottish offering have been obvious to everyone over the last decade and more, the fact remains that this has not translated into dramatic increases in visitors and revenue. A recent book, Scotland's Economic Future, makes the point that Scotland's 2.5m annual overseas visitors is "not an impressive figure", given that the UK gets 28m, and more northerly Norway and Sweden have twice the Scottish level and Ireland three times. With the exception of foot and mouth, the same kind of global vicissitudes have hit these countries as have hit Scotland.
Absence of teamwork and unity of purpose are seen as holding us back, new signs of public-private togetherness are genuinely exciting. The new Alliance, under the charismatic leadership of Stephen Leckie, brings together a patchwork of local associations, and works closely with VisitScotland. The agency on Tuesday hosts a conference on The Winning Years, an inspired conflation of alluring events between the London Olympics and the Ryder Cup, by way of Disney/Pixar's Scotophile film Brave. In the meantime our heritage assets have never looked more like an embarrassment of riches, from the new Stirling Castle apartments to the new Scottish National Portrait Gallery. All the onus now is on developing the soft skills, infrastructure and cross-selling ingenuity that will grow revenue and guarantee repeat business.
The Scottish Government is also leading in its strategic ambition to carve a greedy slice of the doubled volumes of extra tourists expected to take to the skies by 2030. Last week, it announced £5m in support for attracting events. When Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing announced last week that "the best is yet to come" he sounded as if he meant it.
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