Industry takes stock as much-vaunted target set to be abandoned
By Steven Vass

A former head of Scotland's tourism industry body has called for a double-digit rise in the national tourism agency's marketing budget to keep pace with competitor destinations after it emerged that the industry had now abandoned the target of 50% revenue growth by 2015.

The call by Alan Rankin, currently head of the Aviemore and Cairngorms destination management company, came after VisitScotland said that the target would be "reviewed" following the latest quarterly economic survey from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC). The report indicated that the credit crunch was making it harder to jump-start already stalling efforts to attract more UK and overseas cash to Scotland.

The 50% target rate was set by the public-private 2006 Tourism Framework for Change as the mimum required for Scotland to keep pace with global tourism growth rates. Rankin said: "Unless we put more money into investing in marketing, we will fall behind.

"If the market is getting tougher and we want to stay ahead, we have got to lift our profile. That means raising spending above inflation, probably in the region of 10%."

The Sunday Herald has learned that VisitScotland's response to the negative trend will include redeploying £1.5 million of marketing resources from US campaigns to UK and continental Europe, and bringing forward spend from the autumn and winter budgets to the summer. Among other things, this will see adverts for the UK on supermarket items such as packs of sausages and cans of tuna fish.

Last week's SCC report pointed to a particularly large fall-off from American tourists suffering from the weakness of the dollar but demand from business bookings and non-Scottish UK tourists is also well down.

Rural operators are being hit particularly hard by the higher price of petrol, while everyone is having to factor higher fuel and commodity prices into their overheads.

It said that the number of Scottish operators reporting that demand was down was 16% higher than those saying it was up, compared to a 51% excess of positive reports in the same period last year and a 20% excess the year before. Meanwhile, occupancy rates were down 10 points year on year to 67% and confidence had dropped from 14% to -61%, indicating that most operators believe that worse is to come.

With overall growth in the Scottish industry non-existent in the past two years despite the 2015 target, observers have long questioned whether the growth could be achieved.

"I don't think that the target can be met at the current rate of progress," said Iain Herbert, chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Forum, which represents the operators.

But he declined to say whether the target should be reduced, saying it would be necessary to consult members first.

Barbara Clark, head of communications at VisitScotland, said: "Obviously the target is something that we will be reviewing in light of the current economic situation. Whether we will set a lower target has not been discussed."

The only body now insisting that the 50% target can be met is the Scottish government, which called it "perfectly realistic".

Although VisitScotland, a regular winner of international marketing awards, is currently canvassing operators for a report it will publish into the health of the sector in the second week in August, Clark said that the agency had switched the emphasis of its marketing away from the US towards Scotland, north England and continental Europe.

In the weeks ahead, this will include advertising in the Daily Mail, Scottish television and on packs of food products including Perth-based Simon Howie's sausages and John West canned fish around the UK.

Herbert added that operators who were still seeing growth should be more vocal about their successes to help raise confidence across the industry. Cliff Lockyer of Strathclyde University's Fraser of Allender economic research unit, which compiles the data on behalf of the SCC, said there was still cause for hope.

He said: "We still found that 64% to 65% are saying demand is unchanged or higher than before. What you really get worried about is when 70% or 80% of people are saying that demand is down.

"The figures show that activity in tourism is weaker than a year ago, but it would be premature to call it a crisis."