THE tourism industry provides 10 per cent of Scotland’s workforce and 5% of the economy. But Stephen Leckie, chief executive of the Crieff Hydro hotel group, does not believe politicians treat the industry with the respect it deserves.
Speaking just minutes after Mr Hammond delivered his Budget speech, Mr Leckie expressed disappointment that action was not taken to cut VAT (valued added tax)
for the tourism and hospitality sector.
With VAT remaining at
20% – the second highest in Europe – he said the tax undermines Scotland’s attractiveness as a visitor destination.
“We’re still campaigning for a reduction,” said Mr Leckie, whose family have run Crieff Hydro for five generations. “He (Hammond) will have to show his hand when the inquiry into the impact of VAT in Ireland is known this week.”
As chairman of the Scottish Tourism Alliance, Mr Leckie has been vocal in recent months and years about the increasing cost of doing business faced by tourism and hospitality operators.
He welcomed the decision to again freeze duty on spirits, beer and cider and also fuel duty. And he praised the Scottish Government’s announcement last week that rises in business rates would be capped at 12.5% until 2022 (separate to yesterday’s Budget cuts to business rates for England).
But wage costs remain a big burden to a company that employs around 1,000 staff across six hotels, especially after the further rise to the National Living Wage announced yesterday.
Mr Leckie said it remains disappointing that there is “no offset” for the many hotels in Scotland that provide food and accommodation for their “live in” staff. The Crieff Hydro group employs some 150 employees on a live-in basis.
“The cost of doing business in Crieff has grown by virtually £250,000 year on year, and we are feeling that,” he said.
“We want to reinvest more back into the character of buildings and training and people… [but] it makes it so difficult when you have to pay £250,000 extra from Crieff alone to Perth & Kinross Council for business rates.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here