THE long queues and flight cancellations that have become commonplace at UK airports in recent days will have been hard to take for holidaymakers desperate to travel overseas. Especially for those holidaymakers who are heading abroad for the first time in more than two years.

Airports have struggled to keep up with the huge upsurge in demand that has followed the easing of coronavirus restrictions, with a shortage of staff resulting in widespread disruption to travel plans. And, as Easter approaches, there is no immediate sign of the chaos ending.

That people are so keen to return to favoured destinations overseas is understandable given the sacrifices so many of us have made since the pandemic struck in March 2020. But the revival of foreign travel may well have less than positive consequences for one of Scotland’s most important industries, in addition to the inconvenience it is currently posing to travellers.

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While the Scottish tourism industry has experienced enormous upheaval since the pandemic took hold, tourism businesses have, during certain periods when restrictions have allowed, capitalised on peoples’ inability to travel abroad.

The last two summers have seen a huge upsurge in “staycations” as people took the option to holiday in their own country when access to popular destinations on mainland Europe and further afield was significantly more limited because of travel restrictions.

That brought a vital source of income to thousands of Scottish tourism and hospitality businesses that were placed into cold storage for long spells when lockdowns were enforced during 2020 and 2021, albeit the staycation trend will not have fully compensated them for the dearth of visitors from overseas.

Now people in the UK are able to travel abroad more freely again, it seems inevitable that staycationers, who had been content to holiday in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK over the last two years, will be looking to expand their horizons once more.

Of course, this was something that the Scottish tourism industry had to contend with for decades before the pandemic, particularly during the era of budget flights. So in one respect the battle for business against package holidays abroad is nothing new.

However, these are no ordinary times, and it could be argued that, in the aftermath of Brexit, Covid and now the war in Ukraine, the complexity and range of challenges now facing the Scottish tourism industry are without precedent.

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It was shaping up to be a hard enough task for the industry when Brexit brought to an end the free movement of people between the UK and the European Union in January 2020. Before then, thousands of European nationals had flocked to Scotland to work in the sector.

But conditions in the labour market became tougher still when the pandemic hit. The crisis led UK hospitality workers of European origin to return to their homelands on the continent, sparking deeper staff shortages that, compounded with absences enforced by Covid, has resulted in businesses trading at less than full capacity.

Whole floors on hotels have been closed and opening times have been restricted in their bars and restaurants, while pubs in town and city centres have been electing to not open on certain days, the lack of staff combined with reduced footfall making it unviable to operate all of the time.

With Covid infection rates remaining high, the impact of staff shortages across the economy is being felt in businesses in a range of sectors, not just in hospitality but in retail and housebuilding too. Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, told The Times last week: “The situation is not as severe as it was last summer, or in the lead up to Christmas, but absences are beginning to tick up and cause challenges.”

Compounding the challenge of staff shortages in recent months has been profound disruption to global supply chains that has driven up the cost of food and drink and, in recent weeks following Russia’s assault on Ukraine, a worsening energy crisis, all of which have driven up inflation to levels not seen in a generation.

With the Bank of England forecasting that inflation will rise to eight per cent later this spring, it means businesses in the tourism sector must somehow find a way of remaining attractive while dealing with surging costs, and to compete with the return of overseas package holidays which are now proving so tempting for consumers.

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And it is not as if holidaying in the UK is cheap to begin with. Research published by consumer watchdog Which? last summer found the price of breaks in leading UK holiday destinations was more expensive than similarly popular resorts abroad in most instances, while analysis from AirDNA, which collated the prices of thousands of properties listed by Airbnb and Vrbo, concluded the price of rented holiday accommodation had soared above pre-pandemic levels.

Now, amid a cost-of-living crisis that is shamefully pushing more people into poverty, the Scottish tourism industry has got to make itself appealing to holidaymakers at a time when consumers are increasingly worried about money, and can easily find cheaper ways to get away on the continent.

Of course, UK holidaymakers account for the majority of the tourists that Scotland attracts, and this is likely to remain the case. It will take time for visitor numbers to Scotland from overseas to be restored to pre-pandemic levels.

But that does not mean people who prefer to take their breaks on these shores will necessarily feel able to book a holiday in the UK this year.

Not since the early 1990s have people faced a cost-of-living squeeze of this order.

In the weeks and months to come, households will be reviewing budgets and deciding what they can and cannot afford to spend their money on.

Discretionary spending, including expenditure on holidays, will be under the microscope, and it could lead to people concluding that they do not have enough money to get away this year.

It is against this profoundly challenging backdrop that the Scottish tourism industry must find a way to continue its recovery from the darkest days of the pandemic.