SCOTTISH seafood businesses are linking with tourism leaders to help tell their story to sell their products.
Seafood Scotland and VisitScotland’s programme is designed to boost growth in seafood tourism in Scotland has been hailed after a host of seafood businesses from across the country tto part.
The series of webinars, created as part of the Beyond the Boat initiative launched by Seafood Scotland, comprised six weeks of sessions, alongside additional mentoring from experts in areas such as funding, compliance, tourism insights, digital marketing and events, to help businesses diversify into tourism.
Seafood Scotland partnered with VisitScotland on the project, with the national tourism organisation providing mentors and speakers, and contacts for already successful tourism businesses.
The aim of each session was to provide advice and expertise to help seafood businesses create memorable and authentic food tourism experiences to attract visitors from the UK and internationally.
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Over 20 businesses across Scotland signed up to the pilot programme, with many able to get bespoke advice from the mentors during the webinar programme. Seafood Scotland has made the presentations available on its website.
Karen Galloway, of Seafood Scotland, said: “It has been fantastic to see so many businesses get involved with this programme over the last few weeks and hear about their ideas to diversify into food tourism ventures.
"We’re incredibly grateful to VisitScotland and the rest of our mentors for their advice on how to deal with the different aspects of tourism from quality assurance, to how to get your story across, to how to maximise your digital presence online."
She added: “This is just the start, we’ll be bringing the mentors and seafood businesses together in the autumn for an in-person session to help inform, inspire and engage businesses further and, we hope, help build a community of seafood tourism offerings around the country.”
John Farley, from Sutherland’s of Portsoy who said: “As the company is situated in what can only be classed as an idyllic coastal setting, it seemed logical we looked to tourism as another channel for generating sales and brand awareness.
"Whilst the traditional two-day boat festival held in Portsoy brings in an estimated 20,000 visitors, we want to attract visitors from further afield, and saw ‘Beyond the Boat’ as the perfect mentoring programme to help with this vision."
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