BQ2 Scotland Special Report

2 BUSINESS QUARTER Scotland: March 2016

SPECIAL REPORT THE SPIRIT OF SCOTLAND

2020 vision

Malcolm Roughead describes Scotland’s opportunities

Being Brave

Harnessing a film to showcase a nation

Whisky wonder Perfect distillery to wow visitors

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EDITOR’S VIEW CONTENTS 04

BUSINESS UPDATE

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BRAVE WARRIOR

Tourism news from around the nation

Mike Cantlay takes a look back

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THAT’S THE SPIRIT

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2020 VISION

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DESIGN TIME

A marketing campaign involving the nation

Malcolm Roughead describes Scotland’s opportunities

2016 is the year of Innovation, Architecture and Design

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NEATE WORK

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EVENTS MANAGEMENT

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WORKING TOGETHER

An entrepreneur’s work that’s all about inclusion

Events bring visitors, earn money and strengthen communities

How VisitScotland builds partnerships

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INSIGHT

THE SPIRIT OF SCOTLAND As a proud Highlander, tourism is close to my heart. Whether it’s the natural beauty of Nairn’s beaches or the dramatic history played out at sites like Culloden Battlefield or Fort George, tourism plays a key role in the lives of so many Scots.

As a wildlife writer and drinks columnist, I know tourism is about much more than just having a nice holiday too. The industry is worth £13bn a year to our nation’s economy, providing work for 211,000 people in 14,000 businesses.

With Scotland shining so brightly during the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup, how can we continue to build on our progress? In this BQ2 special report, we meet some of the people making sure tourism benefits all of Scotland.

Entrepreneurs are leading those efforts, with Gavin Neate and his Neatebox beacons helping visitors to explore Edinburgh’s Royal Mile using their smartphones, while James Barbour at Foxlake Adventures has brought wakeboarding and a waterborn ropes course to East Lothian. Both have a keen sense of social inclusion too; Neate’s apps help disabled people enjoy tourism, while Foxlake is a social enterprise. In this supplement, VisitScotland chief executive Malcolm Roughead outlines how the industry is fulfilling its 2020 strategy, while his colleagues Charlie Smith and Paul Bush emphasise the roles partnerships, marketing and events play. One of those partnerships is with TripAdvisor and Justin Reid explains how the biggest travel website benefits from VisitScotland’s input. Ken Grier from Edrington highlights why tourism is at the heart of the new £100m home for The Macallan whisky, while we take an in-depth look at both the Spirit of Scotland marketing campaign and the Year of Innovation, Architecture & Design.

We also raise a glass to Mike Cantlay, who’s stepping down as chair of VisitScotland after six years; he may no longer be Scotland’s cheerleader-in-chief, but I’m sure Mike will continue to enliven the industry. Few nations are blessed with Scotland’s combination of welcoming hosts, natural beauty and innovative design. In this supplement, we celebrate the magic that happens when those ingredients come together to create the Spirit of Scotland.

Peter Ranscombe, Editor, BQ Scotland In association with

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room501 Publishing Ltd, Spectrum 6, Spectrum Business Park, Seaham, SR7 7TT. www.bqlive.co.uk. Business Quarter (BQ) is a leading national business brand recognised for celebrating and inspiring entrepreneurship.

The multi-platform brand currently reaches entrepreneurs and senior business executives across the North East and Cumbria, Scotland, Yorkshire and the West Midlands. BQ has established a UK wide regional approach to business engagement reaching a highly targeted audience of entrepreneurs and senior executives in high growth businesses both in-print, online and through branded events. All contents copyright © 2016 room501 Ltd. All rights reserved. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, no responsibility can be accepted for inaccuracies, howsoever caused. No liability can be accepted for illustrations, photographs, artwork or advertising materials while in transmission or with the publisher or their agents. All profiles are paid for advertising. All information is correct at time of going to print, March 2016.

BUSINESS UPDATE Macbeth tourist trail cashes in on Fassbender film Film fans buying Justin Kurzel’s big-screen version of Macbeth will be able to follow in the king’s footsteps thanks to a new guide.

A booklet produced by VisitScotland has been included with 60,000 copies of the DVD and Blu-ray, which stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.

The guide includes locations on Skye used during the filming of the movie, along with sites associated with the real Scottish king and the character in the eponymous play by William Shakespeare.

Locations featured in the booklet include Cawdor Castle in Nairnshire, Glamis Castle in Angus, and Scone Moot Hill in Perthshire.

Cameron Taylor, from Moray Speyside Tourism and an advisor on the guide, said: “Exploring the landscapes of the real Macbeth brings the actual story behind Shakespeare’s famous drama to life, providing an authentic experience of Scotland’s fascinating history.

“We look forward to welcoming visitors inspired

by Justin Kurzel’s adaptation of Macbeth, and helping them walk in the footsteps of the real King Macbeth.”

Visiting sites associated with television programmes and films – or “set-jetting” – is

becoming an increasingly-popular activity for tourists, with 40% of visitors to the UK reporting that they were inspired to come here after seeing the country on the big or small screen.

UK eyes £23bn boost from tourism Overseas visitors are expected to spend almost £23 billion in the UK this year, a rise of 4.2% yearon-year, according to figures from trade body UKinbound.

Mark McVay, chairman of UKinbound, said: “Despite a tough year, inbound tourism is still one of the UK’s success stories.

“With inbound tourists expected to break spending records, it has been suggested that overseas visitors to the UK will spend almost £23bn throughout 2016, a projected 4.2% increase on spending in 2015.

“I would like to thank each and every one of our members for contributing to this success.”

McVay’s comments came as Macdonald Aviemore Resort hosted the trade body’s annual convention and awards ceremony in February, marking the first time in a decade that the event had come to Scotland.

Scottish tourism minister Fergus Ewing was presented with the “Chairman’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Tourism” during the ceremony.

Speakers at the event included Marc Crothall, chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Alliance, and Charlie Smith, marketing director at VisitScotland.

Find out about VisitScotland’s partnerships in an interview with Charlie Smith on pages 40-43.

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Events and festivals industry holds trade show EventIt, Scotland’s only trade show for the events and festivals industry, is due to take place at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) on 18 March.

The show has been created by professional conference organiser Judith Wilson, of JMD Events, and is the first national events expo in Scotland for five years.

“An opportunity for the events industry to come together in one place to market what they have to offer on a national platform is vital for Scotland and I am proud to be launching EventIt as exactly that,” she said.

Tom Clements, Scotland chairman of the National Outdoor Events Association (NOEA), one of the show’s supporters, added: “We are proud to be supporting and taking part in the first EventIt expo.

“The Scottish events industry is thriving and full of innovation and this is the first opportunity for a number of years to bring together the people who make these events happen to communicate, build new partnerships and make the sector even stronger.”

EventIt is part of the Scottish Tourism Week signature programme, opening with the Scottish Tourism Alliance parliamentary drinks reception and dinner at EventIT and culminating with the annual Scottish Thistle Awards.

Find out more about the importance of events to Scotland’s economy in an interview with Paul Bush from VisitScotland on pages 34-37.

Glasgow Airport receives European recognition Glasgow Airport has been hailed as one of the fastest-growing sites in Europe by the continent’s trade body.

ACI Europe ranked Glasgow as the fifth fastest-expanding airport in its category – sites with between five million and ten million passengers – behind only Milan, Gothenburg, Berlin and Porto.

The airport reported its largest-ever annual

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Ellie Simmonds

Swimming contest makes £3m splash The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Swimming World Championships generated £1.5m for Glasgow last summer and another £1.5m for the wider Scottish economy, according to a new report.

The event, which took place at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre, attracted almost 4,000 spectators.

Team GB picked up 32 medals across the six days of competition, including ten golds, as 582 athletes competed from 65 countries.

Simon Morton, chief operating officer at UK Sport, said: “This outstanding event was part of UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded ‘#EveryRoadtoRio’ campaign, which aims to bring an estimated £37m of economic benefit to host cities across the UK whilst supporting athletes in their qualification and preparation for Rio 2016.

“The fantastic GB medal success plus the economic impact of £1.5m demonstrates once again the UK is a world leader in hosting major sporting events.”

David Sparkes, chief executive of British Swimming, added: “We are delighted that, working together as a team, we achieved such a successful outcome to the 2015 IPC World Championships held in Glasgow.

“Through the close co-operation of EventScotland and Glasgow City Council we believe that collectively we significantly raised the bar in terms of presenting swimming at the very highest level of Paralympic sport.”

increase in passenger numbers last year, after more than 8.7 million passengers travelled through its doors, representing an increase of 13% year-on-year or more than one million additional passengers.

Amanda McMillan, managing director of Glasgow Airport, said: “To have been confirmed as one of the top-performing airports in Europe is a fantastic achievement.

“We worked extremely hard throughout 2015 to strengthen our route network and this was

reflected in our passenger growth.

“We recorded double-digit percentage growth during each month of 2015, bar one, and we are looking forward to building on this success during what is our golden anniversary year.”

Glasgow recorded its fifth-consecutive year of growth during 2015, marking the return of its passenger numbers to pre-recession levels.

The airport added 30 routes to its roster over the course of the year.

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Scotland lands first South Korean link

Scotland is to have its first direct flight to South Korea following a deal with the Asian country’s flag carrier. Korean Air and tour operator Hanjin Travel will launch a service between Seoul and Glasgow in August, with more than 1,000 Korean passengers expected to use the route, which will be run using an Airbus

A330 aeroplane. Oh Sang Kwon, president of Hanjin Travel, said: “We are very proud to be introducing the wonderful city of Glasgow – and indeed the whole of Scotland – to our passengers. “I am sure the city’s excellent shopping and wonderful architecture alongside the world renowned scenery of Scotland will prove very popular with South Korean travellers. We look forward to a traditional

Scottish welcome when we arrive in Glasgow Airport this August.”

Hanjin Travel, which is one of Korean Air’s sister companies, is also eyeing further links to Scotland, according to national tourism agency VisitScotland.

Allan McQuade, business infrastructure director at Scottish Enterprise, added: “This new direct service is excellent news for Scotland.

“Direct services make Scotland a more attractive destination for both tourists and businesses by removing the need for extra connecting flights.

“This not only helps the economy by boosting tourism, but also encourages overseas trade and investment.”

Apex Hotels posts rise in revenues

Tomatin Distillery toasts 50% rise in visitors’ centre turnover Turnover at Tomatin Distillery’s visitors’ centre has increased by 50% to £580,000.

The distillery, which lies around 18 miles south of Inverness, was founded in 1897 and in 1986 became the first Scotch whisky to be fully owned by a Japanese company when food and drink group Takara Shuzo bought it out of receivership.

Some 80% of Tomatin’s staff lives on the site in distillery cottages.

Graham Eunson, distillery general manager at Tomatin, said: “We’re delighted with the increase in visitor numbers and the top class facilities we are offering whisky enthusiasts.

“Our community lies at the heart of everything we do, and the world-class product we are offering is testament to the respect for tradition, dedication, skill and attention to detail of our craftsmen.

“Tomatin is renowned for being one of Scotland’s finest single malt whiskies and it is a rewarding experience to see so many people coming to the Highlands to see the work we do.”

Tomatin marked the milestone for its visitors’ centre by welcoming Drew Hendry, former leader of Highland Council and now Scottish National Party MP for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey, on a visit to the site.

Read more about the importance of whisky distillery visitors’ centres in the interview with Ken Grier from The Macallan on pages 44-47.

Turnover has risen again at Apex Hotels, the Edinburgh-based accommodation provider, to top the total achieved during 2014’s Year of Homecoming, Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup. Revenues at the company, which is owned

by Norman and Dorothy Springford and their family, climbed by 2% last year to £57.2 million.

Profits before exceptional items – which related to bank arrangement fees and provisions for directors’ long-term bonuses – surged by 11% to £10.6m.

Ian Springford, chairman of Apex Hotels, said: “Following an exceptionally-strong financial performance last year, driven by one-off events such as the Ryder Cup and Glasgow Commonwealth Games, I am delighted to see another year of growth in our results.

“We anticipate a further busy year in 2016, with extensive refurbishment plans for the current portfolio and the celebration of the group’s 20 year anniversary.”

The company – which has nine hotels in Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London – was founded in 1996 when it converted the former Heriot-Watt University Mountbatten Building in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket into the 120-room Apex International Hotel.

Apex is partway through the £35m redevelopment of its hotel in Bath; the old building has now been demolished and the new 177-room hotel, spa and conference centre is expected to open during the summer of 2017.

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850 jobs to be created by 100 hospitality firms More than 100 hospitality firms pledged to create in excess of 850 jobs, apprenticeships and work placements during the “Big Hospitality Conversation” in Dundee.

The pledges are part of a scheme run by the British Hospitality Association (BHA), hospitality charity Springboard and the UK Government’s Department for Work & Pensions, which aims to create 60,000 jobs, apprenticeships and work placements for 16 to 24 year olds in the sector before the end of the year.

Willie Macleod, executive director BHA Scotland, said: “For so many companies to come together and successfully attract so many young people towards career opportunities in the hospitality industry is a great achievement. “Linking up businesses and young people to have conversations about different roles and the opportunity for development in the hospitality industry really can make a huge impact on a young person’s life, which was clearly evident today.”

Kelly Johnstone, Scottish director of Springboard, added: “What a fantastic day it has been, we’ve managed to succeed all expectations regarding the pledges, which is outstanding.

“The young people hosting and telling their stories were hugely inspirational for everyone who attended.

“It was great to be able to bring so many businesses, people from education and young people together.”

Minister celebrates Year of Food & Drink success Tourism minister Fergus Ewing has toasted the success of the 2015 Year of Food & Drink. More than one million visitors attended the 47 events that received funding last year to celebrate Scotland’s rich larder.

In excess of 200 events took place in total, with more than 33,000 people attending events during Whisky Month alone.

Ewing said: “Visitors come to Scotland for many reasons and 2015 has shown that Scotland’s world leading food and drink is foremost among them, with hoteliers, restaurants and other operators across Scotland rising to the challenge and giving visitors experiences to remember.

“With more than one million people attending Year of Food & Drink

events and tracking down local dishes and restaurants, it has been an undoubted success, showcasing some of the very best that Scotland has to offer.

“I have no doubt that 2016’s Year of Innovation, Architecture & Design will continue in the same vein, capturing the public’s imagination and providing a unique focus for Scotland’s world-class tourism offering.”

News of the figures came as the number of businesses receiving “Taste Our Best” – VisitScotland’s accreditation scheme that recognises businesses that provide locally sourced, quality food and drink – passed the 1,000-mark.

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INTERVIEW bqlive.co.uk

Brave warrior with an eye on his next battle VisitScotland chair Mike Cantlay looks back over his six years overseeing the board of the national tourism agency and reflects on the ‘winning years’, avoiding the ‘tourism draught’ and a red-haired animated princess called Merida As he passed by his television set on Christmas day, Mike Cantlay had a wry smile on his face.

Disney Pixar’s Brave was the primetime film being shown on BBC1 and, for the outgoing chair of VisitScotland, the movie brought back memories of his six years at the helm of the national tourism agency.

Released in 2012, Brave tells the story of Princess Merida, a headstrong young woman who rejects her mother’s plans for her betrothal to a champion from one of the rival clans. The film – which starred the vocal talents of Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly and Emma Thompson – was used by VisitScotland as a marketing tool to promote our nation throughout the world, with adverts for Scotland appearing as trailers before the film and Merida’s image displayed on countless posters.

Cantlay, another feisty redhead, took over as chair of the agency in 2010, having served as its deputy chair from 2001 to 2005. At that point, Brave was still lurking somewhere in the middle distance and it was another famous film with links to Scotland that was occupying Cantlay’s thoughts.

“It was Burns’ Night in 2010 when I was interviewed,” he remembers. “I said ‘I have another Scottish hero in mind in the form of Mel Gibson standing out in front of the troops in Braveheart saying let’s get together and go this way’.

“Let’s look for a handful of big hits and that will get growth going. The person chairing the panel came back to me and said ‘Just go and do that

– that would be grand’. And that’s basically how we went about it.”

Eight key themes were identified for the ‘Winning Years’ between 2012 and 2014 to act as a focus for marketing Scotland to potential visitors. “They included the Queen’s diamond jubilee, the London Olympics, the Year of Creative Scotland, the Year of Natural Scotland, the Year of Homecoming, the Commonwealth Games, and the Ryder Cup,” says Cantlay, checking each one off on his fingers as he goes.

“The one that’s missing from that list is Brave.

Famously – and embarrassingly for one or two members of staff – it was my brother-in-law, who is a Disney fan, who emailed me one day and asked if I knew that Pixar was making this movie. So I had a wee look and thought this is ‘the thing’. I went up to VisitScotland staff at events and just said ‘Brave’. Most of them would look at me somewhat askance but one or two replied ‘Oh yeah, that’s the Disney movie – we’re on that’ and I replied ‘Oh no, no, no – we’re not on that, let’s have a real go’.

“We weren’t just going for everything that came our way; we were focusing on a few really big opportunities and nailing them. Eventually we cut a deal with Disney, which took a long time. They don’t do business with governments – certainly they’d never done one before. But the deal eventually rattled out to us sponsoring the world premiere, sponsoring the European premiere and allowing us to market alongside them around the world. When it all broke open just before Brave’s launch it was amazing. It

linked so neatly for us with the Year of Natural Scotland in 2013 because people were watching Brave at the end of 2012.”

Cantlay had form in this area. His plan to identify eight “big things” for Scotland’s tourism industry was inspired by his time as chair of Scottish Enterprise Forth Valley. The performance of the area’s economy was lagging behind that of Scotland and the wider UK and so a handful of targets were identified for everyone involved in economic development to focus on: attracting £1bn of additional petro-chemical investment for Grangemouth and the surrounding area; building the Clackmannanshire Bridge to replace the Kincardine Bridge, with the work being carried out on the Forth Valley side instead of the Fife side; reopening the Stirling-AlloaKincardine rail link; sorting out the top of the town in Stirling, which Cantlay felt was an under-utilised asset; winning national park status for Loch Lomond and the Trossachs; and finally building the Millennium Link to connect the Forth & Clyde and Union canals.

“The hope there was that there would be a need for a massive piece of infrastructure to get canal boats from one height to the other and we hoped that could become an attraction,” says Cantlay, hinting at the construction of the Falkirk Wheel. “It took many years beyond my time there for all of that to come together, but low-and-behold all of those features came to be and the Forth Valley economy no longer underperforms.”

Spotting such opportunities is in Cantlay’s blood. He was drafted in to run the family firm – William Glen & Son – after his dad had a heart attack while he was in his first year of studying business at the University of Strathclyde. Helping out while his father recovered clearly solidified his interest in commerce.

His father had bought William Glen & Son from its founding family in 1967 and moved his young family to Callander. After returning to Strathclyde to complete his undergraduate

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INTERVIEW bqlive.co.uk

studies and add a master of business administration (MBA) degree to his haul, Cantlay set about building his own portfolio. He bought Robin Hood Gift House in Glasgow and then a former petrol station as a development site at Loch Lomond.

Cantlay’s big break came in 1992 when he bought The Whisky Shop chain out of receivership, subsequently building up the business before selling it to Ian Bankier, now chairman of Celtic football club and the former managing director of whisky distiller Burn Stewart. A year after taking over The Whisky Shop, Cantlay bought a controlling stake in Hector Russell, a kilt-making business based in Inverness that had 17 stores throughout Scotland but no one single cohesive brand.

Cantlay rebadged them all as Hector Russell and built the chain up to 30 shops before selling it to Philip Day’s Edinburgh Woollen Mill in 2005 so he could spend time with his young twins.

The William Glen brand lives on in the name of Cantlay’s current company, which has Highland dress businesses in Canada and the United States. The firm was founded as a tailor’s business in Kirkcaldy in the 1860s, with William Glen moving to Callander in 1869 following the construction of the railway line that opened up the Trossachs to tourists. Cantlay’s father – who had been working for Lochcarron woollen mills in Galashiels – bought the company from William Glen’s grandson in 1967.

Cantlay is proud of the role Callander has played in the evolution of Scotland’s tourism industry and he still calls the village home. “Scotland has been a tourist destination for 200 years and we really started tourism in the Trossachs with Sir Walter Scott and his Lady of the Lake poem,” he explains, pointing to the poet’s 1810 work, which was one of the factors that inspired Queen Victoria to visit the area before settling instead on Balmoral as her family’s Scottish residence. “There’s every reason why we’ll be leading global tourism for many years to come, maybe even for the next 200 years.”

The firm foundations for that growth were laid during the ‘Winning Years’, culminating in 2014, when Scotland hosted the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, golf’s Ryder Cup at Gleneagles and its second Year of Homecoming.

Visitor spending rose by 10% year-on-year during 2014, with around 12,600 jobs being created in tourism since 2010 and the industry

INTERVIEW bqlive.co.uk

adding 35% more gross value to the economy between 2008 and the end of 2014.

“In a sense though, that’s not the best part of the story,” beams Cantlay. “I’m not saying that delivering the likes of the Ryder Cup was easy, but the hard part was always going to be going into 2015, which was a real concern. Often what you see after a period of big events is what we call ‘the draught’ – it took Sydney ten years to get back to where they were before the 2000 Olympics because visitor numbers immediately tailed off. It’s a common phenomenon.

“Our concern was to keep things going during 2015 and in the early part of that year exchange rates started to move viciously against us. The euro moved 15% virtually overnight. And I started to think ‘This is going to be hard work to keep this momentum going’. Then we had the awful summer weather. Basically, 2015 had all the hallmarks of being one of these tourism dips that you get when bad things coincide.

“If you were to ask my fabulous chief executive, Malcolm Roughead, for one word to describe what the ‘Winning Years’ were about then he would say ‘momentum’. The whole purpose wasn’t just to have a great time in 2014 but to create the momentum to take us on. Imagine the example of a bike – if you’ve got momentum on the easy downhill stretches then it makes going up the hills so much easier. If you lose that momentum then you have to go back down through the gears and you lose speed and you can’t get going again.

“So the figures that we’re now seeing, which are for the first nine months of 2015, show overall growth of 8%, which is fabulous, especially when you think you’ve got the implications of the low oil price in Aberdeen starting to kick-in

fluctuations was all down to a change in mind-set, Cantlay believes. “I think we’re in good shape because we’ve learned to win,” he maintains. “And once you’ve learned to win, you like to win. We like to win events, we like to win new conferences, we like to win investment, we like to win new air routes. So

won’t diminish the individual features of each city, but it means that it won’t matter in which city you stay because you’ll be able to move backward and forward between Edinburgh and Glasgow so easily and in comfort and at speed.”

Gazing into his crystal ball, Cantlay also thinks Scotland is ready to embrace driverless vehicles.

“Basically, 2015 had all the hallmarks of being one of these tourism dips that you get when bad things coincide” despite the fact that you look ahead and the immediate period looks quite challenging from an economic perspective, I’m very confident that we’ll continue to win.”

New air routes – and, more broadly, transport in general – are important topics for Cantlay. He points to the recent announcement that charter flights would begin between Glasgow and Seoul in South Korea. “It’s lovely to be involved in things – but that one is mine,” he grins. “I turned up in Seoul on a Sunday afternoon – I literally wasn’t there 24 hours – and took some key people to dinner and out of that dinner came this opportunity. They’d be thinking about this route. That was my contribution. The rest was down to the airports and government colleagues to pull it together. But I look forward to that plane whipping in. That’s an impressive win for Scotland. Whenever you’re involved in anything like that then it’s very satisfying.”

Closer to home, Cantlay recognises the importance of dualling the A9 and laying on longer trains to Inverness for improving tourism in Scotland. Looking further ahead, he thinks having a high-speed rail link between Glasgow

“It won’t matter in which city you stay because you’ll be able to move backward and forward between Edinburgh and Glasgow so easily and in comfort and at speed” there. Overall you’re looking at 10% growth in spend in 2014 and 8% growth at the start of 2015. We’ll bank that. I’m not saying that every business will have done well because the wet weather will have affected several sectors, but overall we’re in good shape.”

Managing to grow the industry in the face of “the draught” and foreign exchange rate

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and Edinburgh will allow tourists to treat the two cities as a single destination, no matter which one they’re staying in. “Edinburgh is already the second-most visited city in the UK after London and Glasgow is the sixth mostvisited city and faster travel times will allow them to work together as one single destination,” he explains. “That would be a profound change. It

“In effect, we already have driverless planes and trains, and driverless cars and buses are almost with us,” he says. “Think about tourism for a minute: you hire a car and it goes where you point it. Imagine the opportunity with the whole European and American markets, which get a bit edgy about having to drive on the ‘other’ side of the road. They wouldn’t have to drive at all. Just get in the bubble and it will take you where you want to go. It’s a global change that will affect everyone employed in driving, but in Scotland drivers also act as tourist guides, so it will allow a move from driving responsibilities to a focus on maximising the experience for the visitor. The potential change is massive and I think Scotland will be really up for that.”

One of the catchphrases that Cantlay inherited from his predecessor, Peter Lederer, was “Tourism is everybody’s business”, words that have seldom been far from the outgoing chair of VisitScotland’s lips as he’s acted as cheerleader-in-chief for his country. “The Commonwealth Games was the point in time when tourism genuinely became everyone’s business,” says Cantlay. “We’ve always said it, but 2014 was the point when it became entrenched and Scots realised that they were part of this whole machine and that they wanted to be part of that welcoming party.

If the whole of the nation is into this thing and wants to do more then I think we’re in good shape.”

And what about the man himself? Does retirement beckon once he hangs up his VisitScotland hat on 31 March? “I’m only 52, so I’m not ready for retirement just yet,” laughs Cantlay. “I don’t have any plans yet, but I’m on the lookout for opportunities, both in the public and private sectors. I’m still an entrepreneur at heart.” n

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ENTREPRENEUR bqlive.co.uk

MAKING WAVES

James Barbour and his team have taken a simple loch on a farm and turned it into Foxlake, Scotland’s first wakeboarding park and Europe’s only overwater ropes course

ENTREPRENEUR bqlive.co.uk

Imagine what would happen if you took the most exciting elements from snowboarding, surfing and water-skiing and mixed them all together in one big pot. Welcome to the world of wakeboarding.

If you’d asked him five years ago, James Barbour would only have had a vague inkling of what wakeboarding was. Although he’d been a keen water-skier for 30 years, he’d yet to try the new sport. Now, as managing director at Foxlake near Dunbar in East Lothian, Barbour is part of the team responsible for building Scotland’s first wakeboarding park and Europe’s only overwater ropes course.

As managing director of Barbour Homes, he had been running a well-established building business in East Lothian. But then a conversation one day with his brother, Duncan, and their friend, Alex Dale, would send his life in a whole new direction.

“We were sitting around talking about different ideas for businesses,” Barbour remembers. “Alex, who I’d done business with before, owns a farm and he wanted to show us a lake that he’d built about four years previously. We went down and took a look and kicked around some ideas for what he could do with it, like building lodges around the edge or putting up yurts.

“We talked about all sorts of crazy ideas. Then one of my brother’s contacts threw the idea of building a cable wakeboarding park into the mix – we liked the idea, did some investigation, still liked it, and that’s how it all got started.”

Cable-tow wakeboarding involves riders standing on a board – around 140cm long by 45cm wide – and being pulled along at around 20mph by a tow line connected to a system of cables. Using a board instead of water-skis allows the rider to demonstrate more flair and freestyle creativity over jumps placed on the lake, mirroring the comparison between snowboarding and skiing.

Following their initial conversations in 2010, the trio spent a further two years developing the idea, engaging with PMR Leisure to work with them and involving Industry Wake Parks, a company that helps people to build their own facilities, in the design of tows and obstacles, with Foxlake Adventures opening in July 2012.

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“Within its first few weeks we were already operating at capacity, so we knew we were doing something right” “Within its first few weeks we were already operating at capacity, so we knew we were doing something right,” laughs Barbour. “At the end of the first season, we decided to apply for funding to get a second cable-tow going, which we did and at the start of the second season we looked to add a second attraction, FoxFall, which is our ropes course.”

FoxFall looks like a cross between BBC One television series Total Wipeout, hosted by Richard Hammond and Amanda Byram, and a Go Apestyle ropes course. With no safety harnesses, visitors are left to plunge into the water if they lose their balance on the ropes course. During its first season, Foxlake employed five members of staff, but that total has since grown to 25, with around ten on duty at any one time during its busiest peaks. The adventure activities site is already welcoming more than 40,000 visitors each year and Barbour thinks the total could double. He expects the business to turn over close to £500,000 this year.

Landlord Dale is no stranger to diversification on

his farm. He has been leasing land since 2001 to Grant Bell, the managing director of East Links Family Park, a small farm and narrow-gauge railway that has attracted more than one million visitors and welcomes in excess of 3,500 school pupils each week during its peak months.

Rather than incorporating Foxlake as a traditional limited company, Barbour and his fellow directors instead opted to create a social enterprise, with Foxlake being registered as a ‘community interest company’ so that it can bring benefits to the wider community in East Lothian.

“Being a community interest company also gives us the ability, if the company is in a financial position to do so, to pay people for their time involved in the company,” explains Barbour. “This enables extra effort to be put in or demanded to grow the company – and with it the community outcomes and benefit – than might otherwise be the case with 100% voluntary input. Any profits are reinvested in the business or used for the benefit of the community.”

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Foxlake’s community impact report for 2014-15 lists the 28 schools with which the business worked during the year, along with a whole range of community groups that have used the site, from Dunbar Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and North Berwick Coastal Rowers through to Borders Scouts and East Linton Girl Guides.

A ‘Vixens’ programme offers young women aged between 12 and 16 the chance to try wakeboarding for free, while the ‘Foxy Ladies’ sessions allow women to carry-on developing their interest in the sport. The ‘Wake Academy’ is a structured British Water Ski & Wake Board (BWSW) youth development programme that

gives young riders the chance to develop their skills, while the ‘Junior Series’ competition allows them to test their talent against fellow boarders.

All of the efforts put into working with young people are already producing some high-profile results. Blair Fraser, a 17-year-old boarder from Edinburgh who learned how to ply his trade at Foxlake, won a gold medal in the ‘Open Men’s Features’ competition at the World Wakeboarding Association (WWA) Wakepark World Championships in Abu Dhabi in November. Fraser trained at Foxlake for four years and the park continues to sponsor him.

“When we opened Foxlake, each of the three of us were doing it part-time and we employed

Callum Mark as the manager to run the show,” Barbour explains. “But we knew that to build the business one of us would have to go full-time with it to work with Callum.

“I pulled the short-straw,” Barbour laughs. “So I wrapped up my own building business in the middle of 2013 and the rest is history.

“On the wakeboard side of things, we have people who regularly come down from Inverness, across from Glasgow and up from Northern England. People travel quite a long way to wakeboard. Up until last year, we were the only cable-tow wakeboard park in Scotland and the nearest one to us was probably in Blackpool.

“But wakeboarding is growing so fast as a

“People travel quite a long way to wakeboard. Up until last year, we were the only cable-tow wakeboard park in Scotland and the nearest one to us was probably in Blackpool”

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sport that there are now around 30 cable-tow wakeboarding parks in the UK – when we opened it was more like ten, so there’s been huge growth in the past four years.”

While the water sports are closed during the colder months, Foxlake hosts the Foxtrail winter running series, five races stretching from 13 kilometres through to 20 kilometres. Over this winter, more than 800 runners registered for the races, which kicked off with a run timed to coincide with the site’s John Muir ‘Winter Carnival’ of activities.

Muir was born in Dunbar and left Scotland at the age of 11 to travel with his family to the US. He went on to become the father of America’s

national parks and his life is celebrated by John Muir’s Birthplace, a museum and visitors’ centre in his home town, and the John Muir Trust, which owns and protects large tracts of wild land in Scotland, including the summit of Ben Nevis, parts of the Cuillin hills on Skye and East Schiehallion in Perthshire.

To mark the centenary of Muir’s birth in 2014, the John Muir Way – a long-distance walking route that originally ran along the coast of East Lothian – was extended across the Central Belt, covering 134 miles or 215 kilometres from Dunbar to Helensburgh, where Muir’s family boarded their ship to travel to America. Foxlake will be organising East Lothian’s first ultra-

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marathon along East Lothian’s section of the John Muir Way in April.

As well as the wakeboarding park and the FoxFall ropes course, the site has also become home to a number of other businesses. CrossFit East Rocks is a shipping container in the woods that offers year-round outdoor fitness training, while ReBoot is a disc golf course, in which players throw discs rather than hitting balls with clubs, and Go Wild offers children’s birthday parties and corporate team-building activities in the forest.

“We also have the Boardside Café,” adds Barbour. “From one social enterprise being setup, we’ve enabled other businesses to piggy-back on us.

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“One of the highlights has been seeing all of the youngsters coming into the business and developing their skills. We train all staff to have a nationally-recognised BWSW coaching and instructor licence and a European Ropes Course Association (ERCA) qualification. It helps them in their development, is a transferable qualification, and ensures a high-quality of service to our customers. Another highlight has been the vast number of visitors that we’ve had and the fact that Foxlake is helping to develop this new sport of wakeboarding.”

Foxlake’s board includes chairman Malcolm Gillies, who created Inch Park community sports club and co-founded rugby charity Hearts & Balls.

Its other board members are Penny Lochhead, director of community sports and leisure consultancy PMR Leisure, and Tim Woodhead, managing director of Industry Wake Parks and a director of parks in Cheshire and Liverpool.

The work that Barbour and his team have put into the project has already been recognised, with Foxlake scooping the ‘Best Outdoor or Adventure Experience’ prize at the Central South East regional heat of the Scottish Thistle Awards. Winning the regional trophy means that the company will now go through to the national finals, which are due to be held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) in mid-March.

Picking up the regional Thistle Award added to Foxlake’s growing trophy cabinet, with the company having been named as the ‘Social Enterprise of the Year’ in 2013 by East Lothian and Midlothian Chamber of Commerce.

The activity centre has also earned a four-star quality assurance rating from VisitScotland, the national tourism agency. Foxlake gained five stars for the attraction itself and then four stars in the other four categories to give it a four-star rating overall.

“Being awarded four stars was a really proud moment for the team,” says Barbour. “What we’d like to do next is take a step forward and gain five stars. Making sure that we offer excellent customer service has always been my focus, whether that was with my building company or with Foxlake. It’s all about paying attention to the small details.”

Along with attracting attention from the assessors at VisitScotland, Foxlake has also received visits from people looking to emulate its success in other parts of the country. “We’ve

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“Making sure that we offer excellent customer service has always been my focus, whether that was with my building company or with Foxlake.

It’s all about paying attention to the small details.” had people coming to find out about the wakeboarding and the other activities we have built round it, which give a complete offering for a day out, with our new children’s play park being the latest addition,” Barbour points out. “Our other activities complement our wakeboarding, and so we do get lots of people coming to find out what we are up to, and how we’ve done it.”

Barbour and the team are currently in talks with Dundee City Council over proposals to open a site as part of the £1 billion redevelopment of the waterfront along the Firth of Tay. The city has realigned its roads and reconnected the city centre with the Firth in preparation for the opening of a branch of the Victoria & Albert

(V&A) Museum, which was originally due to open in 2014 but is now expected to welcome its first visitors in 2018.

“Going from being a builder to being an outdoors activities provider has been a steep learning curve for me,” admits Barbour. “I’ve learned a whole new set of skills.

“During those first two years, there were times when I was asking myself ‘What have I done?’ giving up one business to join another business that wasn’t turning over a lot of money at that point. There were times when I questioned what I was doing, but we have a really good team at Foxlake – from the board of the directors through to the staff – and so it’s been a real team effort.” n

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Capturing the spirit Spirit of Scotland, VisitScotland’s latest promotional programme, is more than just a marketing campaign – it’s a social movement that invites the nation to get behind tourism

“This is about so much more than stunning imagery”, explains Malcolm Roughead, chief executive at VisitScotland.

“It’s about harnessing a nation behind tourism”

As the pale winter sun shone down on the esplanade outside Edinburgh Castle, stunt rider Danny MacAskill found himself sitting astride his bike on top of eleven giant white characters that together spelled out “#ScotSpirit”. With a deep breath and series of “oohs” and “aahs” from the nation’s press, MacAskill began bouncing his way along the top of the display to launch VisitScotland’s latest marketing campaign.

Yet ‘Spirit of Scotland’ is much more than simply a marketing campaign. It’s billed as “the first ever global campaign and social movement to harness the power of the nation behind tourism”.

The £4.25m campaign aims to raise the spirit and profile of Scotland to the highest it has ever been. Visitors and residents alike are being invited to use the #ScotSpirit hashtag to post photographs, videos and other content on social media to celebrate their experiences of Scotland.

The #ScotSpirit movement also hopes to bring global attention to social tourism. VisitScotland

and tourism businesses have teamed up with the Family Holiday Association (FHA) to give struggling families in Scotland the opportunity to see more of their own country, giving families who have never enjoyed a holiday the chance to spend time together in some of our nation’s most incredible places.

As MacAskill set off on his ride along the top of those letters at Edinburgh Castle, he was epitomising many of the seven traits that VisitScotland believes can be found within the character of Scotland’s landscape and her people: warmth, humour, guts, spark, soul, determination and fun.

As well as revamping its website, the national tourism agency will be promoting the campaign on television, radio, social media, digital advertising and in print. Cinematic imagery and content filtered according to region and location will be at the heart of the campaign.

“The new advertising visuals are breath-taking and I’m sure they will inspire many to make the journey to Scotland, but this is about so much more than stunning imagery,” explains Malcolm Roughead, chief executive at VisitScotland. “It’s about harnessing a nation behind tourism.

“We want everyone who cares for Scotland to get behind this campaign by using #ScotSpirit and in doing so become ambassadors for the country and create this very special movement.

Scotland is a unique place inhabited by a unique people – a combination that creates an inimitable spirit.

“The emotional pull of this spirit can’t be duplicated by other destinations. You have to come to Scotland to experience it. But once you’ve felt it, our spirit will stay with you forever.”

Edinburgh-based filmmaker Ben Craig has created a series of cinematic-style television advertisements using time-lapse photography.

The adverts are accompanied by a soundtrack

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composed by Giles Lamb and performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO), with Games of Thrones star Iain Glen providing the voiceover. In the United States, Alan Cumming – star of television shows including The Good Wife and The High Life and films such as GoldenEye and X2 – will take over the vocal duties. Building on the success of the 2014 ‘Meet the Scots’ campaign, 12 online documentaries have also been made, in which those who live and work in Scotland try to put their finger on the elusive ‘spirit’. Music journalist Fiona Shepherd shares her thoughts about the bands that have played in Glasgow, while Harris tweed weaver Rebecca Hutton spins a yarn from her island home and park ranger Fiona Thompson unlocks the secrets of Loch Lomond. Ben Oakes, a scallop diver off the Isle of Skye, Caerlaverock Castle steward Jackie Higgins and lone piper Andrew Reid are also among those putting the spirit into words.

As well as attracting visitors from key markets such as France, Germany and the US, the campaign will also encourage tourists from other parts of the UK – and, indeed, from within Scotland itself – to take a holiday north of the Border. Partnership deals have been signed with Abellio ScotRail and Calmac Ferries to launch a ‘Spirit of Scotland Travel Pass’, which will encourage visitors to spread out from the Central Belt to explore other parts of the country.

Promoting the ‘Spirit of Scotland’ will dovetail with the ‘Year of Innovation, Architecture & Design’, the marketing theme for 2016. The characteristics that trigger the creativity shown in Scotland’s designs, its architecture and its innovative ideas are all alive and well in the seven traits identified in the ‘spirit’ of the nation.

But where did such a radical and innovative idea for the campaign come from? “We went out and spoke to lots of consumers in our core

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markets,” explains Charlie Smith, marketing director at VisitScotland. “What came out of those conversations was that there’s no one single factor that makes Scotland different as a destination – instead, what makes us attractive is an accumulation of lots of different elements.

“It’s the warmth of our welcome, it’s our beautiful scenery and landscapes, it’s the vibrancy of our cities, it’s our history and heritage, and it’s our mythology. All of these aspects contribute in varying degrees depending on who you’re talking to.

“But there’s also an intangible quality, something very emotive that comes through, which is hard to capture. It’s really about how people feel when they come here and how they feel when they leave. The word that kept coming up again and again no matter where we were – whether it was in New York or Paris or Munich or Glasgow – was ‘spirit’, which seemed to capture many of the elements that

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make us an interesting place and an attractive destination.

“The question then became could we bring this intangible, very emotive quality to life, which would draw together all of the attractive elements of Scotland together in an evocative

“What makes this marketing campaign different to others is the way in which we’re respecting our history and heritage while combining that with a quite modern and contemporary view of Scotland”

way? That’s where the spirit of Scotland came from.”

Smith adds: “We really wanted to create a platform that would allow us to speak about our people and our products and our places in a really emotive and compelling way. I think our team has managed to do that.

“We’ve also worked with some really great Scottish talent – whether that be the RSNO, which played the music for our TV advert, or The Union, which is a local advertising agency, or the young team that has done a lot of our online film work. The internal team has built our new website. It’s been about giving those creative people a platform to market themselves while creating amazing content for us.”

The ‘Spirit of Scotland’ campaign hit the streets in New York on 13 February, with the UK premiere following on 18 March. As well as a focus on the domestic market within Scotland, the marketing will also target the North-West and South-East of England, transport hubs in

France and Germany, and key markets in the US like New York, appealing to the Scottish diaspora, the 50 million people throughout the world who trace their ancestry to Scotland or feel a kinship with our land.

“What makes this marketing campaign different to others is the way in which we’re respecting our history and heritage while combining that with a quite modern and contemporary view of Scotland that we hope will be attractive to all,” muses Smith. “We’re using digital technology and capability in ways that we’ve never done, whether that be how we engage people through social media to the ways in which people can get information and interact online with experts about certain parts of Scotland, through to how they get their travel advice, through to how they get information on their mobile and book accommodation.”

Working with the FHA is a key part of the campaign for Smith and his colleagues at VisitScotland, with partners including Accor, Hilton, Macdonald Hotels, Historic Environment Scotland, National Trust for Scotland, the Scottish Youth Hostel Association and Abellio ScotRail teaming up to give families their first holidays together.

“The FHA is delighted to be working with VisitScotland on the Spirit of Scotland campaign,” says director John McDonald.

“Over the years we’ve helped hundreds of struggling Scottish families to benefit from a short break or day out to experience more of the #ScotSpirit for themselves. This campaign is a fantastic opportunity to work with VisitScotland and their partners to help even more Scottish families in 2016.

“We see #ScotSpirit every day in the families we help, families who are struggling with some of the toughest challenges life can bring but are able to create memories that will last a lifetime, strengthening family bonds along the way.”

The campaign has also struck a chord with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who launched the promotional activity at Edinburgh Castle.

“Using the hashtag #ScotSpirit, people can get involved and demonstrate what you think makes Scotland special,” she says. “Everyone who shares their experiences will be part of a special movement to promote Scotland across the globe and people sharing from overseas will become part of Scotland’s extended family.” n

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Opportunity knocks Focusing on internationalisation, investment, innovation and inclusive growth will help Scotland’s tourism industry to fulfil its 2020 strategy, as VisitScotland chief executive Malcolm Roughead explains If you were asked to imagine a typical visitor to Scotland then who would spring to mind?

An American who’s come to trace their family history? A bearded rambler in a hairy jumper who’s preparing to climb a Munro? Or an elderly Dutch couple who are towing their caravan very, very slowly around the Highlands?

Today, those images of the average tourist couldn’t be further from the truth. As well as visitors from traditional markets such as Europe and the United States, the modern tourist could just as easily have come from China to enjoy the shopping on Glasgow’s Buchanan Street or from India to take in the majestic castles and scenery of the Highlands. And Malcolm Roughead is out to make sure that each and every one of them enjoys a high-quality welcome.

“The growth of the middles classes in emerging economies is transforming the global tourism market,” explains Roughead, chief executive of VisitScotland, the national tourism agency.

“The good news is that there are more people travelling than ever before, with the middleclasses in China and India expanding at a phenomenal rate. The bad news is that the

global market is incredibly competitive and so these potential visitors can travel anywhere.

“But Scotland is ready for that challenge. The Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup in 2014 promoted Scotland on the international stage like never before, introducing our nation to hundreds of millions of people throughout the

“The growth of the middle classes in emerging economies is transforming the global tourism market” world. The secret for us is to make sure that businesses operating in the tourism sector in Scotland are competitive.”

For Roughead, one of the key strands of making sure that entrepreneurs are competitive is to make sure that they are making the most of the digital stage. He points to the need for specialised training to help businesses make the most of online opportunities.

“Some tourism entrepreneurs are real

technology geeks and so for them it will be about sharing best practice,” he says. “For others, they will be complete beginners and so they will need more in-depth help. If you’re a geek then there’s nothing worse than being sat next to a complete beginner, and vice-versa because it can be intimidating if you can’t switch the computer on but the person next to you is an expert.”

Roughead highlights the work being done with Skills Development Scotland and with the digital tourism project being run by Highlands & Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise. While bespoke training is needed, the outcome needs to be the same.

“It’s not enough for businesses to have a website anymore – customers also need to be able to check availability, compare prices and book on those websites too,” Roughead emphasises. “Potential visitors now expect to be able to carry out the whole process online.

“It’s also about going for a mobile-first approach. Just two or three years ago, 90% of the 20 million users of the VisitScotland website were accessing it through PCs or other desktop

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computers. Now, 60% of traffic is coming from mobile phones and tablet computers.”

Making digital connections is at the heart of Tourism Scotland 2020, the national strategy drawn up by companies operating with the sector through the Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA) industry body. Roughead’s comments on the requirements for training and the need to offer a high-quality experience also echo the aims of the 2020 strategy.

The STA has outlined key areas – including ‘destinations, towns and cities’, ‘events and festivals’, ‘food and drink’, ‘heritage and cultural tourism’ and ‘nature and activities’ – that businesses operating in the industry believe offer opportunities for growth. The topics mirror many of the marketing campaigns run

by VisitScotland, including the ‘Year of Natural Scotland’ in 2013 and last year’s ‘Year of Food & Drink’.

Another key focus for the STA’s strategy is business tourism, an area that also strikes a chord with Roughead. “The conference bid fund has so far brought more than 120,000 delegates to Scotland,” he says, highlighting the pot of money to which events’ organisers can bid for cash. “And that’s not just in the cities, it also brings conferences or other events to rural areas too.

“The conference bid fund has helped to generate an extra £200m for Scotland’s economy. People who come here for business travel could be potential leisure visitors in the future or they could become investors in Scotland once they see what our nation has to offer to their company in terms of the skilled workforce, the international transport links and the quality of life in our pristine natural environment.”

Tourism already means big business to Scotland.

The visitor economy is worth around £13bn a year, with Scotland’s 15.5 million visitors adding £3.5bn of gross value and supporting around 211,000 jobs in 14,000 businesses.

Adding flights to hub airports in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Istanbul and Qatar allows Scotland to access markets in Asia and the Middle East, while the addition of Madrid will open up South America. Routes to Chicago, New York and Toronto meanwhile give connections to the important North American market.

With so many international visitors coming to Scotland and the need to stay competitive at

the forefront of everyone’s minds, the ability to speak foreign languages is going to become more-and-more important for staff working in the tourism sector. While English may remain the language of business and science, the ability to converse with a visitor in their own tongue – even if it’s simply to greet them – is a key part of offering a high-quality experience.

It’s a topic that’s close to Roughead’s heart. After studying French and German at the University of Glasgow, he put his language skills to good use selling Guinness in markets including Africa and Europe, before becoming global sales and marketing director at Guinness World Records.

“Even to be able to say a few cursory sentences makes a huge difference and brings a smile to people’s faces and surely that’s what we want?” says Roughead. “If you can converse fluently that’s wonderful but by and large I think a few phrases go a long way.

“The ability to converse with a visitor in their own tongue – even if it’s simply to greet them – is a key part of offering a high-quality experience” “We have 23 nationalities working at VisitScotland and together they speak 26 languages. Our new website will be available in five languages initially and seven eventually.

“Cultural empathy is just as important as communicating with someone in their own language. There are only so many times that you can feed a visitor from the Far East a full cooked breakfast and so little things like having noodles and a kettle available in their room can go a long way. It’s very basic, but it’s all about understanding their customs and needs.”

Roughead joined VisitScotland in 2001 as marketing director and was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2005 for his services to tourism. He became chief executive of the agency in 2010 and maintained his position as marketing director until 2014, when Charlie Smith joined the organisation.

One of the first speeches that Nicola Sturgeon gave after being appointed as First Minister in the autumn of 2014 was to business leaders in

Glasgow. During her address, Sturgeon outlined how she wanted her government to help make economic growth more inclusive so as to even out inequalities in society.

Making tourism more inclusive is one of the key strands of VisitScotland’s ‘Spirit of Scotland’ marketing campaign, the first in the world to combine the promotion of a nation with a social movement. The agency has teamed up with the tourism industry and the Family Holiday Association, a UK charity that helps struggling families who may never have had the chance to go on holiday. The #ScotSpirit hashtag will help to get the nation behind the campaign and will also help to raise the global profile of social tourism.

Sturgeon put flesh on the bones of her plan during the spring of last year with the launch of government’s economic strategy, focusing on the four ‘I’s of ‘investing’, ‘innovation’, ‘inclusive growth’ and ‘international’. While tourism has a very clear role to play on the international stage – not just in attracting leisure tourists to Scotland, but also in bringing in business travellers for conferences or as potential investors – Roughead is adamant that the industry can also contribute to the other three ‘I’s.

When it comes to innovation, he points to the integration of the #ScotSpirit social movement into the new Spirit of Scotland marketing campaign. He also highlights the innovative partnerships that have been struck with TripAdvisor – through which VisitScotland’s content will be viewed on the travel website – and with media organisations like NBC and the New York Times.

Investment is also high on the agenda, with Dundee exemplifying the economic benefits that can be drawn from investment in tourism infrastructure, Roughead says. Building a branch of the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum in Dundee is the centrepiece of a £1bn regeneration of the waterfront, with roads being realigned and disused infrastructure being torn down to reconnect the city centre with the Firth of Tay. He also highlights the impact that the SSE Hydro arena has had in Glasgow, with musicians from Fleetwood Mac to Taylor Swift queueing up to perform concerts at the venue. Major attractions such as the SSE Hydro or the V&A have knockon effects for their surrounding areas, with

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visitors also booking accommodation, going out for meals or hitting the shops.

“Investment can be on a much-more local scale too,” adds Roughead. “It can be about upgrading interpretation panels or providing toilets or picnic benches or car parks. All of these wee things add together to give a highquality experience.

“There’s around £13bn being invested in infrastructure by the public and private sectors at the moment. But it’s not just about the big projects. Investment in smaller communities can have a massive impact too.”

As well as the partnership with the Family Holiday Association for the #ScotSpirit movement, inclusive growth also manifests itself through the way that VisitScotland’s employees interact with the wider public. Members of staff have given time to charities such as the Cranfield Trust and Pilotlight, which inject business expertise into charities.

One of the major criticisms levelled at Scotland is that working in the tourist industry is seen as a stop-gap measure until someone finds a ‘real’ job. Working in a hotel or a restaurant or a tourist attraction is seen as something to do in the school holidays or while on leave from university.

In other countries – such as France and the Scandinavian nations – tourism is seen as a profession, with those working in the sector using the skills they learn to travel the world and forge a long-term career for themselves. “We also have an outreach programme for schools where we have a career mentoring scheme,” explains Roughead.

“We go into schools and talk to fourth-year pupils about VisitScotland and the industry as a whole and try to address some of the negative images about it being a lowly-paid sector, when in actual fact what you get are transferable skills. You can travel the world with these skills

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and it could be a very exciting place to be and at a relatively young age you can get to pretty senior positions within the industry.

“Inclusion is also about visitors. It’s a big opportunity – the market is worth some £9bn.

It’s not just about people with disabilities either.

It’s also about catering for families so they feel included and for older travellers too.”

Looking ahead, Roughead wants to make sure that the benefits of the Scottish Government’s four ‘I’s and the industry’s 2020 strategy are spread throughout the country. So where would he like to see the tourism sector in four or five years’ time?

“At the moment, we have around 9,600 businesses listed on the VisitScotland website, but 30% of them don’t transact online,” he says. “The missed opportunity there is somewhere in the region of £450m. That’s not a missed opportunity in five or ten years’ time – that’s a missed opportunity now.” n

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A design for life From Harris tweed and vibrant tartans, through to the Forth Bridge and the Kelpies, or cutting-edge life sciences and digital technology, the 2016 Year of Innovation, Architecture & Design has something to suit ever visitor

Innovation: Scotland has long been famous for exciting design

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Scots have always been at the heart of innovation. Whether it’s Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, John Logie Baird creating the television or the medical advances made by Alexander Fleming, Joseph Lister and James Simpson, our nation has a history of creativity that stretches back hundreds of years.

That innovative spirit is alive and well today, in the engineering prowess of the Falkirk Wheel, the graceful majesty of the Kelpies and the stunning plans for the new Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum of Design in Dundee. Through the weaving of Harris tweed into the patterns for cutting-edge trainers and the architectural grace of the SSE Hydro arena in Glasgow, innovation, architecture and design are all flourishing in 21st century Scotland.

And all three of those elements are being celebrated during 2016 in the Year of Innovation, Architecture & Design (YIAD).

Over the course of 12 months, businesses and organisations throughout the nation are being invited to use the themed year to attract visitors to view their exhibitions, taste their wares and enjoy their hospitality.

The latest themed year builds on the success of previous campaigns, including the 2013 Year of Natural Scotland, the second Year of Homecoming in 2014, and last year’s Year of Food & Drink. Homecoming Scotland 2014

generated £136m for the country’s economy, while the Year of Natural Scotland triggered a 12% surge in the number of tourists visiting the countryside and coast.

Figures from VisitScotland, the national tourism agency, showed that more than one million people attended the 200-plus events organised during last year’s culinary celebrations, with spending on food and drink by tourists between January and September sitting at £804m, up from £747m during the same period in 2014.

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to invite all of our visitors – from day-trippers to those coming from further afield – to enjoy the diverse range of events on offer throughout the year. The 2016 YIAD offers tourism businesses across Scotland a fantastic opportunity to showcase, celebrate and engage visitors with this wide-ranging and fascinating theme.”

VisitScotland is leading the Scottish Government initiative and is being joined by partners including Architecture & Design Scotland, Creative Scotland, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Historic Environment Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland, the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Tourism Alliance.

Ewing’s comments were echoed by Mike Cantlay, the out-going chair of VisitScotland, who is standing down after six years steering the agency’s board of directors. “With this new themed year, we have the opportunity to put Scotland on the map in a new and exciting way, catching the attention of visitors old and new, positioning Scotland as a mix of traditional and cutting-edge at the same time,” he says.

“Scotland is a nation of pioneers, home to ground-breaking scientists, philosophers, engineers and architects for hundreds of years.

From the Forth Bridge to Dolly the Sheep, the telephone to the television, Charles Rennie Mackintosh to Andy Scott, and Harris tweed to the iconic Mackintosh raincoat, Scotland’s innovative past, present and future continue to inspire and influence audiences across the globe,

“An enticing programme of events that shows Scotland’s creative, modern and inventive approach continues to inspire and influence audiences across the globe” “The YIAD has begun,” declares tourism minister Fergus Ewing. “Visitors already travel to Scotland to experience world-class architecture and top-class design and the year will build on this heritage with an enticing programme of events that shows Scotland’s creative, modern and inventive approach continues to inspire and influence audiences across the globe.

“Building on the success of Homecoming 2014 and the previous themed years, I encourage the industry to embrace this latest opportunity to show the best of what Scotland has to offer and

shaping the modern world we live in today.

“The events planned for the YIAD 2016 are diverse, interesting and inspiring and we look forward to what we hope will be a groundbreaking year for tourism.”

Fans of great architecture are in their element when they visit Scotland. From classical contributors such as Robert Adam, William Playfair and Alexander Thomson through to the Art Nouveau influences of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, tourists are spoiled for choice. It’s little wonder that architecture accounts for

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more than 10% of Scotland’s £3bn creative industries sector according to the 2013 Creating Places report, or that the 2013 Great Britain Tourism Survey found that £187m was spent viewing architecture and buildings on trips north of the Border.

It’s not just fine buildings that attract attention either. The Forth Bridge has been recognised by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (Unesco) as a world heritage site, while Thomas Telford’s Caledonian Canal linking Inverness with Fort William through the Great Glen via lochs Dochfour, Ness, Oich and Lochy still proves to be a draw for tourists 200 years after it was completed.

The plethora of breathtaking buildings and stunning structures continues to grow, with more recent works such as the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, the Riverside Museum in Glasgow and the Mareel arts centre in Lerwick on Shetland taking their places

alongside the grand designs of the past.

A series of 28 key events have been funded by EventScotland, part of VisitScotland’s events directorate, to celebrate the YIAD. These include: the Clo Mor Festival of Harris Tweed, which will run in Stornoway between July and

March with ‘Hinterland’, a night-time public art event at St Peter’s seminary in Cardross in Argyll, hailed as one of Scotland’s most important modernist buildings.

Audiences will be able to wander through the ruins while listening to a specially-commissioned

“Thomas Telford’s Caledonian Canal linking Inverness with Fort William still proves to be a draw for tourists 200 years after it was completed” November; ‘In Vogue’, a fashion show spanning the centuries at Stirling Castle on 14 and 15 May; and ‘Luminous Birds’, a series of art installations throughout Scotland to encourage communities to celebrate their surroundings.

One of the highlights of the programme will be a year-long festival of architecture, featuring more than 400 events throughout Scotland organised by RIAS. The festival kicks off in

choral work by composer Rory Boyle, performed

by St Salvator’s Chapel Choir from the University of St Andrews. The site is due to be partially refurbished and will reopen as a public arts space in 2018.

“Almost 50 years on from the day the seminary opened, we are witnessing the first positive steps towards a new purpose, one that accepts loss and ruination as part of the site’s history

Innovation: Architecture accounts for more than 10% of Scotland’s creative industries sector

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World Class: Scottish architecture is admired around the world

creating an evolving arts programme for local people, all of Scotland and visitors attracted to this iconic site from around the world,” explains Angus Farquhar, creative director at NVA, the Glasgow-based public arts charity behind the event.

“We are setting out to ensure that the imaginative re-use of this great late modernist structure reflects the same social dynamism and ambition with which it was conceived, based around a spirit of working progressively to improve what we can and imagining a better world. It is NVA’s intention to preserve a raw sense of otherness, excitement and revelation.

“Hinterland will offer everyone a chance to visit St Peter’s seminary at a key moment in its evolution and it promises to be the must-see arts event of 2016, leading on to the delivery of an important new creative and heritage resource for progressive public art in Scotland and beyond. You want to be able to say that you were there at the start of what promises to be the most significant arts development for a generation.”

Putting Hinterland in its wider context, David Dunbar, chair of the festival of architecture,

adds: “The festival is designed to be an engaging, inclusive and Scotland-wide celebration.

“The festival will share Scottish design and creativity internationally and highlight the richness and breadth of Scotland’s architecture and the world quality of our built landscape.

be fun.” EventScotland is also supporting the ‘Our Built Environment’ strand at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, which runs from 26 March to 10 April. The science festival’s programme includes a large-scale outdoor installation called ‘Tiny Homes Village’.

Situated on the Mound precinct throughout

“You want to be able to say that you were there at the start of what promises to be the most significant arts development for a generation” Across Scotland, there will be hundreds of exhibitions, workshops, film screenings, musical celebrations and other events, involving many thousands of participants from home and abroad. “The festival is a partnership of more than 90 organisations, a nationwide event that will show how architecture touches everyone’s lives. This truly global festival is designed to reach out to the broadest audience – local, national and international. It will improve our appreciation and understanding. It will also

the festival, this full-scale exhibition of ten tiny houses examines the changing style of homes and how small buildings may provide comfortable and realistic solutions to urban, eco and emergency shelter demands.

Respected model artist Warren Elsmore will also create a vision of a Mars habitat from Lego bricks that will form the base of Mars Master Constructors, a free children’s Lego brick building event running throughout the festival at the National Museum of Scotland. n

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A Neate solution Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is steeped in history, from the imposing majesty of the castle sitting at one end of the thoroughfare to the more refined grandeur of the Palace of Holyroodhouse at the other. Visitors to Scotland’s capital are treated to hundreds of years of heritage as they wander between the attractions, stopping to watch Fringe performers during August’s festival and sheltering in the fascinating array of shops and cafes during the winter.

As tourists stomp between the castle and the palace, they pass a weird and wonderful collection of closes, tiny streets that run between the buildings of the Old Town.

Each one has its own story to tell, with some becoming rather famous: Mary King’s Close was

first Edinburgh Apps competition back in 2013 and we started working together from there,” explains Neate. “The council has been very supportive.”

Neate’s beacons use a little-known low-energy form of Bluetooth, which means that phones or tablets don’t have to be ‘paired’ with the beacon in the same way that they would if they wanted to swap data with a music speaker or a laptop computer. The low-power beacons can also run using a single coin-sized cell battery for a whole year, meaning that they don’t have to be wired into the mains electricity.

Using low-power Bluetooth for Neate’s beacons also means that users don’t need to connect to wifi or pay for expensive mobile data over

into an army base for the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the Royal Engineers, and the Military Provost Staff, which supervises custody and detention of suspects.

Although he enjoyed working in the RAF, he didn’t want to extend his initial nine-year commitment to 12 or 22 years and so Neate began looking at options for his career beyond the armed forces. During his time at Leuchars, he began volunteering with the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, the charity that trains and supplies dogs to people who have lost all or some of their sight and which is now simply known as Guide Dogs. Volunteering led onto applying for full-time work after he left the air force, kicking off an 18-year career with the

After 18 years working with guide dogs, Gavin Neate developed an app and Bluetooth system that turns the world into a more accessible and inclusive place, with applications ranging from tourism to pedestrian crossings struck by the plague in 1645 and is now open for tours; Fleshmarket Close is named after the old meat market and became the title for one of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus mysteries; while the World’s End Close will forever be linked with the murders committed by Angus Sinclair.

Gavin Neate is out to tell the stories of some of the lesser-known closes that line the Royal Mile and tell them to a wider audience than ever before. His company, Neatebox, teamed up with the City of Edinburgh Council to install Bluetooth ‘beacons’ in the closes and develop a free app – called ‘Edinburgh Up Close: Footsteps Through Time’ – that visitors can download onto their Apple iPhone mobiles or their iPad tablet computers. As tourists reach the entrance to a close, the app picks up a simple signal from the beacon and then displays information about the close on their screen, including an audio commentary and images.

“I won one of the categories at the council’s

their phone’s network. Tourists can choose their own route and follow the beacons in any order, stopping off along the way.

Relying on passive Bluetooth instead of wifi or active Bluetooth means that users can access the app without having to come into contact with advertising from businesses, which may otherwise have been needed if shops or restaurants were asked to supply mains electricity for the beacons. Neate says that a key part of his personal and company mission is that his solutions are inclusive by design and available to as many people as possible, including those with hearing or sight impairments – an issue that’s very close to his heart following a career working with blind people and their guide dogs.

Neate has taken an unusual route to becoming an entrepreneur. He served for nine years with the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a police dog handler, latterly serving at RAF Leuchars near St Andrews in Fife, which is now being turned

organisation as a guide dog mobility instructor that also saw him moving with it from its former base in Forfar to its new home in Edinburgh.

“During my time with Guide Dogs, I was fascinated with how my blind and partiallysighted clients were using modern technology,” explains Neate. “I would visit them in their home areas and observe them working with their guide dogs and they would show me the latest apps they were using on their iPhones or iPads. Many of the features they showed me were built into the phones’ operating systems and it became apparent that companies like Apple were making a real effort to engage with this new customer base.”

Seeing what digital technology was available to blind and partially-sighted people stoked Neate’s own interest in the area. As devices continued to develop, the apps created for Apple’s iPhone were matched with Android equivalents that would run on Samsung, Sony and other makes.

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“It became apparent that companies like Apple were making a real effort to engage with this new customer base.�

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“A lot of so-called digital technology ‘solutions’ for disabled people are designed by developers who might not really understand the problems,” says Neate. “For example, I recently saw a Braille tablet computer, which – instead of just displaying one line of Braille type like existing devices – could display a whole page of Braille, to make the technology look much more like a standard tablet. “But what use is that to a blind person? Unless I’m missing something obvious, they’re unlikely to need to read a whole page at once, they’re just going to want to read one line at a time so why over engineer?

“I had first-hand experience of what blind people wanted through my work with Guide Dogs and many of my clients are now my friends.”

Edinburgh’s Royal Mile isn’t the only location to have used the Neatebox. Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen worked with Neate on a trial of his system of beacons at the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune in East Lothian, where Scotland’s Concorde – call sign “Golf-Bravo Oscar Alpha Alpha” – is now housed. The jet was the first plane in British Airways’ Concorde fleet to go into service in 1976 and completed 8,064 flights before being put on display at the museum after the squadron of super-sonic aircraft was retired from duty in 2003.

Next steps for the system include designing an Android version of its iPhone app and adding in British Sign Language videos so that deaf people have more than just the text and images currently available. Neate is also working with Edinburgh City of Literature to create an app that promotes the books and writers connected with the city.

“Edinburgh was the first place to be designated as a city of literature by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (Unesco),” Neate notes. “There are so many literary connections in the city, like the Scott Monument on Princes Street and the Scottish Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile.”

Yet tourism is only one of many applications for Neate’s beacons. While the ‘Attractions Neatebox’ can open up Edinburgh’s tourist trail for disabled people, perhaps the inventor’s proudest achievement so far is his ‘Pedestrian Neatebox’, which tackles a much-more everyday dilemma.

“When a person in a wheelchair reaches a

pedestrian crossing then the button is often at the wrong height or out of reach,” he explains.

“On narrow pavements, the pole with the control box button attached to it is often placed really close to the road, and so the person in the wheelchair might have to position themselves really close to the edge of the pavement in order to press the button.

“That can be really dangerous on corners, if big lorries are making a tight turn. The same is true for steep pavements – the person in the wheelchair maybe grabbing their brake in one hand while trying not to overbalance as they reach to push the button with the other.

“There are similar problems for blind people.

Once they’ve found the button on the control box using their guide dog or their long stick then they have to line themselves up with the edge of the pavement so that they’re in the right place to cross.

“That can take time and if the green man starts beeping and flashing before they’re lined up then they may not have time to cross and so have to press the button again and then wait for the next cycle. It’s important to line yourself up with the edge of the pavement otherwise you may trip on the raised edge of head off in the wrong direction when you’re crossing. This all combines to make crossing a road for many a far more complex and potentially dangerous procedure than is immediately obvious.”

Neate’s solution to the problem is to install an adapted form of his beacons in the control boxes at pedestrian crossings. Blind or otherwise mobility-impaired people can then switch on the Bluetooth on their mobile phone before they leave the house and load-up a dedicated app.

The app will then automatically ‘press’ the button on the control box for them digitally by sending a signal to the passive Bluetooth beacon. This gives blind people time to line themselves up for the crossing without worrying about finding the button to press, while people using wheelchairs don’t have to reach for high buttons.

“We looked at using the global positioning system (GPS) but that was only accurate to between five and ten metres and so that was no use,” explains Neate. “We also looked at near-field communications (NFC) transmitters and receivers, but they only work over about 22 centimetres. Low-power Bluetooth was the answer.”

“As our population gets older, customer service is going to become even more complicated, but this system could be used to tell staff what help someone needs”

His system is currently on trial at a pedestrian crossing at Royal Bank of Scotland’s Gogarburn global headquarters on the edge of Edinburgh, where the beacons can also be activated using Apple’s smart watch. The beacons have also been installed at a four-way traffic light system on Lauriston Place, near the old Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh site, which is being transformed into the Quartermile development featuring

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offices, flats and shops, and is close to the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion.

The third application for the beacons is the ‘Customer Service Neatebox’, which it is hoped will shortly be on trial with Virgin Money.

Disabled customers can program an app on their mobile phone or tablet computer to tell the beacon in a shop about the type and amount of customer service they require. The beacon then relays the information to tablets or mobiles being carried by customer service assistants, so

they instantly know what help each individual requires.

“For a blind person, they could use the app and beacons to tell the assistant which arm to take to guide them around the store or they could use it to ask the assistant to just ignore their guide dog instead of distracting it on its head every time that they come into the store,” says Neate. “It could be something as simple as asking the assistant to introduce themselves by name to a blind person – a lot of blind people

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will hold entire conversations on the street with people who they might meet every day but whose name they’ve never known because that person has never introduced themself.

“For a young, independent person using a wheelchair then they may use the app to thank the staff for offering to help but to tell them that actually they just want to go round and do their shopping on their own. As our population gets older, customer service is going to become even more complicated, but this system could be used to tell staff what help that someone with dementia or Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy needs and ultimately helps the retail outlet provide a better service.”

Neate funded his business by selling his home to finance his research and development costs.

Now, he has raised £140,000 through family and friends, with match funding supplied by the Scottish Investment Bank, the finance arm of Scottish Enterprise, which is also working with Neatebox as one of its account-managed highgrowth companies.

He has also brought on board two nonexecutive directors: Professor Charles Swainson, a doctor who was involved in the designs for the new Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh at Little France on the edge of the city; and Biju Krishnan, a dental surgeon who practices in the UK, US, South East Asia and Australasia. Neate’s efforts have been recognised through him winning a runners-up prize at Virgin’s Pitch2Rich event, and the opportunity to meet serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, and also a runners-up prize for the most innovative business at the WeDo Scotland Awards, for which BQ Scotland magazine was the media partner. The market support for his creation was demonstrated when he scooped a commendation in the ‘Use of Technical Innovation’ category at The Drum marketing magazine’s Dadi Awards in 2014.

Among all the talk of tourism and customer services, “inclusive” is a word that’s seldom far from Neate’s lips. “It’s not necessarily about making things accessible but about making them inclusive,” he explains. “When we say accessible, what we really mean is that we’re adapting mainstream devices to suit disabled people. Why not plan our infrastructure, facilities and devices with disabled people in mind from the very beginning so that we make our solutions more inclusive and bring our society closer in doing so?” n

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Raising the bar for events More than simply bringing visitors to Scotland, events generate economic benefits and foster community cohesion, as Paul Bush, director of events at VisitScotland, explains

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Few Scots will ever forget the magic of 2014.

The excitement of having the world’s eyes fixed on our nation has inspired a whole generation and created a lifetime full of memories, from Hannah Miley winning gold in the pool at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow through to Europe’s victory in golf’s Ryder Cup at Gleneagles and more than 1,000 events for the second Year of Homecoming.

When the curtain came down at the end of 2014, Paul Bush knew the hardest part of his job was just beginning. As VisitScotland’s director of events, Bush was part of the team responsible for making sure that the momentum of such a momentous year wasn’t lost and that the benefits of so many world-class events coming

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“All of those delegates are also potentially leisure tourists in the future – if they enjoy their time in Scotland, they could bring back their families for a holiday or recommend us as a destination”

to our shores could be spread throughout the whole nation as a lasting legacy.

Bush is no stranger to big challenges though.

He was an Olympic and Commonwealth games team manager, which included heading up teams at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, before moving to Scotland in 1998 to become Scottish Swimming’s first chief executive. During his tenure, he oversaw the building of the national swimming academy in Stirling, and witnessed Scotland’s rise to prominence as the most successful swimming team at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006.

Following on from his early career as teacher and sports director, Bush was invited to investigate the role of international sports events by EventScotland’s first chief executive, David Williams. He joined the organisation as international sports director in 2004, shortly after it had been founded by the-then

First Minister, Henry McLeish, in response to Scotland’s failed bid to host football’s 2008 European Championships. Bush went on to assume the chief operating officer’s role in 2007.

“I’ve been in this role for about ten years now and it’s been a pretty good ten years for events in Scotland in terms of what we’ve achieved and what we’ve done,” says Bush. “The way that Scotland really rose to the challenge of 2014 was amazing. Between 1 January and 31 December, Scotland delivered the most unforgettable 12 months of activities that we’ll ever see during our lifetime.

“During that short space of time, Homecoming delivered more than 1,000 events and Scotland staged the best ever Commonwealth Games and the best ever Ryder Cup. On top of that, the MTV Europe music awards came to Glasgow.

For a country of just over five million people, it really was a spectacular year. In world terms, it

was probably unsurpassed. Very few nations of our size deliver something as complex as that and then pull it off with no problems.

“On the back of 2014, we’ve continued to raise the bar. Scotland’s capacity and capability is unsurpassed now on the world stage. The ability of events to drive sustainable economic growth as part of the visitor economy is easy to see. In 2014, the penny suddenly dropped – people began to realise events are the fabric of society, especially for smaller communities. They’re not just important to a community in terms of its wellbeing and social cohesion but they also drive benefits in terms of tourism, the profile of the area, getting people to work together, and the feel-good factor.”

Bush points to a series of big events that is reaching Scotland over the coming years, including the inaugural European Sports Championships coming to Glasgow and other

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“So we have to look at events that we haven’t hosted before and we need to look at new markets”

areas of Scotland in 2018, golf’s Solheim Cup arriving in Gleneagles in 2019, and Glasgow hosting part of football’s 2020 European Championships, 18 years after Scotland lost out on the chance to host the tournament.

“The momentum has carried on from 2014,” Bush says. “To keep it going, we need to be innovative and start to think laterally. We have to be realistic – we won’t be able to host the Commonwealth Games again in our lifetime, and we’re never going to host the Olympic Games or the football World Cup. “So we have to look at events that we haven’t hosted before and we need to look at new markets. We refreshed our national events strategy, Scotland: The Perfect Stage, in December and, as part of that, we’re looking at mass-participation events. These may include traditional activities like running or swimming or cycling, but can also relate to new areas like dancing or walking or climbing or rambling. There are a whole plethora of activities out there.”

Bush highlights the need to cater for different age groups when it comes to events, too. Older visitors may be less mobile but they will often have more disposable income to spend on their trips and have more time to spend travelling.

He also thinks Scotland needs to have more events focused on young people, targeting markets such as computer gaming, alongside developing Scotland’s most valuable and longstanding events.

“In Frankfurt, they recently sold all 17,000 tickets for a gaming event within ten minutes,” he says. “In England, the Football Association has sold 80,000 tickets for a football gaming event at Wembley this spring. That’s a combination of participation and viewing.

“We also need to continue to grow our most famous assets – we’ve built up the history and heritage of events over decades, which presents significant opportunities for the future. The Edinburgh festivals are the biggest collection of arts festivals in the world – we need to

maintain them and grow them. In Glasgow, Celtic Connections has grown into a huge music festival so how can this develop further? What should we do in the future to keep Edinburgh’s Hogmanay as a meaningful event in society and around the world? On the sporting front, we get to host the Open three out of every five years – most countries would give their right hand for that opportunity.”

Some of the benefits of hosting events in Scotland are easy to see. Visitors bring economic clout to any area that hosts an event, from buying food and drink through to booking accommodation and using taxis, riding buses or booking bicycles for transport. The 2014 Commonwealth Games alone generated £740m for Scotland’s economy, while the Edinburgh festivals bring in around £260m a year and the 2015 World Orienteering Championships and the ‘Scottish 6 Days’ companion event together swelled the economies of the Highlands and Moray by £9.4m.

“As well as those direct benefits, there are also the residual or tail benefits too,” says Bush. “If you have a group of five guys coming to watch the Ryder Cup or the Open, they may spend only one day watching the event but then a further five days over a long weekend playing on Scottish golf courses while they’re up here.

“Hosting events also gives destination marketing organisations (DMOs) a tool for selling Scotland on a wider stage. The Open brought £140m into Scotland and that total is now set to rise because the television rights deal with the BBC has ended and it’s been taken up by Sky and NBC instead. It’s hard to put a price on having golf matches in Scotland being shown live on NBC.” While hosting events in rural locations – like FyneFest in Argyll or Mumford & Sons’ Stopover festival in Aviemore – can obviously bring benefits to smaller communities, participation in larger national activities can also be spread throughout the country. In 2012, the London Olympics Games’ torch’s travels touched

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communities throughout Scotland, while the Queen’s baton relay in the run-up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow switched the whole process up a gear. Bush expects the same will be true when the baton for the 2018 Commonwealth Games on Australia’s Gold Coast spends some time in Scotland.

Away from the glitz and the glamour of sporting or music events, business tourism is often the unsung hero, bringing in around £1.9bn annually. As well as the direct benefits – the same spending on accommodation, food and drink and travel that’s seen with leisure visitors – there can also be a knock-on effect for businesses surrounding a venue, such as a conference centre. Local florists may supply flowers, local audio-visual specialists may be called in to provide presentations or videos, and local design agencies and carpenters can create sets or stages.

“If we bring a conference of 2,000 neuroscientists to Edinburgh or Glasgow then we’re demonstrating to those academics and their professional bodies that we can handle events on those scales,” explains Bush. “That means that they will go home and rave about the great time they’ve had in Scotland and they may encourage other people to come here for their business events as well. All of those delegates are also potentially leisure tourists in the future – if they enjoy their time in Scotland, they could bring back their families for a holiday or recommend us as a destination for their friends to visit.

“Having repeat events – like the Mountain Bike World Cup in Fort William, which is acknowledged as the best course in the world – can also create sustainable businesses within local communities.”

Looking back over the past decade, 2014 is clearly one of the highlights for Bush, but he points to an early high-point on the journey towards Scotland’s landmark year and bright future within the events sector that he recognises as having special significance.

“The first major event that we won was back in 2004 when we mounted a successful bid to host badminton’s 2007 Sudirman Cup in Glasgow,” he remembers. “That may sound like an odd one to pick, but it was the first major bid that we had gone for and so we were the events virgins on the international stage.

Winning that first one was really important.” n

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Arriving at VisitScotland at the tail-end of 2014, Charlie Smith was a man on a mission. As the national tourism agency’s new director of marketing, Smith was tasked with capitalising on the energy and enthusiasm that had been created by Scotland hosting the Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup and the second Year of Homecoming.

“There was a feeling of confidence about the place when I arrived,” remembers Smith, whose previous role had been as marketing director at Ovo Energy, one of the new breed of gas and electricity suppliers that had sprung up to challenge the ‘big six’ and disrupt the utilities industry. “Scotland had just pulled off these two major world events and had done them better than anyone else ever had. The spotlight was

Working in partnership Building partnerships throughout the public and private sectors is one of the key tools that VisitScotland is using to promote the nation, says marketing director Charlie Smith

“There’s a huge potential for tourism in Scotland, but to realise that potential we can’t just keep going to government and asking for more public funds.”

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on Scotland and Scotland did itself proud.

“The challenge for me has been to help capitalise on the momentum created by 2014.

The challenge is not to sit back and reflect on what’s gone before but to ask ‘What’s next?’

“We’ve shown what tourism is like when we perform at our best. We don’t have to rely on the big set-piece events to get everyone engaged – although I’m sure we’ll win lots of others as the years go by – how can we be at our best at all times? And how can we give the industry the tools and the inspiration to do just that?”

One of the tools that Smith and his team has used to promote our nation to potential visitors is forming partnerships with a wide range of organisations, from media companies like NBC and the New York Times through to transport operators like Calmac and Scotrail.

“Partnerships come in all shapes and sizes,” explains Smith, whose career has also included senior roles at Royal Bank of Scotland, Orange and Vodafone. “There’s a huge potential for tourism in Scotland, but to realise that potential we can’t just keep going to government and asking for more public funds. We have to think smartly about how we pull together the right organisations and brands that can help us to market and sell Scotland. We can work with people who are really good at their jobs to help us spread our messages.”

Many of the partnerships that VisitScotland has formed with other organisations revolve around the sharing of content. The agency’s website is a treasure trove of information about our country to excite and inspire potential tourists.

But it’s no use hiding your light under a bushel.

Instead of relying on customers coming to the VisitScotland website, the agency has taken its show out on the road.

Content created at VisitScotland is being shared with a host of organisations, from domestic outlets such as The Guardian and Media Scotland newspaper groups through to international players, like NBC and the New York Times. “These groups can help us to understand how we can use their assets, how we can best share our content and importantly how we can understand who the people are who are viewing their websites or reading their papers.

“We don’t want to pretend that we can become the sole reliable source for information about Scotland. There are already brands out there that are reliable and trusted in their own

“We have to think smartly about how we pull together the right organisations and brands that can help us to market and sell Scotland”

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“We’re a wee country but we’ve got enormous potential and if we’re going to fulfil that potential then we all have to work together.”

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markets so why shouldn’t we supply them with the very best content that we can about Scotland so that people are engaging with us in the very best way possible, irrespective of where they come across us? It’s not just about getting people to go to the VisitScotland website – it’s about making sure that people have a positive experience when they’re interacting with Scottish content and information, wherever that might be.”

Video is an important tool for Smith and his team, with short films about Scotland being made available for use on the internet, alongside more traditional formats such as photography and text. Blog entries are another popular route.

“We’re here to market Scotland ‘with’ Scotland, not ‘for’ Scotland or ‘on behalf of’ Scotland,” Smith says. “So part of our job is to help people throughout the country – whether they’re in the Outer Hebrides or in Inverurie or in the Borders – to make sure they’re marketing their content as best they’re can. We’re not the experts, they’re the experts – they know their area better than we do.”

That notion of meeting potential visitors on

their own terms is also an important part of the agency’s distribution partnerships, which include working with organisations such as Historic Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland, as well as transport providers like Abellio ScotRail and Calmac ferries. “These are people who are interacting with tourists on a daily basis,” Smith points out. “They’re having many conservations with people so we offered to provide them with the right information and tools and training so that they can have conversations that encourage visitors to see more and do more while they’re here, and in turn improve their own customer satisfaction.

“That effectively increases our ability to give tourists the information and advice that they want and in the place that they want it and at the time that they want it. Ultimately, we want them to stay here longer and spend more, and they’re only going to do that if they know what options are available to them.”

In among all of the partnerships formed with websites, television stations and newspaper groups, Smith maintains that there’s still a place for the more traditional tourist information centres. “It’s like any service organisation

– whether you’re a bank or a telephone company or an energy provider – some people still want to talk face-to-face,” nods Smith.

“They will appreciate the physical engagement of going into a bricks-and-mortar centre and speaking to a tourist information officer.

“Other people will prefer to do things in a virtual environment – they’re happy to interact, engage and even transact on the internet and increasingly through mobile phones. But in some parts of Scotland, where there are huge amounts of traffic, people will want to find out information when they’re there on the ground, whether it’s to buy tickets or get advice. So tourist information centres will still have a role – it’s about getting that mix of channels right and not lurching from having all bricks-andmortar to suddenly having everything in a virtual environment.”

Other partners are working with the tourism body to provide more specialist services.

Travel website Booking.com is making its Scottish accommodation available to view on VisitScotland’s online pages, while TrustYou is aggregating reviews of hotels and tourist attractions from social media and other

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“We need to be unashamedly optimistic. As a nation, we need to be really proud of this amazing land that we’ve got and the fact that so many people want to come and see it.

platforms and is using them to deliver a single rating. TrustYou is used by partners including Google, Thomas Cook and Trivago and has aggregated reviews for more than 50,000 hotels globally, such as those in the Best Western, Hard Rock and Motel One chains.

“There are so many different points of view that other consumers and organisations have about a destination, hotel or a visitor attraction, so TrustYou aggregates all of those reviews into one single rating that tells you ‘This is what other people think of the experience that you’re thinking of having’,” explains Smith. “It’s to try and make things simpler and fairer for people who are coming to our site and who are thinking about engaging with these activities in Scotland.”

Smith, who is originally from Edinburgh, is passionate about his homeland and his enthusiasm is infectious. After studying business at Edinburgh Napier University, he spent time with BT before progressing on to Orange and Vodafone. “Funnily enough, I always wanted to do this job,” laughs Smith.

“When you’re in a marketing or commercial role then it’s a real privilege to get to market and

“It’s not just about getting people to go to the VisitScotland website – it’s about making sure that people have a positive experience when they’re interacting with Scottish content and information, wherever that might be” sell your own country. It’s not difficult to get passionate about it. I’m working with a genuine world-class product and that’s a pleasure.”

Having worked with Ovo Energy in Bristol and with telecoms firms in London, the attraction of working back home in Scotland was also a big draw, especially after all of the excitement of 2014. “I’m a great believer in public-private partnerships and partnerships with the third sector,” Smith adds. “We’re a wee country but we’ve got enormous potential and if we’re going to fulfil that potential then we all have to work together. That means collaborating with partners in the private sector. I don’t see that as a choice – it’s a necessity.

“Culturally, it means that you have to be very good at working in partnership with people and collaborating and having an open mind and understanding what mutual benefit truly

means. Along with digital enablement, I think partnership is the key catalyst for growth.

“What’s really important for me is that we all unite around tourism because it’s so important for the Scottish economy. No matter what your political persuasion or where you’re from or what you do, I think that we can all agree that tourism is a good thing. Not only does it provide direct economic benefit but the halo effect on industry and academia for example is significant.

“We need to be unashamedly optimistic. As a nation, we need to be really proud of this amazing land that we’ve got and the fact that so many people want to come and see it. We need to feel good at selling ourselves – it’s not always been part of the Scottish psyche, but now’s the time for us to galvanise, come together and unify so we can be positive about what Scotland has to offer.” n

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“We’re not just building a distillery and then grafting a visitor experience onto the side of it.”

Craft & care Creating the ‘perfect distillery for the perfect whisky’ also involves giving visitors the ultimate experience, as The Macallan brand director Ken Grier explains Few days out can compare with a tour around a Scotch whisky distillery. The smell of the malted barley, the heat from the still and the flavours of a wee dram in the tasting room afterwards all combine to create a truly memorable tour. But Ken Grier wants to take all of those elements and push them on a stage further.

“It’s more than just a visitors’ centre – it’s a complete experience,” explains Grier, who is the brand director for The Macallan, the world’s best-selling single malt by value. Edrington – the company that owns The Macallan, along with its sister brands, Cutty Sark, Famous Grouse and Highland Park – is investing £100m to build the world’s first named-architect designed distillery and visitors’ centre.

For the design of such a landmark building, the distiller has drafted in Graham Stirk, senior partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP), the firm of architects behind such London landmarks as the Leadenhall Building or ‘cheese grater’, the Millennium Dome in

Greenwich and Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport.

His brief is to build the world’s most iconic distillery at the 300-acre estate on which The Macallan’s currently distillery sits, close to Easter Elchies House, a Jacobean mansion.

Construction is already underway, with Elginbased builder Robertson expected to finish work on the site on the banks of the River Spey near Craigellachie in Moray in 2017. Fabrication firm Forsyths of Rothes will supply the stills and other distillation equipment for the enlarged distillery, while Grier expects to welcome his first visitors to the new home of The Macallan in early 2018.

Edrington has also hired Atelier Bruckner, a consultancy firm that’s worked with clients including the BMW Museum in Munich, to create the narrative structure for its visitors’ centre. The practice has already produced installations for brands, exhibitions, galleries, museums and trade fairs in cities such as Brussels, Copenhagen and Shanghai.

“We get visitors from all over the world, from

more than 100 countries, and so we really want a world-leading visitor facility,” says Grier. “The visitors’ centre will be the gateway to this new iconic home for The Macallan. We’ve always had this fantastic estate, which is on the River Spey and which has its own fishing beat. We want to build the ultimate experience for visitors.

“The building itself is absolutely gorgeous.

It has an incredible floating grass roof. It fits beautifully into the landscape and will make a fantastic statement about how the brand looks in terms of luxury.

“My team is working with RSHP and Atelier Bruckner, and Graham Stirk has been heavily involved in the process. The vision for the visitors’ centre will blend into the vision for the whole building – we’re not just building a distillery and then grafting a visitor experience onto the side of it.”

Grier joined Highland Distillers in 1998, a year before the company was taken over by Edrington. He’s worked with The Macallan for

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the past 16 years, during which time the single malt has cemented its position as a luxury brand.

Last year analysts at International Wine & Spirit Research declared The Macallan to be the world’s best-selling Scotch malt whisky by value.

In 2014, a bottle of The Macallan M Imperiale six-litre Lalique decanter became the most expensive whisky to ever sell at auction when it changed hands in Hong Kong for US$628,000, smashing through a record previously held

by The Macallan in Lalique Cire Perdue at US$460,000.

“It’s about the emotional attachment too,” Grier points out. “The Macallan is a brand that collectors keep and treasure and so they feel emotionally connected to the liquid. They’ve bought precious bottles and so it’s important that we create the right experience for them

refreshments and shopping, up from £27m in 2010. The average amount spent by each visitor in 2014 stood at £32.50.

The largest group of visitors came from other parts of the UK, followed by overseas guests from Germany, the United States and France, mirroring the importance of those destinations as export markets for Scotland’s national drink: the US remains the biggest consumer of Scotch, followed by France, with Germany coming in at number five.

“Getting people recruited into the brand is about education and immersion,” explains Grier. “You can do some of that in their local market with brand ambassadors and through events, but ultimately the most powerful physical marketing asset we have is our home. It represents the brand, its values and its character, and it makes people feel close to the brand.

“It’s a very important part of securing the foundation of the brand, getting into people’s hearts as well as them enjoying the liquid” when they come to visit.

“We already received a reasonable number of visitors for our appointment-only tours. Once the new visitor experience opens, we expect to double visitor numbers within the first five years.

“The perfect whisky deserves the perfect distillery. Rather than just decide to extend our existing premises, we commissioned the world’s first named-architect designed distillery.

“It positions the brand as the ultimate luxury spirt and it provides a fantastic home for the brand that people can visit as they learn more about The Macallan. We care so much about the quality of our liquid that we’ve gone a step further than anyone else and built the perfect distillery for the perfect liquid.”

Grier highlights the role that whisky distillery visitors’ centres play in rural economies – not only do they create jobs on site but they also support employment in the wider area, with tourists staying in hotels, buying food in restaurants and cafes, and supporting shops and other small businesses.

Figures from the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) trade body reveal that 1.5 million tourists visited whisky distilleries during 2014, up 6% year-on-year and a massive 15% higher than in 2010. Visitors spent a combined total of almost £50m at distilleries in 2014 on tours,

“People drink the drink – and it is all about liquid to lips – and they enjoy it and appreciate the quality and the cache. But it’s fantastic that people take the time and care to come to Speyside to experience the beautiful Scottish countryside and the great food. It’s humbling.

“They spend time with us, they take a tour of the distillery, and if they’re lucky then they’ll meet some of the key people involved. It’s a very important part of securing the foundation of the brand, getting into people’s hearts as well as them enjoying the liquid.”

As well as his work with The Macallan, Grier was also involved in the creation of The Famous Grouse Experience, the tourist attraction at Glenturret distillery – Scotland’s oldest whisky distillery, having been founded in 1775 – near Crieff in Perthshire. “I’m still very proud of that because we beat the BBC and won a Bafta for The Famous Grouse Experience,” laughs Grier.

“What a night that was – it was slightly surreal.”

Last year Glenturret won the ‘Best Visitor Experience’ prize at the Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions (ASVA) awards. Grier thinks there are lessons that can be learned from The Famous Grouse Experience and from Edrington’s Highland Park distillery on Orkney when it comes to planning the new Macallan facilities, as well as from the existing work being done

at the site on Speyside. Grier, who cut his teeth as a marketing manager with United Biscuits before a short spell as head of marketing in the UK for toy company Lego, is one of the Keepers of the Quaich, a society set up by members of the industry to promote whisky. He has also served for the past 11 years as a non-executive director of the Scotch Whisky Experience, the five-star visitor attraction on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh that welcomes more than 300,000 tourists each year to learn more about single

INTERVIEW bqlive.co.uk

malts, single grains and their blends.

“We are finding that, within the industry, whether it’s small distilleries like Edradour near Pitlochry or big distilleries like Glenfiddich at Dufftown, there’s a real interest in visiting distilleries,” he says. “Distilleries are a fantastic asset for Scotland. We’re driving traffic into rural areas and giving visitors the chance to learn more about whisky.

“It’s not just about having a tour either – you

can give visitors the chance to purchase bottles that they might not be able to find elsewhere.

There’s also the opportunity to create cafes or restaurants to serve food and drink at distilleries.”

As well as welcoming tourists from throughout the globe to The Macallan’s new visitor experience, Grier is also looking forward to inviting other members of the industry to see what Edrington is creating on the banks of

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the River Spey. “This is a beautifully-designed building with a grass roof that will blend into the landscape,” he says. “It’s high quality, which is good for Scotland in terms of promoting its food and drink.

“It gives us the chance to welcome other people from our industry, whether it’s our ambassadors or our trade customers. It’s something that speaks of craft and care, which is very much what Scotland’s about – there’s magic there.” n

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Taking advice TripAdvisor’s 350 million users are now enjoying content written by VisitScotland after the two organisations joined forces, as Justin Reid, head of European destinations at the world’s largest online travel community, explains

The numbers surrounding TripAdvisor are mindboggling: the world’s largest travel website is visited by 350 million unique users every month, with travellers having contributed more than 290 million reviews and opinions in total, covering 5.3 million hotels, restaurants and attractions.

It’s little wonder that guest houses, bed and breakfasts and cafes proudly boast of their TripAdvisor ratings and display the ‘certificates of excellence’ issued by the website in their windows for passers-by to see.

Soon after it was founded in 2000 in a small office above a pizza shop in Needham, Massachusetts, the site began giving holidaymakers a voice. Instead of employing

legions of inspectors to tour round the globe trying out hotels and testing tourist attractions, the website – which now operates in 47 countries – gives tourists the chance to post their own reviews of the places where they’ve stayed or visited during their trips.

For Justin Reid, head of destination management for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at TripAdvisor, a natural extension of those user-generated reviews was to start providing visitors with more in-depth information about their prospective holiday destinations. Having previously served as head of digital and social media at tourism agency VisitBritain for 13 years, inspiring online readers to book a trip is a topic that’s very close to his heart.

“We get about 69 million unique users each year looking at Scottish content on TripAdvisor,” explains Reid. “That’s a huge number of people.

The most popular destinations won’t come as a surprise – they’re Edinburgh, followed by Glasgow and then the Highlands and islands.”

During his time with VisitBritain and now at TripAdvisor, Reid has watched where users have been going to look for their content. Over the past five or six years, he’s seen a trend develop, with users moving away from national tourism board websites towards places where they can find independent opinions about places to travel. “They want a bit more in-depth content – something that you wouldn’t get from a travel agent,” Reid explains.

About a year ago, Reid and his colleagues began developing new features for their website that would give tourism agencies and other destination management organisations (DMOs) the opportunity to put their content in front of visitors to TripAdvisor. “It’s a cliché, but we’re letting tourist boards fish where the fish are,” smiles Reid. “They can take their best content and put it in front of people who are actively looking to book their next trip.”

Last summer, the website ran a global conference for a hand-picked group of DMOs to tell them more about the project. “Since joining TripAdvisor, and also while I was at VisitBritain, I’ve always been very impressed with the content produced by VisitScotland,” Reid says. “Tourism is very important to Scotland, so VisitScotland was one of the DMOs that we invited to the summit. We were very impressed by how Charlie Smith, its marketing director, was looking at what people are doing now rather than what people were doing ten years ago. VisitScotland isn’t just willing but it’s also keen to do digital in a different way.

“VisitScotland was the first European partner for our global launch. We launched the activity back in October as part of our beta testing. It’s all about letting TripAdvisor users know what the best-of-the-best is about Scotland. If you go onto our website then it’s easy to see what the best hotels are or what the best restaurants are, both in Scotland and in specific areas within Scotland.

“But there’s not a natural filter for ‘the ten best whisky trails’ or the ‘ten best walks in the Highlands’, for example. We’d have those reviews on the website, but what VisitScotland now has is the opportunity to put together collections based on its marketing themes and then combine them with the user-generated

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content – the actual reviews by actual people who have visited these places. Together, they create an overall message that says ‘These are what VisitScotland thinks are the best things about Scotland and then these are the reviews of those things by travellers like you’.”

The content that VisitScotland posts on the website comes under three headings: events, allowing it to promote activities such as the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and link through to operators’ booking sites; collections, which feature lists of places to visit; and articles, which offer in-depth looks at specific topics.

Collections already posted on the website include ‘Literary Scotland’, a selection of ten writing-related sites to visit, such as Abbotsford House near Melrose, JM Barrie’s birthplace in Kirriemuir, and the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.

The ‘Unesco World Heritage Site’ collection profiles all six locations in Scotland, including the Forth Bridge, New Lanark and St Kilda, while the ‘Castles’ collection goes beyond the obvious suggestions of Edinburgh and Stirling to feature ten lesser-known sites, such as Cawdor Castle near Nairn, Drumlanrig Castle near Thornhill, and Floors Castle near Kelso, Scotland’s largest inhabited mansion.

Articles written by VisitScotland include: a profile of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national bard; a travelogue featuring the newly-reopened Borders railway; and a look at film and television locations north of the Border, ranging from

Harry Potter and Skyfall through to Katie Morag and Outlander. New behind-the-scenes features added to the website in February mean that VisitScotland can now take control of updating its content, so that last-minute events like an unexpected comet or good visibility of the Aurora Borealis or northern lights can be flagged up to potential visitors. The agency can also see live data on which articles, collections and events are proving most popular with which audiences, including which content is appealing to potential visitors from which countries.

“For example, it could be that the whisky trails

there is in Scotland from TripAdvisor users.

“While Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Highlands and islands are the most popular areas within Scotland for our users, what this new content will do is allow that interest to be dispersed more widely,” Reid explains.

“A visitor might be planning to go to Edinburgh for the weekend, but hopefully they’ll be inspired to book a longer stay and look at what they could do if they went on a tour of the areas surrounding Edinburgh, like out into East Lothian, down into the Borders or across the firth into Fife. That won’t detract from Edinburgh, but it will give visitors more options.”

During his time at VisitBritain, Reid was responsible for the development of the tourism agency’s website – increasing commercial clickthrough referrals by more than 150% – and the deployment of its social media strategy, which led to plaudits for the tourist board’s interactions

“It’s fundamentally important that you’re not just online, but you’re bookable online and you’re responsive to reviews online.” are proving the most popular content with users from other parts of the UK, while the German users are more interested in the wider food and drink offering or the Unesco sites are going down well with the French,” explains Reid.

“VisitScotland is then able to tailor content for those specific audiences or produce more content for themes that are proving to be really popular.

“We know that if we can get those 69 million users to this content hub then we can turn their interest into inspiration through this in-depth content without driving them off the website.

We want to take that initial interest that someone might have in Scotland and turn it into inspiration when they see all the things that they can see and do in Scotland. We can then take them further so that they will hopefully book.

“It’s early days yet, but already we’ve seen that users are consuming more Scottish content from these pages than ever before,” adds Reid.

“Collections seem to be the items that are of most interest to people so far.”

Reid is a familiar face north of the Border, having spoken at several Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA) events about Scotland’s place within the global tourism industry and what interest

with Facebook and Twitter. He also introduced the agency’s online shop and oversaw its North American customer service department while based in New York.

While ‘digital’ is very clearly in his blood, Reid is adamant that tourism businesses in Scotland need to take full advantage of all of the opportunities that the internet presents to them. “It’s not enough just to have a website anymore – customers need to be able to book through your website and they need to be able to interact with you,” he explains. “I’m biased because I’m a digital guy, but it’s absolutely crucial. People are researching online, but they’re looking to book online as well and do their price comparison there-and-then.

“It’s fundamentally important that you’re not just online, but you’re bookable online and you’re responsive to reviews online. A bad review – and I don’t mean an inaccurate review – isn’t wrong, it’s free customer research. So if you’re a hotel on TripAdvisor and you’ve got great reviews all the way down, but there’s a consistent complaint that you’ve got poor wifi, then that’s customer research telling you that perhaps you need to look at upgrading your internet connection.” n

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“Scotland has been a tourist destination for 200 years and we really started tourism in the Trossachs with Sir Walter Scott and his Lady of the Lake poem. There’s every reason why we’ll be leading global tourism for many years to come, maybe even for the next 200 years.”

MIKE CANTLAY, VISITSCOTLAND CHAIR In association with

BUSINESS QUARTER www.bqlive.co.uk