Scotland Staycations to Boost Economy
Staycations in Scotland seems to boost the country’s tourism sector. New statistics show that this boost still continues. Those who are engaged into hotel business is now calls on this sector to tap into fresh opportunities. The companies like KarmaKerala is more on to focusing on homestay tourism.
The statistics this year (according to the Great Britain Tourism Survey and the International Passenger Survey) shows that between the months of January and June, there was a total of 6.9 million visits to Scotland, up 4 per cent on the same period in 2010. Domestic visits, which account for 84 per cent of all trips to Scotland, were up 6 per cent to 5.9 million, with Scotland outperforming the rest of Britain.
The figures, which include UK and overseas visits, show that the international picture continues to be challenging, although there are indications that Scotland’s biggest market, North America, is showing signs of recovery with a 7 per cent increase in visitor numbers.
These figures encourage Scotland’s tourism sector as the country is moving on to the ‘winning years’, which aims to capitalise on the huge economic opportunities that lie ahead, including the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, Homecoming 2014, Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup 2014.”
Taking all these positive things into account, Scottish tourism can exploit the trend for “staycations” and, the huge private investment in the sector to make the industry a beacon of economic growth in Scotland.
Seminar on Social Media Impact on Tourism At St.Andrews on 25 October
The Scottish Enterprise is organising a 4 hour free seminar on 25 October 2011 at St. Andrews Links Trust Golf Practice Centre on how social media can influence the tourism industry.
It has found that Social media is fundamentally changing the tourism industry. The businesses like Gobananas are using these tools to get their message across and to draw their customers closer to them.
Since, the social media has found to be effective in tourism business, tourists are “liking” a venue on Facebook, describing their experiences on TripAdvisor, or posting their videos and photos on YouTube and Flickr. Customers are using these tools to choose how and where to spend their leisure time and money.
The seminar on social media is to demonstrate on how these tools works, why they are important and how to make them work for businesses, using inspirational and practical examples.The seminar is done using following steps.
1. Understand the impact of social networking on the tourism industry
2. Learn about the power of social networking for business
3. Learn which sites and which technologies suit your business and your customers
4. See how you can get others to do your marketing for you
5. Improve and strengthen your reputation, your credibility and your customer relationships
6. Be inspired by real world examples and successes.
The e-business experts of the Scottish Enterprise are at your help to give further advice and explore what else they can do to help. The criteria to attend the seminar is you must be into a tourism business.
Scotland’s Tourism Industry Missing Targets
Scotland’s tourism sector is now having the worst time ever, the new reports says. Numbers of tourists travelling into the country for visits are found on the decreasing level. The major reasons sighted behind this beat is said to be the bad weather and recession.
There have been visible fall in the number of visitors at tourist attractions throughout the north and north-east areas of Scotland. This slump reveals that the vital industry is almost certain to miss ambitious targets to boost its income.
Although goals have set in increasing revenue by 50% until 2015, the Scotland Government’s tourism unit have revealed that the industry is now running on a trajectory level. But, now the situations show that the industry is not on trajectory to meet 50% growth in the decade up to 2015.
The tourism industry was one that had better performed than any other sectors in Scotland. Most of the tour organisers face heavy decline in the number of visitors this year than that they had in the previous year. There are rising opinions from the part of experts in the field that, Scotland would have to change its marketing policy to succeed and not simply drop prices to increase business.
Also it is opined that Scotland needed to look further afield than the traditional domestic and North American markets because of the struggling economies. For instance, to the east, to places like China where the economy is still strong, and sell the state as an all-year-round tourist destination.
‘Staycations’ are here to stay!
From vacations to staycations, things have come to a full circle for Scotland. More and more people are opting for domestic holidays instead of going to far off destinations and the number of Scots who chose to stay at home registered a 15% rise from that of last year. The ongoing trend of tourists is to stay longer at home turfs during their holidays instead of splurging on the overseas destinations. Most of the low budget tourists preferred to take short breaks and camping options nearby , which in turn shoved up the domestic tourism prospects of Scotland.
As per a recent survey, more people were exploring the UK holiday options than in the last few years with wild life trails and camp nights becoming more popular. Scotland has some of the best outdoors well represented by the lochs and the mountains and people are showing a keen interest to explore the unexplored and off the beaten trails these days. The valentine’s day fervor in the air is sure to bring in more tourists who are on the look out for romantic breaks.
The heavy snow and the exceptionally hard winter season this year has brought in more than the fair share of skiers and mountain sport enthusiasts to Scotland. Though the economic slowdown is not as serious as it was a few months back, still people prefer to stay at home for their holidays and to keep their purse strings tight, which has immensely benefited the domestic tourism sector of Scotland. The figures so far have been encouraging and the Scotland tourism industry is kick starting the new year with renewed optimism and determination to make the most of the domestic tourism potential.
Edinburgh was the best tourist spot next only to London in 2009
Edinburgh has enough reasons to cheer as it wound up the recession hit year of 2009 on a bright note as it was rated as the second best tourist spot after London. More than 80% of the hotel rooms in Edinburgh were sold out by November, which placed it well ahead of some of the other popular UK destinations including Liverpool and Cardiff. The average value of rooms sold in Edinburgh was also the second-highest in Britain, at £69.79 against London, which topped the list at £102.76 a room.
Edinburgh hotels recorded a steady increase beating the national trend of occupancy slump in many places across Scotland and England. The high profile Nato conference in Edinburgh held in November immensely benefited the hospitality industry of Edinburgh when most of the hotel rooms went up for grabs for several days together.
According to a survey conducted by PKF, a business and accountancy firm, Edinburgh had an exceptionally good year last year when it outperformed the rest of the country except London, which hit the first spot. The month of December has always been strong in Edinburgh thanks to the festive season of Christmas and Hogmanay festival, which draws scores of revelers from far and wide. 2009 also saw an exceptional phenomenon when most of the people chose to stay close to their homes due to the grounding of the Scottish airlines, which interfered with their overseas holiday plans. Edinburgh hopes to keep up the tempo of a good tourist season this year too as new hotels are being added to its already impressive list and old ones getting spruced up to attract more customers.