Harnessing the Winning Years

SPECIAL REPORT: HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

2 SPECIAL REPORT: HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

keep the home fires burning

Selling Scotland

Time to get animated

A delegate balance

Gearing up to celebrate all things Scottish

Tourism chief’s reasons to be cheerful

A nation awaits the Disney-Pixar treatment

Nurturing business tourism growth

The PGA Centenary Course

The Dormy Clubhouse

The Blue Bar

The Gleneagles Hotel

The PGA National Golf Academy

TEE UP YOUR OWN RYDER CUP EXPERIENCE The Ryder Cup comes to The Gleneagles® Hotel from 26-28 September 2014. From this summer, embrace the magic of one of the world’s greatest sporting events with your very own tournament on The PGA Centenary Course, and be one of the first to play the course before it sees the golfing greats of the US and Europe do battle.

Our team will create a truly memorable Ryder Cup-inspired shotgun start event, including: • 18 holes on The PGA Centenary Course.

• Coffee/Tea & bacon roll on arrival • Two course golfers’ lunch in The Mitchell Room • Golf carts • One hour golf clinic at The PGA National Academy, Scotland, prior to play • Full scoring and tournament administration from our team of PGA Qualified Professionals, including personally branded scorecards • Exclusive Ryder Cup branded gift, unique to Ryder Cup Shotgun Experience Days • GPS Visage System on golf carts that can carry corporate branding • Ryder Cup pin flags • Play from championship tees on signature holes • Photography on tee, including tournament signage All this from just £205 per person, based on 72 golfers.

To book please call Resort Sales on 0800 587 8806 and quote ‘Business Quarterly’.

The Gleneagles Hotel www.gleneagles.com ®The GLENEAGLES word and the EAGLE Device are trade marks.

CONTENTS 05 news The latest stories from Scotland’s flourishing tourism industry

12 home run Why Scots everywhere can look forward to Homecoming 2014

SPECIAL REPORT:

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

18 site to behold An inside view of VisitScotland’s successful digital strategy

24 Selling scotland The challenges and opportunities facing Scotland’s visitor economy

WELCOME

28 getting animated

Businesses need a strategy to beat the recession. Tourism in Scotland offers great hope because a full range of companies right across Scotland have the ability to embrace the opportunities of tourism, one of the nation’s most important industries.

The ‘Winning Years’ – which have already kicked off with the successful Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations and continues with London 2012 Olympics - offer a unique run of international events, culminating in 2014, with Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles and Homecoming Scotland 2014.

All types of business in Scotland – from the smallest SME to the largest corporate – will be able to ‘piggy-back’ on this international exposure to increase their own commercial opportunities. But what is the best way to harness the Winning Years?

In this special BQ2 report, VisitScotland’s chief executive Malcolm Roughhead explains how both the public and private sector must grasp this window of opportunity to set in place a solid and sustainable future.

There will be a massive amount of excitement and global media interest – it is up to Scotland to show itself off as a friendly and hospitable place to visitors that offers quality and value for money. It’s all to play for.

32 bedroom secrets

Kenny Kemp, Editor, BQ Scotland

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

A nation awaits the benefits of the Disney-Pixar treatment

Undercover with the quality and tourism advisors who support Scotland’s hotels

36 back to nature A look ahead to a major celebration of Scotland’s unmatched beauty

CONTACTS room501 ltd Christopher March Managing Director e: chris@room501.co.uk George Cheung Director e: george@room501.co.uk Euan Underwood Director e: euan@room501.co.uk Bryan Hoare Director e: bryan@room501.co.uk EditorIAL Kenny Kemp, Editor e: kennykemp@blueyonder.co.uk Victoria Masterson e. Victoria@city-desk.com Gillian Law e. gillianlaw@techliterate.co.uk Andrew Mernin Sub-editor e: andrewm@room501.co.uk Design & production room501 e: studio@room501.co.uk Photography KG Photography e: info@kgphotography.co.uk advertising For advertising call 0191 537 5720 or email sales@bq-magazine.co.uk

46 Delegate balance An in-depth look at Scotland’s fastgrowing business tourism industry

SELLING SCOTLAND

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In association with

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room501 Publishing Ltd, 16 Pickersgill Court, Quay West Business Park, Sunderland SR5 2AQ www.room501.co.uk room501 was formed from a partnership of directors who, combined, have many years of experience in contract publishing, print, marketing, sales and advertising and distribution. We are a passionate, dedicated company that strives to help you to meet your overall business needs and requirements.

All contents copyright © 2012 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 information is correct at time of going to print, June 2012.

BQ Magazine is published quarterly by room501 Ltd.

SPECIAL REPORT | SUMMER 12

WELCOME

SUMMER 12

Seize the day - making the most of the Winning Years When it comes to a warm welcome, nobody does it better than right here in Scotland. And don’t just take my word for it - who would have thought that at a time when purse strings across the world are being pulled and pennies are being pinched, visitor numbers to Scotland would rise by 9% and spend by some 15%.

Results like this don’t just happen - it’s the hard work, tenacity and dedication to quality from thousands of tourism businesses, families and individuals all across the country that have helped Scotland to reap the rewards. When opportunity knocks, these businesses, quite literally, are the ones ready to open the door.

Working alongside VisitScotland, The Scottish Government is helping Scotland as it gears up to welcome the world. If you haven’t already heard of The Winning Years - you will have by the time this summer is over. Never before have so many once-in-a-lifetime opportunities been there for the taking and it’s quite likely we’ll never get a chance like this again.

So time is of the essence. Later this summer will see the global release of Disney-Pixar’s animated movie Brave. Starring the voices of some of Scotland’s finest actors, including Billy Connolly, Kelly MacDonald, Robbie Coltrane, Craig Ferguson and Kevin McKidd, Brave may be the biggest film and tourism opportunity ever to hit Scotland. But the lead character beats them all as it’s one we all know well - Scotland.

And VisitScotland is poised and ready to deliver a world-wide campaign to make sure people will be inspired to visit the land that inspired the movie.

Then looking further ahead to 2014, two of the greatest sporting events on earth, the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, will focus the eyes of the world on our nation.

Across The Scottish Government, we are all dedicated to harnessing the power of the Winning Years and to win for Scotland.VisitScotland will be selling our country as a must-see tourism destination across the world, bidding for conferences, bidding for new sports and cultural events, and supporting industry however and wherever they can. We’re working together on this year’s Year of Creative Scotland and gearing up for 2013 as the Year of Natural Scotland and it’s exciting to see the industry’s enthusiasm really taking shape.

Fergus Ewing MSP Minister for Energy, Enterprise & Tourism

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HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

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NEWS

Scotland remains flavour of the day in America, Exodus to Germany could prove lucrative, lifetime servant wins deserved recognition, and whisky centre gets £1m shot in the arm

>> New five-star venue checks in The Cairn Lodge & Hotel has opened in Auchterarder, near Gleneagles, following a makeover, creating more than 40 jobs. Perthshire’s newest five-star property is the vision of hotelier, Steven McLeod, and the latest addition to his luxury Aurora Hotel Collection.

Over £3m was spent on the acquisition and reinvention of the Victorian property to create a hotel featuring 10 exquisite bedrooms, a chic bar & grill, an outside terrace and separate luxury five-bedroom lodge house. Interior decoration and furnishings are by Andrew Martin, light fittings by Studio Italia and bedrooms featuring sumptuous Philippe Starck bathrooms with luxury amenities from the White Company.

The focal point of the hotel is The Grill Room, one of the few venues in the UK to feature a Josper Grill. Chief executive Steven McLeod says: “The Cairn will add a new dimension to the accommodation and dining available in the area and is a great addition to the Aurora Hotel Collection. The Cairn is the first of several ventures which we plan to open in the next 18 months and there will be at least two further additions in the near future.”

The Hotel Colessio will open in Stirling at the end of this year, and following an upgrade and refurbishment, the historic Kenmore Hotel, near Aberfeldy, will be re-launched along with our luxury lodge development at Kenmore.”

>> US influx continues North American visitors are still choosing to come in large numbers to Scotland.

The country’s flagship travel trade show, which has seen nearly 250 Scottish tourism businesses exhibiting to tour operators and travel agents from all over the world, has

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

welcomed 65 ‘buyers’ from North America, with some of them reporting a huge surge in interest in Scotland.

This comes on the back of recently published figures which show a 15% increase in the number of North American visitors to Scotland during 2011.

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New Jersey-based CiE Tours International, one of the buyers at Expo, runs regular tours to Scotland and reported a 165% increase in business between 2009 and 2011 Dennis Savage, Senior Vice-President at CiE Tours International, says: “Over the past three years CIE Tours coach tour passenger numbers from our USA and Canadian markets to Scotland and Scotland/Ireland have surged over 165%.

The combined Scottish/Irish coach tours has been the backbone to this surge. Additional coach tour programs and capacity has been added for the 2013 season based on current year sales which are very robust at 30% year-to-date growth.

North America also boasts 5,000 VisitScotland SCOTSagents - tour operators who have completed an online training course that gives them the knowledge and resources to sell Scotland. This year, VisitScotland expo welcomed buyers from a total of 36 different countries, from key markets such as the USA and Canada to emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Hidden gem: Rabbit pate at the Gille Brighde, on the Isle of Canna

>> Cooking up a treat Scotland welcomes anyone who adds something special. And Dutchman Art Lastdrager fits this bill. He and his partner, Amanda, run the Gille Brighde, a cafe and restaurant on the Isle of Canna. This gem of a bistro makes a range of delicious food including its own local rabbit and pistachio pate. Book ahead: www.cannarestaurant.com.

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NEWS

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>> No blow from turbines Donald Trump take note: wind farms have little impact on a decision to holiday in Scotland, independent research has revealed.

Investigating the consumer attitudes to wind farms and their effect on tourism, the omnibus study incorporated the views of some 3,000 interviewees. Highlighting the fact that 83% of respondents stated their decision to holiday in the UK would not be affected by the presence of a wind farm; the research also reported that the majority (80%) of respondents disagreed, or felt neutral, that wind farms spoil the look of the Scottish countryside.

The research also demonstrated that a high proportion, some 83%, of respondents wouldn’t tend to avoid an area if there was a wind farm present. In fact, almost half of all those surveyed expressed an interest in visiting a wind farm development if it included a visitor centre.

Peter Taylor: Lifetime award winner

>> Doors open to new deal The UK’s biggest holiday letting company, The Hoseasons Group, has signed a major partnership with VisitScotland in order to enable the group’s portfolio of more than 2,000 Scottish properties to pass the highest accreditation standards.

Scottish Country Cottages, Welcome Cottages and cottages4you are three of The Hoseasons Group’s leading brands which will have their Scottish properties assessed by VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance Scheme - a world-renowned initiative designed to raise overall standards of accommodation, visitor attractions and places to eat across Scotland.

The partnership will also benefit the thousands of small businesses which contribute to Scotland’s tourism industry and will be looking to achieve accreditation standards which help them boost their property’s booking figures and annual income.

VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance experts will work with regional managers from The Hoseasons Group and each of the property owners to help raise the standards of the overall visitor experience.

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>> Double boost for hotel group Peter Taylor, chairman of The Town House Collection, and featured on BQ cover article in BQ Spring 2011, has received the Catering in Scotland Lifetime Excellence Award making May a very rewarding month for the Scottish hotel group.

Of his award, he says: “The hotel industry is not all about bricks and mortar but very much about people - the team - and I am fortunate enough to have a great one! It is a great privilege for me to receive this CIS Lifetime Achievement Award however it is also a true reflection of the efforts of a strong and committed team over a great many years.”

Other recent award highlights for The Town House Collection include The Bonham receiving the Boutique Hotel of the Year award at the Scottish Hotel Awards and Blythswood Square winning at the Regional Finals of the Thistle Awards. The hotel has won in two categories – Best Hotel and Best Café, Bar or Restaurant for The Salon.

The industry is not all about bricks and mortar but also about people Simon Law, vice-president of The Hoseasons Group, added: “Scottish Country Cottages, Welcome Cottages and cottages4you are three of our biggest holiday property portfolios and can only benefit from this exciting partnership. From a business perspective, having a world-renowned accreditation will

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also be of massive benefit to our Scottish property owners as it will be key to helping them attract new holidaymakers in search of quality self-catering accommodation.”

For more information on letting your property with The Hoseasons Group, visit www.letmycottage.com

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

Advertorial

Tourism – Putting Scotland on the map

By Ian Collins, Area Director for Bank of Scotland

With the number of overnight visitors to Scotland increasing by nine per cent in 2011, the country’s tourism industry is remaining buoyant against a difficult economy.

And as ongoing instability in the Eurozone may encourage more holidaymakers to remain in the UK rather than visit the EU, upcoming events such as the 2014 Ryder Cup and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games will also put Scotland at the forefront of many international travellers’ minds.

To add to this, Scotland is also set to feature on the big screen too, with Disney-Pixar’s new film Brave, set in the Highlands, due for release in June.

With these potential catalysts for increased visitors, businesses in the Scottish tourism sector should be preparing now to make sure they take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves. The box out on the right highlights some important steps to take.

Support you can bank on At Bank of Scotland, to entrench ourselves into the tourism sector, we work with VisitScotland to ensure we understand the opportunities and challenges that businesses in the industry face every day.

With a strong customer base across the Scottish tourism sector, we also actively look to build long term relationships with hotel and bed and breakfast businesses across Scotland.

We continue to approve eight out of ten requests for loans and overdrafts, and are keen to support viable businesses in this sector.

When approaching your bank for funding, beyond the fundamentals such as a strong business plan and cashflow forecast, you should also ensure you ask for the right amount of lending for the full year and not just key seasons. This will ensure the funding you request is enough to cover you for the term you require it for, and allows you and your bank to have sight of potential issues way before they occur.

To find out how we can work with your tourism business, please contact me on 07764 287 926 or ian.collins@lloydstsb.co.uk

www.bankofscotlandbusiness.co.uk

Take advantage of tourism opportunities • Build a strong support network – it is worth the time and money to secure the services of good quality advisors, such as accountants, who have experience of the tourism sector • Marketing is key – ensure your business is visible to both tourists in the area and international visitors before they come to Scotland. The digital age of marketing now makes it easier to market your business globally • Consider accepting card payments whether in sterling or international currencies – Lloyds TSB Cardnet can allow you to take card payments in foreign currency, providing convenience for overseas visitors.

Any property given as security which may include your home, may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage or other debts secured on it.

All lending is subject to a satisfactory credit assessment Bank of Scotland plc Registered Office: The Mound, Edinburgh EH1 1YZ. Registered in Scotland no. SC327000. Telephone: 0870 600 5000.

Licensed under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 under registration number 0593292.

We subscribe to The Lending Code; copies of the Code can be obtained from www.lendingstandardsboard.org.uk Please note that any data sent via e-mail is not secure and could be read by others.

Please be aware that there are certain circumstances where we are unable to accept e-mail instructions - for further information, please contact your Relationship Manager.

All Cardnet applications will be subject to their own credit and risk assessment and we may ask for supporting documentation.

Cardnet is a registered trademark of Lloyds TSB Bank plc

NEWS

SUMMER 12

five stars for excellence in recognition of its exceptionally high standard of facilities and services for visitors. This prestigious award, only achieved by a small percentage of visitor attractions, puts Edinburgh Bus Tours alongside other five star attractions in Edinburgh, including Edinburgh Castle and Royal Yacht Britannia.

The tour costs £12 for Adults, £11 Students/ Senior and £5 Children aged 5-15. For information visit: www.edinburghtour.com

>> Taking the high road

Cruising ahead: The 12-seater Integrity

>> New vessel sails into growing cruise market Scotland has an immense range of cruising experiences to offer. There are established favourites, such as Caley Cruisers, on the Caledonian Canal, established in Inverness in 1970

by Jim Hogan, and now operating ten classes of motor cruising.

But one newcomer to the established Crystal Yacht Charter, out of Croabh Haven, 14 miles south of Oban, is an outstanding new Redbay 11 metre rib, called Integrity, available for commercial and bareboat charter.

This vessel has capacity to transport up to 12 passengers all over the West Coast of Scotland, including the difficult passage out to St Kilda, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which is owned by the National Trust for Scotland. Camping is optional, but needs to be booked in advance. The rib has twin Yamaha 285 diesels with stern drives which allow it to cruise out to the islands at up to 30 knots. Colonsay from Craobh can be achieved within an hour.

The cruising range of Integrity is around 400 miles on full tanks, at 60 litres per hour on a speed in the high 20 knots. www.crystalyachtcharter.com or www.caleycruisers.com

>> Tour into the past Edinburgh Bus Tours has added a historic tour to its portfolio.

The Edinburgh World Heritage Official Tour offer visitors the opportunity to discover facts about historical events and people that have shaped Edinburgh’s iconic landmarks in and around the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns.

The tour, created in partnership with Edinburgh World Heritage, comes with multi-language commentary and offers informed commentary in English, French,

SPECIAL REPORT | SUMMER 12

German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

Ian Craig, Managing Director of Lothian Buses, which owns Edinburgh Bus Tours, says: “The launch of Edinburgh World Heritage Official Tour will offer visitors to Scotland’s Capital the opportunity to enjoy a five-star quality city tour that succinctly narrates the significance of key cultural landmarks and their role in shaping both Edinburgh and Scotland’s rich cultural heritage.

In 2011 Edinburgh Bus Tours achieved the highest accolade from VisitScotland attaining

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Coach touring is still one of the growth areas for tourism. And the Highland Experience is the fastest growing five-star Scottish Tour Company that offers tours from one to five days throughout Scotland.

Brand new for 2012, are one-day tours departing on a regular basis from Inverness. Tours to Skye, John O’Groats, Applecross and the Black Isle. The Scottish Tour Company departs from Edinburgh, Glasgow or Inverness.

>> Global showcase Eleven leading Scottish tourism businesses were showcased at the IMEX event in Frankfurt in the biggest Scottish stand in recent years.

VisitScotland’s attendance at last year’s show delivered an estimated £3.3m in enquiries to bring large events to Scotland.

The Business Tourism Unit will also be represented at major United States trade shows in June aimed at two of the most valuable markets – incentive trips and large international association conferences.

Lindsay Brown, UK marketing manager for VisitScotland’s BTU, said: “Business tourism is a lucrative sector and consequently we are operating on a fiercely competitive global stage. We need to ensure that we are placing resources where they can deliver best benefit for our industry both at home and abroad.

“In recent years we have seen renewed interest from not just Europe, but North America as well, and overall our conversion rate is running at a healthy 20% of enquiries, up 25% on the previous year.”

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

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>> Sea change A £1.3m investment has been made by Scottish Sea Farms to create a new fresh water salmon hatchery for Holywood, Dumfries, with the facility set to be operational by October 2012.

Fresh water manager at Scottish Sea Farms, Mike Bauermeister, said the investment would help to”secure and improve upon the excellent health, quality and performance of the production at this site and help to grow our fresh water facilities across the company”.

>> A shot in the arm Five-star visitor attraction, the Scotch Whisky Experience, has launched its new retail experience in Edinburgh following a £1m renovation of the site. Developed in

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

partnership with industry experts, the concept is designed to reflect modern attitudes to Scotch whisky and evolving shopping trends, bringing the product and retail experience up to date. Susan Morrison, director and general manager of the Scotch Whisky Experience, says: “As a world-class visitor experience, we want to continue to challenge traditional preconceptions of Scotch Whisky in everything we do; blowing away common myths and stereotypes.” The facility represents the next step in the attraction’s multi-million pound overhaul to bring Scotland’s national drink into the 21st Century and marks the most significant development since the unveiling of the World’s Largest Collection of Scotch Whisky. Susan continues: “The whisky shop has established itself as a key element of the attraction. In the last three years, revenue has risen by over 55% and, as of last year, it represents almost half our total revenue. It is

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NEWS

important the facility reflects the same quality, up to date experience as the rest of the attraction. An interactive kiosk, developed by designers Moriarti, offers information on all of Scotland’s distilleries in 20 languages, including Arabic, Korean and Brazilian –all emerging Scotch Whisky markets. In 2011, 80% of Scotch Whisky Experience visitors were international with significant year-onyear increases in developing markets including South America (+84%), Japan (+48%), and Europe (+47%).

The interactive kiosk is one of many measures to help ensure a customer-friendly experience for the growing numbers of international visitors. Created by designers Bright 3D and main contractor Laurence McIntosh, the interior boasts a gallery, bespoke fittings including countertops made from reclaimed whisky cask ends, custom made lighting, oak flooring and slate feature walls.

SPECIAL REPORT | SUMMER 12

NEWS

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>> Digital deal creates buzz Wyndham Hotels has appointed Bitbuzz, specialists in innovative Wi-Fi solutions for the hospitality sector, as its supplier of wi-fi internet access to its portfolio of hotels across the UK, including its Days Hotels, Ramada, Ramada Encore and Wyndham Grand hotel brands. Wyndham Hotels has 109 properties in the UK. Since June 2010, Bitbuzz has been injecting some competition into the wi-fi market. Among Bitbuzz’s notable UK clients are Ibis Hotels, Elegant English Hotels, Travelodge, StayCity Apartments, Kensington Rooms, Tune Hotels, Costa Coffee, The Lough Erne Resort and Leeds Bradford Airport.

>> Thai-ing up new deals Tourism leaders led a delegation of ten Scottish tourism businesses to Thailand as part of a major international sales mission. VisitScotland, working with Scottish Development International, led a delegation to Destination Britain and Ireland – a business-to-business networking event run by VisitBritain which is attended by 117 buyers from the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions.

As part of campaign, Mark Greenaway, Head Chef at No 12 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, hosted a seminar in Bangkok.

The Scottish businesses included Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh; Mar Hall, Bishopton; Fairmont St Andrews; Aldourie Castle, Loch Ness; Isle of Eriska Hotel, Argyll; The Torridon, Wester Ross; Dryburgh Abbey Hotel, Scottish Borders; The World Famous Blacksmiths Shop, Gretna Green; Rabbies Small Group Tours, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Apex Hotel, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee The launch of the double daily flight from Dubai to Glasgow means that many of the businesses will also participate in a sales and networking event in Dubai, organised

by VisitScotland and SDI. Denise Hill, head of international Marketing at VisitScotland, said: “Every year, VisitScotland’s work with tourism businesses, helping them to connect with overseas operators and creating new travel

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packages to Scotland, generates more than £30 million worth of additional revenue for this country’s economy. Last month, VisitScotland expo welcomed 149 tour operators from the emerging markets, each one keen to add Scotland to their travel itineraries.”

>> Media spotlight Glasgow City Marketing Bureau and VisitScotland is operating a Destination Media Centre (DMC) for international media during Glasgow’s hosting of eight Olympic Football Matches in July and August 2012. The DMC will be a free service for media located in Gallery 5 of The Lighthouse in Mitchell Lane in Glasgow, operating from 10am to 6pm through Tuesday to Saturday, July 24-28 and from Tuesday, July 31 through to Friday, August 3.

Scott Taylor, chief executive of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, says: “The Olympic Games is the biggest sporting event on the planet and, as the host of eight Olympic football matches, Glasgow is set to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in front of a global audience.”

>> Waterway to grow A new village on the outskirts of Edinburgh is set to be expanded to pave the way for the construction of a new canal basin.

The Moorings in Ratho will be increased in size to fund the development of the tree-lined docking area at the basin of the Union Canal.

Cala Homes has already constructed half of the 100 homes planned for the upmarket development, which is expected to be completed in 2014.

Scottish Canals, which promotes Scotland’s waterways, said the investment would result in 20 new berths for vessels and would help turn the area into a visitor destination.

Development manager Jamie Woodfield said the alternative plan to extend the village would ensure the construction of a new canal basin in the area.

“These development proposals will help the Union Canal to become more established as an attractive destination, not just for leisure, but also as a vibrant and integrated community,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Bridge Inn at Ratho, run by Graham and Rachel Bucknall, won the Pub of the Year Award in the Catering In Scotland Excellence Awards, held in Glasgow.

>> A cloudless day on Harris The Rodel Hotel, on the Isle of Harris, is a stunning setting beside a natural sheltered harbour where you get a warm welcome.Two miles from Leverburgh, it’s a real find for dinner: Hand dived Sound of Harris scallops in white wine cream sauce with chive mash, for £18.95, or collops of Pabbay venison, served with port and bramble sauce, at the same price. Rodel is 24 miles from Tarbert.

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COMPANY PROFILE

Although born in 1866 and built on the back of skills which date back centuries, there is a fresh vein of young talent running through jeweller Hamilton & Inches, as BQ reports

Youthful edge keeps historic jeweller shining

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idden from the gaze of passing folk on Edinburgh’s busy George Street, within the confines of one of Scotland’s most treasured jewellers, is a workshop in which old habits die hard.

Hamilton & Inches (H&I) has been producing heirlooms, antiquities and other ostentatious pieces famed for their quality since 1866.

It also lists the Queen amongst its cliental, as one of the very few royally appointed silversmith and clock specialists in the country. At the same time its workshop team continues to preserve the skills that have been part of the trade for generations.

But despite being a Scottish institution of considerable years, this is no fading light with its best days behind it. In fact, the business is currently in the process of building for the future and bringing through the new talent it hopes will become the custodians of the famous jewellery emporium for years to come.

“The techniques haven’t changed much over the years. Silversmithing skills are definitely becoming less common and we are anxious to keep them going,” explains workshop manager Jon Hunt – who has been plying his increasingly rare trade for 30 years. “We’ve got guys in the workshop who’ve been here for over 20 years, which shows great loyalty, but there is a recognition that we need to pass our skills on to younger generations.”

As part of its strategy to embrace the skilled craftspeople of tomorrow, Hamilton & Inches recently gave 19-year-old product designer Kathrine Pelosi the opportunity to launch her range of new designs in the store.

And the Edinburgh College of Art student has not disappointed, with her silverwear proving extremely popular with both young and older customers of H&I. “Kathrine’s father is our electrician and has worked for us for many years. Because of this she had visited the store since she was very young

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

the workshop at hamilton & inches in edinburgh is a hive of activity which fuses age-old techniques with new technology and began to see the style of silver jewellery we were producing and took it upon herself to design her own,” Hunt says. “The designs fitted in well with our other pieces and so we put them into production.” As well as giving a young designer her first career break, though, Pelosi’s range also served as a learning experience for promising silversmith apprentice David Ramsay, who helped transform the designs into reality.

“David is currently working on a table centrepiece with candle holders and a bowl of fruit and I’m delighted he’s getting to grips with that. He’ll spend around three months, on and off, working on the project and it’s great we are able to offer him the chance to develop his skills.”

Meanwhile, although the H&I team is keen to pass on the traditional techniques of silversmithing, the business has also invested in new technology in recent months that has revolutionised some workshop processes.

“We’ve bought in a laser welder which is a fantastic thing and enables jewellers to do welding under

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the microscope, welding the metal with a pulsing laser light.”

The company was also delighted to participate in producing all the silver and diamond elements of a range of limited edition decanters for whisky brand John Walker & Sons to commemorate the Queen’s recent Diamond Jubilee. Each was sold for £100,000, with the proceeds going to the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, which supports excellence in British craftsmanship – a fitting cause for a company that continues to breathe new life into a very old trade.

87 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 3EY 0131 225 4898 www.hamiltonandinches.com

BUSINESS QUARTER | SUMMER 12

2012 HIGHLIGHTS

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Scotland is such a creative place, we need a whole year to tell you why…

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As opportunities go, the Year of Creative Scotland 2012 was certainly timely. With its remit to ‘celebrate and promote’ Scottish creativity, it arrived as Creative Scotland was making its first major announcements on how it would support artists and arts organisations. It allowed us to harness the international communications reach of VisitScotland and deliver a range of new initiatives to raise the country’s profile as a cultural destination.

Across the Year, £8million was budgeted to support new activity, ranging from creating opportunities for people to experience the arts for the very first time to assisting Scotland’s festivals and major cultural events in achieving their dynamic plans. We celebrated some of Scotland’s most Creative Places and, most recently, we invested £1.2million to support 32 innovative collaborations between the tourism and culture sectors.

These partnerships introduce new occasions for visitors to experience Scotland’s vibrant culture across all regions. Offering up hospitality packages, accommodation deals and promoting local attractions, these collaborations reach from the Borders to the Orkney isles. Programme highlights include Wild at Art, a range of creative holidays targeted at overseas visitors; a new annual crime writing weekend in Haddo House, with talks by national and international crime writers; a community-wide celebration and exploration of the recently discovered Hawick Missal in the Borders; and the creation of a major permanent artwork in John O’Groats.

Amongst the Culture and Tourism projects supported are: • Wild at Art are to target overseas visitors by organising and selling creative holidays, featuring workshops run by local artists and trips to cultural attractions.

• In the Scottish Borders, Historic Scotland mark the discovery of the Hawick Missal with an exploration of the manuscript and bespoke choral pieces by Scottish and European composers which will be performed at Melrose and Jedburgh Abbeys, each year to 2014.

• Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival are developing new partnerships and approaches to

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completed tapestry will be exhibited across Scotland as part of the Homecoming 2014 celebrations.

Red Note Ensemble at the Museum of Flight as part of Lammermuir Festival © Amelia Jacobson broaden its audiences and create greater local impact. These include more support for local promoters, closer working with Destination Dumfries and Galloway, programming new work and developing a Burns Pageant.

Edinburgh & East: • To celebrate Dovecot’s Centenary, an imaginative and innovative programme of exhibitions, events, commissions and new works has been developed. This includes a major summer exhibition and international tour, a new illustrated book, an international symposium, and a performance piece written by Alexander McCall Smith and composed by Tom Cunningham.

• Lennoxlove Book Festival will offer hospitality packages combining local accommodation, festival tickets and visits to local attractions, marketing the festival to UK and international visitors via partnerships with tour companies and tourism initiatives.

• The Lammermuir Festival plan to enhance the customer experience and attract more day trip and short break visitors by developing partnerships with tourism businesses across East Lothian.

• Taking place in North Berwick every August and running parallel to the Edinburgh fringe, Fringe by the Sea brings headline performers from all around the world, encourages emerging talent and attracts an audience of over 7,500 from East Lothian, Scotland and overseas.

• Prestoungrange Arts Festival focuses on creating worldwide connections through the making of tapestry panels reflecting the experiences of the Scottish Diaspora. The panels will be created by 25 Scottish Diaspora communities throughout the world and the

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Glasgow & West: • For the first time ever, Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, intend to bring their internationally successful touring displays “Gothic Kinetic” and “Travelling Circus’’ to Glasgow. A new marketing campaign targeting both domestic and international visitors will ensure that the awardwinning kinetic sculptures of Eduard Bersudsky are seen by an ever-increasing audience, enhancing Scotland’s reputation as a destination for worldclass creativity.

• Building on existing relationships between the festival, tourism and promotion agencies, The Scottish Comedy Agency will launch a specific campaign in the autumn of 2012 to promote ticket, travel and accommodation packages, encouraging customers to visit the Glasgow International Comedy Festival in 2013.

• A summer programme of creative and cultural events from Mackintosh Heritage Group celebrates Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scotland’s most famous architect and designer, featuring collaborations with Mischief Le Bas and Liz Lochhead and culminating in the Creative Mackintosh Festival 15 - 28 October 2012.

• Archaeology Scotland will work with the communities of Argyll and Bute to create Homeland Argyll and Bute, virtual multi-media exhibitions telling the stories of the vanished culture of crofting and small agriculture on the islands of Bute and Islay.

• Building on Argyll’s rich cultural heritage and abundant creativity, the Heart of Argyll Tourism Alliance, Artmap Argyll, and Kilmartin House Museum have formed a unique partnership of artists, tourism businesses and visitor destinations to develop, coordinate and deliver ‘heARTofARGYLL’ Arts and Heritage Festival in 2012 and 2013.

• North and South Lanarkshire Councils and Scottish Enterprise Lanarkshire will stage additional activity around ‘Celebrating Lanarkshire 2013’, a yearlong series of events and activity launching in late 2012. Major new artistic events will be created and approaches are being made to Lanarkshire artists such as Mark

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2012 HIGHLIGHTS

Craft exhibitors Open Day at Hospitalfield House Millar, Christopher Kane and Jim Lambie.

• ‘Arts and Crafts’ in the Clyde Valley celebrates the art and culture of rural Lanarkshire with exhibitions, events and workshops. Local artists and crafts people along the Clyde Valley Tourist Route, one of only 12 National Tourist routes in Scotland, can promote and sell their products, whilst building relationships with retailers and operators in the tourism sector.

Dundee: • Working with artist Jaygo Bloom, the Fleet Collective will create an augmented gallery across the city of Dundee. Using smartphones, visitors to Dundee will be able to experience augmented art works using image recognition markers in selected city locations.

Perthshire: • The Perthshire Amber Festival and local hotels are linking up to offer festival packages, develop live and on-demand streaming of concerts and produce promotional videos for the festival and the local area.

• Working with visual artists Dalziel + Scullion, The Enchanted Forest introduces a new visual arts dimension that celebrates the Year of Creative Scotland within a community run cultural tourism event.

• The sixteenth World Saxophone Congress has its sights on St Andrews in July 2012. Featuring master classes and lectures, street performances, recitals and gala concerts, the international event promotes artistic exchange between musicians from all over the world while encouraging local saxophone players and students.

Clackmannanshire: • The Clackmannanshire Storytelling Festival

draws upon strengths within Clackmannanshire, specifically their unique public art programme.

This year builds on the success of the 2010 Storytelling Festival, and the ‘Imagine Alloa’ project, with the aim of encouraging more visitors to the festival over the next three years.

Stirling: • For ten weeks in the summer of 2012 and 2013, Freedom Versions transforms the yard of Stirling’s Historic Old Town Jail into a bold, collaborative installation expressing artists’ concepts of freedom, independence, colonisation and alienation.

North & North East: • A new annual crime writing weekend (19 21 October 2012), based at Haddo House and surrounding properties in Aberdeenshire, will present talks by national and international crime writers, children’s events, and crime themed tours of castles.

• The Scottish Traditional Boat Festival in Portsoy introduces new visual arts elements to the festival. ‘Ebb & Flow’, created by professional artists, explores the family histories of Portsoy and connections to the rest of the North East, Scotland and the wider world.

• Hospitalfield in Arbroath will pilot new cultural tourism activities at Hospitalfield House, including artist-led open days and partnerships with Scottish tour companies, local conference organisers and tourism providers.

• The Cromarty Arts Trust showcase a Words & Music season, including a series of music and writing events taking place April - November in 2012 and 2013. Weekend events include Junior Writers, Crime & Thriller, Jazz Weekend, Cromarty Harp Village and Write On.

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Highlands & Islands: • The Feis Chanaidh (Canna Feis) Festival explores the important place of Canna in Gaelic heritage through local musicians, singers and performers, and encourages cultural tourism by targeting visitors from emigrant populations in Nova Scotia and Canada.

• Highland Print Studio will develop a pilot programme of short courses aimed at the UK and overseas visitor markets, appointing a marketing graduate to create a specific strategy and develop the organisation’s networking profile with tourism agencies.

• North Lands Creative Glass delivers an exhibition with Caithness Horizons showcasing objects from NLCG’s collection of contemporary glass exploring glassmaking processes and artist’s inspiration.

• International contemporary art festival Papay Gyro Nights in Orkney will build on world-wide connections through touring exhibitions to develop its successful event and exchange programme.

• Promotional Arts Network will offer a more attractive and accessible programme for the domestic UK market using a variety of marketing platforms including a Highland Passport scheme and trail.

• Rural touring promoting (group) social enterprise SEALL Ltd offers a programme of 40 quality cultural events across all art-forms throughout the year. They plan to improve engagement, create new partnerships between creative and tourism activity and build on south Skye’s profile as a cultural destination.

• A major permanent artwork and series of cultural events forms part of ongoing plans to improve the experience of visitors to John O’Groats.

To find out more about these projects, or our work in supporting Cultural Tourism contact: E: enquiries@creativescotland.com T: 0845 603 6000 W: www.creativescotland.com

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INTERVIEW

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Twelve months to savour

VisitScotland is promoting Homecoming 2014, inviting ancestral Scotland and anyone who loves the country to come home during an action-packed 12 months. Kenny Kemp talks to Tom Chambers, director of Homecoming Scotland 2014 and part of VisitScotland’s EventScotland team The year 2014 will be an historic one for Scotland. In many ways, it will give the nation a focal point: a collective reason to celebrate, remember its past and determine its future.

Two massive international sporting events - the Commonwealth Games 2014 in Glasgow and the Ryder Cup, the intriguing golfing contest between the United States and Europe, held at Gleneagles – will both attract worldwide interest which will be turned into visits to Scotland. Dovetailing into this activity is the second Year of Homecoming which not only encourages the Scottish diaspora to make a connection with the land of their fathers and mothers, but invite others to come and share in Scotland’s celebrations for the first time.

Tom Chambers, director of Homecoming Scotland 2014, is at the helm of a real team effort at VisitScotland - working with all directorates from across the organisation, including marketing, communications, digital and EventScotland.

The team’s remit will include working with the events industry to pull together an innovative list of event activity. This follows on from the announcement in March by Fergus Ewing, Scotland’s Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, that £3m is being invested to create an extended programme around the themes of ancestry, food and drink, activity, creativity and the natural environment and to market

them to every corner of the world. Initial planning is already well underway for the integration of Homecoming into VisitScotland’s existing marketing channels.

While 2014 is the final 12 months of the much talked about ‘Winning Years’, it also has to be the springboard for Scottish tourism in the years beyond. Chambers appreciates that pulling together these strands is a major task that will require co-ordination, collaboration, goodwill and partnership with businesses and organisations across Scotland. It will be a time for the whole country to put on its best bib and tucker and show its friendliness, generous spirit and sense of humour.

"2014 is simply the year that Scotland will welcome the world. There is the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup. These are massive major events in their own right. Homecoming 2014 is designed to extend the benefits that these events bring by having a year-long programme," he says.

"While there will be intense media attention during the summer on both of these high-profile events, we will be able to complement them with an extensive marketing and events programme throughout the months leading to and from these two sporting landmarks.

"We are working closely with Glasgow 2014 and the Ryder Cup to ensure an aligned year

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Home run: Tom Chambers is encouraging Scots to return to their homeland in 2014

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where we've thought through what’s happening so there is not a host of unconnected events," he says.

"The Bannockburn story will definitely be part of Homecoming Scotland 2014. It is a landmark national event and an opportunity for us to re-assess its historical importance to Scotland. We are already in detailed discussions with the National Trust of Scotland, who own the battlefield site, to help support them and this important story.

"As far as the Scottish Referendum is

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INTERVIEW

Global exposure: More champions like Chris Hoy and key events such as the Commonwealth Games will significantly boost Scotland’s profile concerned, it is something we will know more about once the date has been officially decided. But, first and foremost, Homecoming is a tourism initiative and from our perspective it is about showcasing Scotland and maximising economic benefit for the whole country.”

"The themes for Homecoming Scotland 2014 are ancestry, food and drink, active, creative and natural. The Edinburgh clan event in 2009 was well received and there were a host of clan society events across the country. There is an interest from the clan groups of bringing the world event back again but in terms of ancestry we are also looking at other ways that are not so clan-specific, doing something a bit different about Scots and where they come from."

Tom Chambers makes no apology about returning to the theme of food and drink. He says since the Year of Food and Drink in 2010 there has been a real push at all kind of events in Scotland to use our natural produce and manufactured goods to showcase the best we

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can offer. “We are exploring how we can take this excellence in produce of food and drink and enhance it in 2014, not only through our usual channels such as the Royal Highland Show, but at smaller events across Scotland.”

"We are working with partners, such as the trade group Scotland Food and Drink, to maximise the opportunities that are coming forward with the events programme.”

Creativity is also a central theme and this catch-all word can encompass a gathering for computer game boffins in Dundee, comedy at Oran Mor in Glasgow, the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh, a Gaelic feis in Lewis, or a book festival in Kirkcudbright.

"It is a very broad brush and it is about keeping it open for a variety of ideas. There is obviously a lot happening this year in Scotland and we will be looking at how we can enhance these events. VisitScotland and Eventscotland’s support is not just about this year but about continuing and building up for a stronger focus in 2014. We are not trying to be event specific but keep it as fluid as we

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can. We want an events programme across Scotland that appeal to many different groups."

Next year the Year of Natural Scotland will be at neat stepping stone.

"Again we are working with the key partners in our natural environment and planning a coordinated series of events and marketing activity that will start in 2013 and continue after this.

“We are looking at launching events which continue into 2014 and beyond. Effectively those in the natural environment will be getting two years to get their events and projects off the ground.

“Next year John Muir and his legacy will be featured and hopefully this will create an impetus for 2014 as well."

The Home of Golf already has an international pedigree for high-spending visitors. While The Open golf championship is genuinely viewed as a world-class events VisitScotland and EventScotland were particularly involved in helping to secure the Ryder Cup for >>

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INTERVIEW

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Scotland. And there is a wealth of knowledge and expertise to draw on to ensure that the Ryder Cup is a massive success.

The Commonwealth Games 2014 is a multi-sport event. It will obviously have the halo affect from London 2012, when a new generation of international stars are likely to emerge, and make Glasgow a hot ticket.

If the likes of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt are still at the top of their powers, then it is likely to attract massive global attention, while Scottish Olympians will get the chance to perform in front of what will be a boisterous home crowd.

Homecoming Scotland 2014 is working closely with the Games' cultural programme, which has become an integral part of the sporting event, to ensure an alignment of objectives.

Over £600,000 is being invested to support local communities across Scotland get involved with the Games.

The Games for Scotland programme will be a taster of 17 sport and dance events aimed at encouraging physical activity.

Sports fans will be glued to the excitement of the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup "From a Homecoming perspective it is about working with both organisations and seeing what we can do for their target audiences. Maybe we can extend the stay of those who are coming across for the events.

For example, we can encourage golfers to see the other wonderful golfing gems we have in Scotland. Scotland is the Home of Golf and having the Ryder Cup here gives local businesses across Scotland an extra opportunity to do something special.”

What has been learned from the Homecoming 2009 event?

"There have been a number of internal reports about what worked and the lessons learned.

We've seen what was successful and we will continue building on these things to make it even better, and things that weren't so successful, we'll just have to do it differently."

The issue of environmental sustainability is also fundamental to Event Scotland with every events and shows now been assessed and measured on their carbon impacts and how they can be made greener.

"There will be a huge focus in 2014 through our education programmes taking a harder

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On the green: Scotland’s famous five-star luxury hotel, Gleneagles, in Perthshire look at green issues. This is the core of what we do and we plan to take it to another level,” he says.

So how should businesses in Scotland get involved in Homecoming 2014?

"There are three levels: one on the commercial side with the major corporates, who can become involved in national promotional campaigns, which has a dual purpose of promoting Homecoming 2014 and their brands bringing something different.

“We are looking for businesses that want to get involved with us to see how we can work together. They will be able to use Homecoming as a branding event.”

“Then there are the mainstream tourism businesses, partnering with VisitScotland through the various aspects of the ‘Years of Focus’. This is about our partners continuing their learning on what works for them in a commercial way.”

"And Scotland has a huge number of small and medium size enterprises that depend on tourism. Our plea is: don't think you can't get involved. Have a look at community aspects where you might get involved, there will be lots of partner events during Homecoming 2014. They might not be directly funded but they will be part of the umbrella programme and they will get the glow of the overall

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marketing support around that."

The Partnerships Team at VisitScotland have been involved in market segmentation, breaking down the wider markets into much smaller bites.

“It is not a one-size fits all approach and it is very specifically focused.

“We are having tool kits prepared and developed to take the key learning on through the focus years and beyond. For tourism businesses that have already become engaged in the ‘Years of Focus’ and have done something already, it will be another opportunity to do business. 2014 is not about a single theme, such as food and drink, but there are five themes."

For Tom Chambers there has been a lot of similarities between his previous work and his recent task.

“My previous role at the Royal Edinburgh International Military Tattoo was to deliver the spectacular grandstand project, from the concept right through to delivery, working on all aspects of securing funding, dealing with various stakeholders, through to contractual procurement and completion.

The difference with the Tattoo stands was it was a single project, whereas Homecoming Scotland 2014 is an ambitious programme that is of a far greater magnitude.” n

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COMPANY VIEWPOINT

There is a balance to be struck between regulating our alcohol consumption and ineffectual policies that impair the visitor experience in Scotland.

RAMMIES LAS RAMBLAS

O

ur guests in Scotland tell us before they arrive that visiting pubs and bars is high up the agenda of things they want to experience. Those comments are backed up by the sums spent on eating and drinking when they eventually arrive.

It does not take a great leap of logic to assume that the regulation around alcohol consumption and the approach of licensing boards play huge roles in supporting the quality of the visitor experience.

Are we doing enough to ensure that the visitor experience is as good as it can be? I would like to think we can all be doing more.

Too often we see narrow policy based decisions from boards which impact adversely on the quality of a visitor’s experience, for example the decision of the Glasgow Licensing Board to refuse permission for external seating at the Dhabba in the Merchant City on the basis that to grant permission would cause congestion and inconvenience to pedestrians. The decision was overturned by the sheriff. Or the “one size fits all” legislation which meant that neither Italian school children nor their teacher could buy miniatures of whisky from a shop in the Royal Mile as gifts for their parents - to do so would have been either an underage purchase or an agency purchase.

We know that our tourism entrepreneurs will develop fantastic visitor experiences when they have the freedom to do so. Too often they are hamstrung by ineffectual policies that don’t take into account local market conditions, clientele and location or give credit to those who run their

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Audrey Ferrie, Legal Director

it does not take a great leap of logic to assume that the regulation around alcohol consumption and the approach of licensing boards play huge roles in supporting the quality of the visitor experience. premises well. Policies are very often written with the lowest common denominator in mind. We need to find a better balance that is based on sensible distinctions.

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A great example is the lifting of the blanket restriction on in-stadium alcohol consumption at sporting events. It’s a small change that has no doubt improved the atmosphere at major events without having a detrimental impact on the health and safety of spectators and residents.

Tackling our nation’s poor history of alcohol abuse is a no brainer and it’s right that we encourage a social sea change through a mix of legislative measures and education. We also need to ensure that we allow responsible entrepreneurs to thrive by building the visitor experiences that keep the tourist industry flourishing.

Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street will not resemble Barcelona’s La Rambla in my lifetime. That hasn’t stopped the Licensing Boards in Glasgow and Edinburgh taking real and significant steps to develop café cultures in their respective cities. An amount of flexibility and determination from our elected local representatives will go a long way towards boosting Scotland’s ability to compete in the tourism sector.

Audrey Ferrie is a Legal Director and licensing law specialist at Pinsent Masons. www.pinsentmasons.com +44 (0) 141 248 4858

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INTERVIEW

SUMMER 12

How to make Scotland click The relaunch of VisitScotland’s website has been a mammoth two-year undertaking. It is now pulling together sites under a single unified roof, aligned to the latest social marketing. Gillian Law spoke to Robbie Parish, VisitScotland’s director of digital and media, who led the project Our national tourism organisation is fast becoming the envy of the tourism world, with transformations to its website, its marketing strategy and the way it uses the large databases of information it holds.

The new VisitScotland site was launched on 1 May 2012, and eventually all of VisitScotland’s nearly 160 websites will be incorporated into this one super resource. It is still early days, but reaction to the new site has been extremely

positive, with traffic up 9% cent in the first two weeks and a massive increase in interest in the content pages.

But Robbie Parish, VisitScotland’s director of digital and media, has much bigger plans than simply an attractive look and higher traffic.

Parish was brought in two years ago to bring VisitScotland’s digital marketing function bang up to date. With a strong marketing background in e-commerce and online >>

Bigger picture: Robbie Parish’s vision involves far more than just generating web traffic

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INTERVIEW

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services, including four years with Scottish Power owner Iberdrola, he brought fresh ideas to a site that had been deeply-criticised by the tourism industry and underperforming on several scores.

Parish was brought in specifically to make VisitScotland click. And, as Parish stresses, his role covers much more than the website.

Parish is responsible for search, social media, email campaigns, plus print production, design and commercial operations.

Tying all that together is vital, he says. “People assume digital just means the web – but it’s information provision in all our centres, at iPoints, mobile devices, everything.”

The new site has been over two years in the making, because it’s much more than just a new front end, Parish says. His first step was to look at the data structures within VisitScotland, and how it was managing the information it held.

With websites, ranging from golfing sites to small, niche campaign sites, there was little control or coordination of the data collected.

“If you take Scotland the country and think of it as a company, you want to have your database structured in a way that allows people to understand it in a very tangible and real-time way,” he says. One centralised database also allows ‘relational’ selling, something Parish is evangelical about – if you know what a customer likes and doesn’t like, you stand a much better chance of selling other similar or related things.

“That's a very different approach for a national tourism product,” he says.

That was hard to explain, at times, why a seemingly straightforward new site would take

two years to build. And indeed, will continue to be updated with new iterations, with at least three planned over the next two years.

“You have to phase things in – or it could take another two years to deliver something,” Parish says.

Further iterations are planned for September, April, and the following September. “It’s a never ending story. These are big system changes – the algorithms, the taxonomies and mathematics behind it,” he says.

The September 2012 iteration will also include changes based on Facebook integration, which will transform how VisitScotland can present information to visitors.

By offering the ability to log in to its site via Facebook, VisitScotland can use Facebook’s API to gather information on people’s preferences and interests and present them with activities and products that are more likely to appeal to them. Utilising the information a user has directly given, and also some ‘semantic’ reasoning based on who they communicate with and the likely interests of a group of friends, Facebook is increasingly accurate in identifying what will interest them.

“That means our events engine, for example – when you come to the site, it will automatically consider that [information from Facebook] and bring back events which you might want to go to,” Parish says.

VisitScotland’s mission statement has two elements, Parish says – to “provide a gateway for consumers on the international, national and local stage to see Scotland, and to provide businesses with a platform that enables them to show their products and services. This is about gluing them together: if you can get the

right products and services, to the right customer at the right time, you’ve got the optimal mix.”

This change, unusual in a tourism organisation, has started to create waves and Parish has seen a lot of interest both from the tourism sector internationally and across the Scottish government.

As for the new site, feedback has been positive so far, he says.

“From a consumer point of view, they don’t tend to say thank you! They just expect it to work. So all we can go on is whether people are doing more things, and we’ve had a lot of positive comments on Facebook and Twitter.”

As with the implementation of any new technology, there are always a few teething problems to be expected, but Parish is adamant his team are working hard with businesses on a one to one level to make sure they are set up to make the most of the new site. Overall the industry response has been very supportive, Parish says, and he believes this is largely due to a ‘Project Steering Board’ that was put in place from the beginning.

With representatives from 16 different tourism sectors, the steering board saw the development through from inception to delivery. “They could give their views and steer certain things. And I think we were lucky to have that in place, it was definitely the right decision, rather than us trying to make assumptions. It’s one of the first times we’ve had that level of engagement, at that detailed level and it worked well,” Future developments will include multilingual pages throughout the site, replacing the current international sites, and the integration

If you take Scotland the country and think of it as a company, you want to have your database structured in a way that allows people to understand it in a very tangible and real-time way

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INTERVIEW

of all separate VisitScotland sites.

Parish will also be testing screen reading technology, as part of the site’s accessibility plans. This year will see a lot of video content added to the site, Parish says “Video is massive for us this year, using video to sell the country. So we’re focusing on key events across the year, and we’ll do a lot of video for web.

“It doesn’t have to be done to high broadcast quality, but just to catch the moment.”

The homepage currently has one video available, showing the VisitScotland’s evocative ‘Surprise Yourself’ television advert, and Parish says it gets 20% of the ‘clicks’ on the page, so is clearly popular.

Always aware of usability and of keeping viewers engaged, Parish says it’s important that all video is shown on the page, rather than “pulling you off to a different area, so you’re clambering back to where you were before.”

There is still a lot of work to be done, in terms of ‘future proofing’ the site for technological changes. “In four, five years time, will our system be future proof?

“You’ve got to be able to keep to the plan you’ve made, while being agile enough to make small changes based on developments in the market,” Parish says.

He is confident that VisitScotland is heading in the right direction.

“It’s been a huge exercise, but by the end of the project Scotland’s national tourism website will surpass anything that exists in the worldwide tourism market.” n

Robbie Parish: A digital bite

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Prior to VisitScotland, Robbie Parish held a number of roles including marketing director for one of the UK’s largest digital agencies, and other senior national and international marketing roles working with brands such as Easy Group, Bombardier Aerospace, Molson, The Mighty Ducks and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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Scotland still has some of the finest unspoilt scenery and natural assets in the world. Its wilderness with mountains, lochs and islands, are among the national gems, and these are strong selling points to tap into

Island life: A sunny day in Tobermory, image: Kenny Kemp

INTERVIEW

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The man who sells Scotland

Malcolm Roughead, the chief executive of VisitScotland, reflects on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for tourism.

He talks to Kenny Kemp

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Malcolm Roughead has been sketching out an integrated plan for Scotland’s tourism future. It hasn’t been fully formulated yet, but it is like a pebble being pitched into a still pool with the ripples reaching out to the edge.

“Tourism touches every facet of our society,” says Roughead, sitting in his eight floor office suite with its seagull’s eye views of Ocean Terminal, the Leith harbour, and a panoramic vista across the Firth of Forth to Fife.

While ‘The Winning Years’ has become a neat

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shorthand for a string of major events, beginning with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and the 2012 Olympics, the Disney-Pixar blockbuster Brave, and runs through to 2014 with the Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup, and Year of Homecoming, the man who sells Scotland to the wider world needs to build a strategy beyond these years.

The Winning Years is a unique opportunity to raise the awareness of Scotland as a premier global destination but the industry needs to capitalise on this beyond the next handful of years. As chief executive of VisitScotland, Roughead sees it as his job to pull together disparate elements that are not often associated with tourism. He explains that he went to meet some of Scotland's leading medical and bioscience brains, and received quizzical looks when he asked them: “How can we help you?”

The scientists wondered why the VisitScotland boss, ostensibly the leader of the national tourism body, wanted to get involved with the microbiological sphere of life sciences. Wasn’t he busy enough? Was he looking for something else to take on?

“What I am working on is how tourism works within the Scottish environment. If you think about the narrow definition of tourism, it is about accommodation, attractions and travel, but the broader definition takes you into food and drink, then it is about culture, the arts, heritage, and you can take it even wider in terms of business and academic tourism.”

The ripples from his pool are reaching out towards the edges of Scottish endeavour, industry and creativity.

“If you think about the conferences around all the life sciences, renewables or creative industries, all of this enhances Scotland’s reputation on a global scale.

Roughead’s evolving thinking is to use these spheres of global excellence, encouraging them to bring business tourism to Scotland.

This chimes well with what the destination marketing companies in both Glasgow and Edinburgh are doing, working more closely with universities and academics to identify opportunities for symposiums.

“It's about building up this network. The life scientists will attend conference around the world, starting with symposia, then this

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Spellbound: The white witch from VisitScotland’s Surprise Yourself/Year of Creative Scotland 2012 TV advert becomes a global conference. In the past, we were constrained by capacity, but the real game-changer in this is the SECC and the Hydro Arena in Glasgow. This takes global conferences and that ilk into a different stratosphere. We want the Scottish-based scientist to encourage their global colleagues to come to Scotland. This has massive spin-offs. It's about building on the celebrity status.”

Malcolm Roughead was appointed Chief Executive in September 2010, having been the Director of Marketing since 2001. He knew it was time to re-connect with those who had become disgruntled with the national organisation’s more lofty aims.

He and his chairman Mike Cantlay have become an effective double-act, with Cantlay, the charismatic front-man and Roughead, the more reserved and

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INTERVIEW

reflective brand market specialist.

“The organisation has come a long way since I joined in 2001. However, it’s like all businesses, they all evolve and go through different stages of growth. We became disconnected from the industry, and you should never stray too far away from the guys on the ground. So my job has been to re-orientate ourselves back towards them and work with them, much more in partnership. This is where our whole working ethos comes in, setting up the Partnership Directorate.”

One of the key drivers for tourism going forward is digital connectivity across the country. “If we are not competitive, then we are not at the races. All the conditions need to be right, whether it is accessibility, how can people get here, can they get around the country, and can they connect with whatever they want to connect with?”

But each and every visitor has a unique profile and set of wishes and desires.

“The whole strategy is about touch points.

You have your ‘pre-arrival’ strategy, which will either drive people onto the website for further information, or generate an inquiry for brochures – although this is declining in the digital world - and then the ‘on-arrival’ strategy, which is about face-to-face engagement, through our visitor information centres, and increasingly through more mobile technology, such as apps, and through those electronic touchpoints. It is about delivering information to visitors at the point of requirement in the format that they are most comfortable with.”

The physical presence of 129 visitor centres across Scotland, of which 28 are partnerships, handles a hefty 4.2 million enquiries per year.

“The Staycation phenomenon has made us rethink what and how we deliver because a lot of people are finding out about their own country when hitherto they were going abroad.” In a fiercely competitive market for global tourism, with more developing countries opening up their own national industries, VisitScotland has to keep ahead of global trends.

“I tend to have that Balzacian theory [Roughead is a modern language scholar, who studied French at university]. What does the world look like? What’s going on out >>

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there, and then bring it nearer and ask ‘What’s happening in Europe’?, because that is the nearest opportunity, then funnel that down into the UK, looking at trends within, looking at our competitors in terms of what they are doing in terms of innovation and pricing.”

So what is he seeing in his crystal ball?

“Some of the most important trends are value for money and the whole quality of the experience,” he says.

But the theme of ‘partnership’ underscores a lot of his thinking. This revolves around working to help improve a myriad of establishments across Scotland. VisitScotland has gone through a re-positioning of its Quality Assurance scheme, which grades hotels, guest houses, and tourist attractions, because of the advent of ‘user-generated content’. More specifically, this is a response to the popularity of TripAdvisor, which can be both a joy and a bane for many of Scotland’s tourism businesses.

“For me, the QA scheme is all about three key deliverables: it’s about trust, independence and it’s about authority.

“So while you have those subjective views out there, some exceptionally good and some exceptionally bad, with most gravitating to the middle, as a counterpoint to that you want some re-assurance on where you stand, so you can look at the QA scheme and that will give you an unbiased opinion on what you are about to get. But, ultimately, it is up to the customer to decide.”

Roughead’s view is that most people tend to reference a variety of sources before booking a holiday, which is then digested before people come to their own conclusion. But hasn’t the likes of TripAdvisor helped to raise the game of tourism in Scotland too?

“The game is getting tougher all the time – although we’ve been saying that for a number of years now. Everyone realised that quality is important and that service levels have to be better. It’s the old adage; the last experience is the one you remember – and the one you are judged by. People are much more canny about how they spend their hard-earned cash now, because times are tough.”

Roughead also wants to hammer home VisitScotland’s green agenda, which is dubbed Sustainable Best Practice. This is more than

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Joining forces: Cabinet secretary for culture and external Affairs, Fiona Hyslop with VisitScotland chairman Mike Cantlay at the launch of the Surprise Yourself/Year of Creative Scotland 2012 TV advert (in Edinburgh Castle) simply cutting back on washing bath towels, fitting low-energy bulbs or recycling bottles, it’s moving to a much higher level. While there is a Green Business scheme, with accolades for excellence in environmental tourism, more is required, through for example more efficient lighting and insulation, and this involves working with the big energy companies, like SSE, and water businesses, such as Business Stream, to monitor levels of consumption of increasingly expensive resources.

“I’d like to see this as a core behaviour, rather than an add-on. If we are going to be competitive, then we have to make sure the tourism industry is sustainable as well – and that’s to do with protecting our natural assets in Scotland.”

He concedes that businesses will want to see the benefits of ‘going green’, after all if you are replacing all your on-suite toilets with split-flush loos in a 20-bedroom hotel, that can soon add up.

Surely, in blunt business terms, going greener does need to make a return on investment?

“It is up to us to explain what the business benefits of going green will be. They are measurable, although in some cases it can take a little bit longer to realise those benefits.

I don’t think the case has ever been made for saying, ‘I will put this investment in, because there is an up-front investment required, and this is what I’m going to get back out’.

“There is a whole range of tangible things that can be done.”

We are very blessed because we have a very motivated team across the board.

Everybody believes in what they do and I’d like to think they enjoy their work

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VisitScotland has green pilot projects running, which could become an added part of its scoring in the years ahead. Through its partnership team programme, VisitScotland will be pointing businesses in the right direction for grants and funds that might help develop sustainable business.

“We don’t have the wherewithal financially in terms of handing out grants to affect this, but we can be the catalyst for that change.”

Roughead wants people to understand that VisitScotland is a diverse marketing organisation - ‘one size or methodology doesn’t fit all’ - and he does not want his people to be shackled by red tape and bureaucracy, but to be able to perform and even have some fun at work.

“Operationally, we are very blessed because we have a very motivated team across the board. Everybody believes in what they do, and I’d like to think they enjoy their work here.

Our strategy is leadership through people, allowing people to take decisions. It’s about being fleet of foot.”

How does he view Scottish tourism as a generator of new jobs for young people and encouraging entrepreneurs?

“If you have an entrepreneurial flair, then tourism is a wonderful environment. You are only constrained by your imagination. With the right support and help, there are some brilliant opportunities. But the business fundamentals have to be the same as in any other sector: there has to be a market and it has to be marketed properly.

And the quality of that product has to be valued at a certain level, and people have to want it.”

But, taking all this as the basics, he feels that young Scots have more chance of succeeding in the tourism industry than in many others.

“And you can have fun doing it. People tend to forget that it is a fun industry.”

Roughead says it is more than just start-ups too. “I like the fact that whether you’re in IT, finance, marketing, those skills are transferable to the tourism industry, where we need all of these skills. If you look at it on a broader scale, tourism is a global industry. What better way to get around the world than through the tourism? I can’t understand why tourism is not seen as a career choice for school-leavers.”

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He dismisses the old view of tourism as slightly dull and stereotypical and not something you should encourage your kids to get into.

“I would be encouraging my kids to get in.

That’s partly because in Scotland, up until very recently, tourism had not been recognised for the contribution it made to the overall economy.” Next year is the Year of Natural Scotland, and there is a lot of planning going on – not least an attempt to tidy up some of the litter and rubbish that is blighting the Scottish townscapes and landscapes.

“We are talking to the likes of Keep Scotland Beautiful and working with them together.

“I like the phrase that Mike Cantlay [the VisitScotland chairman] often uses which is ‘Make Scotland Shine’.”

In reality, the worsening problem of fag-ends thrown in the gutter, plastic bags in trees, and

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carry-out containers tossed out of car windows, is something VisitScotland has little power to change.

“It is societal. We need everyone to help make Scotland litter free, so that people can see the benefits. It’s not going to happen with a one-off campaign, these things take time.”

Yet Scotland still has some of the finest unspoilt scenery and natural assets in the world. Its wilderness with the mountains, lochs and islands are among the national gems, and these are strong selling points to tap into.

He gestures again to his early-stage sketch for a future strategy.

“It all ripples out. Tourism has to become a part of everyone’s life in Scotland – it’s when we all take it seriously as a driver for our own economic benefit that we will see another step-change in attitude.” n

Malcolm Roughead: His business career He was born in Perth, grew up in Stenhousemuir, and went to Glasgow University where he studied modern languages. Even today his German is impressive, honed after eight years living in the Ruhr area, while his French is ‘nearly up to scratch’. On graduation in 1981, he joined Nestle in Croydon as a graduate trainee, which had a highly-regarded programme as a hands-on introduction to major-brand marketing. He then went to Beecham, which was swallowed up by GlaxoSmithKline, then Guinness Brewing Worldwide, helping to develop markets in west and central Africa, including South Africa. He was also involved with the overseas promotion of Kaliber, a non-alcohol beer, which was made famous by Billy Connolly in the UK, but lacked a decent taste.

Roughead spent eight years working in Essen, in Germany, at Guinness GmbH which served the massive German market. He was sales and marketing director, learning a lot about how the iconic draught stout was able to excite young Germans about visiting Ireland, through the thriving Irish pub scene underscored by Guinness, and supported promotionally by Aer Lingus.

But he was also in Berlin – the Irish Pub in the Europa-Center, which has one of the longest bars and was one of the top ten Guinness-selling bars in the world - when the Wall came down, which was a memorable event, which resulted in strong beer sales!

He left Germany in 1992 and headed to South Africa, just as the country was basking in the glow of Nelson Mandela release and his Rainbow Alliance. He helped set up a joint venture between Guinness and South African Breweries, which is now SAB Miller.

In 1997, he returned to the UK, where he was given responsibility for Guinness Publishing, which was losing money. While it had the flagships of The Guinness Book of Records and the British Hit Singles, there was a lot of rubbish that needed cleared out. Roughead did just that, concentrating on building the record book’s brand value through partnership with advertisers and television, and revamping the whole presentation, which resulted in a massive boost in sales.

Then in 2001, he returned to Scotland and joined VisitScotland as the director of marketing. He was awarded an OBE in 2005 for his services to tourism.

Then in September 2010, he became chief executive. He plays a weekly game of golf at Dalmahoy and is married to Robyn, a New Zealander.

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Fortune favours the Brave A unique business tie-up between Disney-Pixar and VisitScotland is now set to give Scotland a magical glow with the release of the muchawaited full length animation, set in Scotland.

Gillian Law examines the Brave story

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If you had the chance to change your fate, would you?”

That’s the cry of Merida, the star character in Disney-Pixar’s latest blockbuster animation, Brave. But it could also describe the reaction of VisitScotland to the launch of this high profile movie, set in Scotland – this is a chance to change the fate of Scottish tourism and VisitScotland are seizing the opportunity with both hands.

Brave is being launched this month, with a European premiere at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh on 30 June. The Disney-Pixar team is known to have spent a long time researching the project, with teams touring

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Scotland in 2006 and 2007, and the promotional shorts available suggest a very beautiful rendering of Scottish scenery – and a positive picture of Scots themselves.

VisitScotland and the Scottish Government have jointly pledged to spend £7m in promotional activity around the film and are working closely with Disney to make the best of that investment.

This was too good an opportunity to miss, says VisitScotland chairman, Mike Cantlay. He first learned about the movie from his brother in law, a serious Disney fan, who emailed to say, “Have you heard of this?”

“I looked into it and just thought, my gosh, this could be enormous. I famously went round the building, looking at people and saying ‘Brave!” to see what reaction they gave. Many just thought I had taken leave of my senses…”

As it turned out, VisitScotland was already aware of and working on the opportunity, but Cantlay says his involvement ramped up the ante on the project.

Thinking back to the release of Braveheart and Rob Roy, Cantlay says he was aware of just how powerful those had been as a tool to

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promote the country. “I really felt that if we thought this was a goer, then we had to really go for it.”

And go for it they did, getting directly in touch with Disney and asking to work with them in promoting both the film and the country.

“They were a bit surprised! My understanding is they’ve never had a national tourism organisation who have gone at them quite like we have. We really did kind of set up camp with them, and it’s developed into a really strong collaboration.”

Charlie Coleman, general manager, promotions at Disney EMEA, says the fit with VisitScotland is “a very natural and organic one”, and “a campaign in which Disney and VisitScotland can mutually benefit. Expanding each other’s reach and communication through the various channels that both organisations have seems to make a lot of sense for both parties.”

Brave will launch worldwide this summer, dubbed into dozens of different languages to suit every market.

The campaign will therefore try to reach as many of those markets as possible, though it’s going to be a ‘real time’, ever-changing >>

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Scotland: A Brave adventure One of the first tourism offers tied into the Brave movie is being run by Disney’s own operator, Adventures by Disney.

For a substantial fee (over £3000 a head) families and small groups can book a nine-day trip called Scotland: A Brave Adventure. A Disney representative will meet them at Edinburgh airport, to begin a week touring round a range of sites that appear in the film, from Edinburgh (or Edinboro, as it’s pronounced in the promotional video) to Skye, Lewis and ‘Glen Coe’.

With pony trekking, archery, ceilidh and canoeing lessons, it’s a chance for people to live out scenes from the film, and sounds a lot of fun.

It’s not cheap – but if people are prepared to pay for a personalised trip then they’ll have a great time.

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plan as the VisitScotland team sees which markets are most enthused by the movie.

“One of the really exciting things is that we’re anticipating certain markets getting really excited about it – but we won’t know which until the movie is out. So the fun of this is we’re going to have to move very quickly when we see that it’s big in Brazil, or Australia, or wherever.

The team will work closely with Disney on that, and more than 20 other organisations

Family Market Family market potential - the 2010 value of family expenditure was £428 million or 16% of all domestic expenditure.

The number of family holidays to Scotland rose from 21% to 24% between 2008 and 2010. VisitScotland segmentation shows that the segment with the youngest children are more likely to be pro holidays in Scotland and the UK.

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This doesn’t come round every day, so you have to take advantage of it and do as much as you can

across the country - from The Forestry Commission to Scottish Canals - it’s a real Team Scotland approach.

Naturally, some markets are more obvious targets than others, and VisitScotland plans a television advertising campaign in North America, “the first time in many years that we’ve been able to do that,” Cantlay says.

The promotional prospects are long-term, he stresses, not just around the launch. If Brave is as successful as previous Disney films, the DVD sales could be huge and awareness will “rumble on” for years, Cantlay says.

It’s a tense wait for VisitScotland – not only to see which countries will pick up on the movie, but to see what parts of Scotland are shown.

Each region is now preparing its own response to Brave. At Visit Cairngorms, for instance,

marketing manager Angela McBrearty says she immediately contacted all members in the local area to alert them to the opportunities coming up.

Each area will have its own page on VisitScotland’s ‘Brave’ website to promote activities in its area, and Visit Cairngorms is putting together information about the Cairngorms National Park, with one, three and seven-day itineraries for people to follow, showcasing the main areas around the park.

Those can change if anything specific to the area comes up in the film.

McBrearty is also planning a Brave week, with showings at the MacDonald Aviemore Resort’s cinema and activities related to the movie for people to try.

The five-day event is “hopefully a chance to

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get as many people as possible coming into the park and trying their hand at archery, and different activities that exist here all year round but that they’re maybe not aware of. So it’s a huge opportunity for us. This doesn’t come round every day, so you have to take advantage of it and do as much as you can,” McBrearty says.

VisitScotland is working with partners to organise a group of 20 overseas journalists to be taken on a tour of the country in June, ending their visit in the Cairngorms with a range of activities to try and a final event at Blair Castle.

“The big thing for us is just to be able to use all the activities available in the park and let them come together, to work as a team and provide activities for people, to get a taste of what they’ve seen in the film,” says McBrearty.

VisitScotland and Disney are jointly putting together a media kit for the regions, and for any local businesses wanting to be involved.

The use of the Brave name and images will be tightly controlled.

As with any campaign, Coleman explains, Disney has been involved from start to finish, “as we take our responsibility as a trusted brand very seriously.”

Materials have been prepared alongside VisitScotland, with different options for different sizes of businesses.

Brave will reach a broad audience and a market that potentially doesn’t know much about Scotland, Cantlay says.

Working with Disney has let VisitScotland use its investment in the best possible way to reach that market. The aim is “to jump on the back of the movie, and use their tools to encourage people to come and see us.

The movie gives people the interest and our job is then to say, right, come and see us for real.” Coleman says that with any project of this scale, “and given the sheer volume of opportunities for collaboration that present themselves, there will always be challenges.

However, working with VisitScotland has been a great experience, and we are thoroughly enjoying implementing all the elements of this campaign.” So now the team just has to make it happen – to turn that £7m into high spending visitors to Scotland, and to ensure they enjoy it when they get here.

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The target is a £140million return on investment so it’s clear to see that the aim is to seriously boost tourism on the back of this initiative.

“This is a one off, to be honest, in terms of highlighting Scotland” says Cantlay. “It’s so refreshing to see something we can do to make a real significant impact for tourism at a time when the industry – the biggest industry in Scotland –really needs it.”

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The tourism industry in Scotland has done “remarkably well over the past couple of years, despite the recession,” Cantlay says, “and if we’re clever then maybe we can gain market share and position ourselves, just as the world comes out of these tough times.

“It’s just perfect timing – and now we’ve got to pull it off. n All images ©2011 Disney/Pixar.

The Marketing Push VisitScotland has launched its biggest worldwide campaign to convert cinema goers who enjoy Brave into visitors to Scotland. An extra £7m investment will allow Scottish tourism adverts to appear on television in North America for the first time in ten years. The VisitScotland and Disney-Pixar partnership is expected to bring in more than £140m worth of additional revenue to the Scottish economy.

In the UK There will be national TV and cinema advertising campaign - with VisitScotland adverts shown before Brave screenings. There will also be national online advertising campaign and outdoor advertising in Scotland.

International There will be a television advertising campaign, online advertising, and dedicated screenings in overseas markets.

This will be coupled with competitions and media promotions. VisitScotland is also working with more than 100 Disney stores across eight Europe countries with window displays, online and social media competitions, in-store branding and promotions to Disney’s database. Around 12.5million will access this promotion.

Local Visitor Information Centres will be dressed with Brave promotional Point of Sale. The VisitScotland Castle Trail leaflet will be Brave themed in 2013.

Industry Engagement VisitScotland is developing a toolkit for tourism businesses to help them engage with Brave and capitalise on the opportunities. Communication with 8,500 tourism businesses continues across all VisitScotland channels.

Industry partners are working with VisitScotland to provide travel experiences for the website and competition prizes for online and consumer PR activity.

VisitScotland’s partners include: Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise/SDI, Scottish Natural Heritage, Creative Scotland, Woodland Trust Scotland, Historic Houses Association Scotland , National Museum of Scotland, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Wild Scotland, WWT Caerlaverock, RSPB Scotland, Scotland Food & Drink and Highlands & Islands Enterprise.

Skills Development Scotland, Historic Scotland, National Trust of Scotland, The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Scottish Archery, Horsescotland, The Mountaineering Council of Scotland Scottish Highland Games Association, Scottish Canals, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park, Cairngorms National Park are also partners of the organisation.

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Their identity is a secret. They can arrive at any time. But they are here to help Scotland’s tourism businesses fulfil their star quality. These are the bedroom (and breakfast room) secrets of a Quality and Tourism Advisor

Lesley is a lady of mystery. She arrives at a guest house, often in the afternoon and early evening. She’s already booked her room, and her suitcase is in her car outside. It’s pouring with rain. What would you do?

First impressions are vital. Before Lesley has even opened the door of her bedroom she has already paid close attention to the warmth of the welcome, the general atmosphere and the sense of hospitality on offer.

Then, once she’s in the privacy of her guest room, she will take out her folder and start to record the quality of the whole experience so far that will contribute to the overall grading.

As part of this process, she will also do a thorough check of her room.

For hotel, guest house and bed and breakfast owners, it can be a little daunting, like awaiting a disapproving maiden auntie with a penchant for polish.

Lesley (not her real name) is a Quality and Tourism Advisor with VisitScotland.

She is much more convivial than ‘auntie’, in fact she’s about as far away from that image as you can imagine, she genuinely wants to offer her expertise and help each establishment that she visits.

She is the frontline in ensuring that Scotland is maintaining and raising its standards when it comes to tourism. And with recent research showing that since joining the Quality Assurance scheme around a quarter of businesses have improved their star grading and 94% have made substantial investments

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in their business, it becomes clear that the Quality Assurance role is about much more than just putting ‘stars’ on the door - it’s helping businesses fulfil their full potential and helping Scotland to shine.

When Business Quarter caught up with Lesley she was sitting in her car in Inverewe Garden car park, typing her notes into a lap-top. She has just been to a grand stone-built Victorian guest-house which has done well to attain its four-star grading. It’s been an interesting few days since she left her home in Inverness, heading up around the Western Highlands.

“People should not really know that I’m coming – which is why I should really not be named,” she explains.

“Sometimes they do work it out, but we always just try and book in as an ordinary guest. I’ve been doing this job for ten years and I really enjoy it, because I firmly believe I am making a difference.”

Sometimes she will even get a ‘Hello, Lesley, it’s yourself, come away in!”

How did she land such an unusual job?

“I have a degree in hospitality management from Glasgow Caledonian University to start with,” she says, “and I worked in the hotel sector for seven years with Macdonald Hotels and then decided I wanted to do something a bit different.”

Having initially felt a little nervous at the arrival of the previous VisitScotland Quality and Tourism advisors when she was a hotel manager, she thought it would be interesting to get involved and use her own hands- on hospitality experience to offer businesses a helpful and consultative approach - something which is at the heart of the QTA role. So what do she and her colleagues look for when they come into a tourism establishment? Much of Lesley’s job entails grading tourist attractions and caravan parks too.

“We are looking at the overall quality of a property. This evening I will be staying at a bed and breakfast and checking out the overall hospitality that we receive from the owners as well as the facilities themselves of course, and will also be going to a >>

She is the frontline in ensuring that Scotland is maintaining and raising its standards when it comes to tourism

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Quality Assurance helping Scotland to shine • Since joining the QA scheme around a quarter of businesses have improved their star grading • VisitScotland’s Quality Assurance scheme encourages the industry to invest in their business - in fittings and facilities, in marketing and IT, and in people development - to make it shine. 94% of QA businesses made investments in the last 2 years and the majority say they were influenced by the QA scheme • The total annual investment by all businesses in the QA schemes is an estimated £309m - an average of £31k per business QA scheme influenced investment results in an increase in annual revenue in the Scottish tourism sector of at least £38m Businesses value the advisory element of the schemes, the marketing benefits of the award, and the benefit of gaining official status from the national tourist board.

• Quality is imperative - the QA scheme gives an unbiased, objective and professional approach and helps businesses to not just meet visitor’s expectations - but exceed them • The benefits of Quality Assurance aren’t just for visitors - the confidence that comes from Quality Assurance keeps businesses on top of their game and ultimately the increased opportunities it creates puts cash in the till • Quality Assurance is about more than just the ‘stars’ on your door - it’s about the entire visitor experience, it’s about investing in your business and making it as economically sustainable as it can possibly be

caravan park later this afternoon,” she says.

She looks at the general condition of each place, including for example the state of the carpets, the quality of the towels, the condition of the toilet, shower and bath room.

Each item, such as hospitality, cleanliness, the

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bedrooms, public areas and bathrooms, the breakfast offering, is all assessed out of five, with one being acceptable and five being top grade. Each establishment has to reach a minimum percentage to gain its award.

“It does focus on the hospitality and

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friendliness of the operators and what they do,” she says.

Here’s the answer to the opening question.

You get credit for giving a very warm welcome and an offer to bring a guest’s suitcase in even when it’s pouring.

“You are looking for a friendly welcome – ideally someone who will come out to your car and take the luggage in for you – or at least offer to do so.”

Then it is a matter of showing the guest to the room and offering them a cup of tea. There is recognition for explaining about the facilities, how the shower might work, and giving a bit of background about the local area, and where might be nice to have an evening meal, especially for someone travelling on their own.

The QTA has already been doing a lot of homework, noting how many rings it takes to answer the phone, and what that first welcome is like, how much it will cost and the directions by any given mode of transport. In February, all of the 30 QTAs from across Scotland get together to ensure that a consistent grading standard is Scotland-wide, and that Dumfriesshire isn’t harder than the Trossachs, and Elgin shares the same grading as Elie.

The next morning, breakfast is also checked and marked, down to the toast, the butter options, the milk (is it UHT or semi-skimmed?) and the hot plate of eggs, bacon and black pudding. So what are the components of a Great Scottish breakfast?

“I’ve had a few breakfasts in my time now.

The quality has really risen greatly in the last few years. What people are saying is that they want to use more local produce, local free-range eggs, and organic produce, and providing the fish options, such as kippers or smoked salmon. The greasy fry-ups from when I first started are less frequent and everything is regularly cooked to order now, even in the humblest places.”

“Things have moved on – but if we find someone who is lagging behind we will respectfully suggest that changes are made,” she smiles.

There’s no reason why a two-star establishment shouldn’t be capable of giving a great breakfast to set you up for the day.

After breakfast, Lesley will pay her bill, collect

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her things, say goodbye and leave. A QTA is expected to head to her car and fill out an initial form. Then moments later, she returns with a business card announcing who she is.

Lesley says this is often a daunting moment for some people – as they mentally try and retrace their steps and think about what has happened over the previous 24 hours.

“Some people say, ‘Oh, my goodness, can you give me a minute to sit down!’ But I say they don’t need to worry and that they will get some really useful feedback and encouragement about what they are doing.”

Very soon they get the real benefit of the visit - the feedback and the advice, so highly valued by tourism operators.

“I give them the feedback about the whole process of booking and staying and they do appreciate it. We are encouraging people to give as much personal input as necessary. This is face-to-face advice, a genuine consultation – nothing spiteful from an anonymous website. Often visitors have little idea what is available locally and this is good time to let them know about produce or attractions that are something different. It is crucial for people’s enjoyment of the visit that they get a bit of knowledge about the local situation.”

She says this is about helping local businesses and encouraging people to stay local and spend their money in the local economy.

How is the judgement made between a three and four star? And what if there is any dubiety about this?

“We grade what we see at the time of the visit. We give people the feedback in the morning and ask them about their expectations. If they say they want to attain four-star status, we can give them advice and pointers on what they can do to reach that standard.”

“One bit of my job that I enjoy is that you see people who want to improve. They are keen to find out what they need to do to get up the next rung of the grading ladder. That’s a great feeling and it can only be good for Scotland.”

Lesley or one of her colleagues makes a decision about a three or a four star award, but if there is any concern there is a process to verify all the awards.

“In ten years, I’ve never had anyone disputing the grading we’ve given them.”

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There have been some key changes in the Quality Assurance schemes over the last few years and it very much viewed as being a partnership to help improve accommodation and attractions. There is also a sustainability project ongoing to record the current levels of sustainable practice. This will inform how sustainability can be integrated into quality assurance in future to help operators reap the benefits of becoming more sustainable, also to respond to consumer demand.

“We don’t make changes without consulting industry. We have 4 industry Quality Advisory Committees which provide advice and input to shape the ongoing development of the schemes. But if something new is added, for example to ensure four-star grading, such as better wi-fi connections for guests, we always give a lead-in time. We also undertake regular consumer research to ensure we are up to speed with changes in consumer expectations.

Overall, 95% of consumers stated that their accommodation met with their expectations of its VisitScotland star rating,” explains Lesley.

She says VisitScotland does not expect people to fund major changes if they are still running a modest guest house with only a few rooms.

“We do give a lot of constructive feedback about what is expected across the wider market and tell them what they might expect on the next visit.”

Scotland’s operators are graded every year and Lesley makes around 400 visits per year to hotels, bed and breakfast operators, caravan parks and to tourist attractions. Most of her thirty colleagues are doing three overnight stays per week, which is around 150 a year.

That’s a lot of overnight stays on hundreds of different beds, particularly to new properties.

So does she sleep well?

“Some are more comfortable than others. You get to see all of Scotland, places you didn’t think existed. We’re so lucky, it’s a country that never ceases to amaze me. You get to the outer isles and remote operators in tiny villages, you travel the length and breadth of the country helping Scotland to shine - and that’s part of the fun of the job, something you can take real pride in.”

Lesley also sees a wider variety of businesses and understands how small communities depend on the passing tourist trade and how

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it is re-cycled through local pubs, eating places and shops.

“What the visitor wants is a friendly welcome, a good night’s sleep and a good breakfast.

And, most of all, the place has got to be clean.

These are the fundamentals. If you get them right, you can build on that.” n

Case study Maggie and Gordon McFarlane own the four-star Highfield Guest House, in Edinburgh, with help from Maggie’s sister, Kate. They are all working to make their family-run business a five-star VisitScotland establishment.

“Since taking over the guest house four years ago we’ve been on a programme of upgrading and updating our property,” says Maggie.

The McFarlanes have refurbished every one of their five rooms, with new decoration, beds and bed linen, they have improved the stairs and hallways, adding wood panelling and dados, redecorating with paint, and laying a new carpet. They want their visitors - and VisitScotland’s quality and tourism advisers - to notice the transformation.

“We took over a well-run guest house with regular clientele but obviously we wanted to put our more modern stamp and design on the whole house.”

The family have invested thousands in creating a more contemporary feel for their Victorian townhouse situated in the Capital’s South Side, handy for Edinburgh University’s King’s Buildings.

“We’ve had our recent QA visit from VisitScotland and the feedback from the advisor was positive.

“We’ve more to do to secure the extra star, including re-doing our breakfast room, but it is expensive and so you need to fund this one step at a time. But I know the advisors appreciate this. We are determined to get the grading.” www.highfieldgh.co.uk

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NATURAL SCOTLAND

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NATURAL SCOTLAND

Hail, wind or shine: let’s get back to nature >>

Image: Scottish Viewpoint

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NATURAL SCOTLAND

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Picture perfect: The beach at Traigh Shanndaigh on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides. Image: Paul Tomkins / VisitScotland /Scottish Viewpoint

Our wonderful outdoor environment will be the star of the year of Natural Scotland 2013, encouraging everyone to get out and breathe it in. Victoria Masterson hears the talk of the wild side Nature tourism is big business for Scotland, accounting for around a quarter – £1.4bn – of UK tourism spend north of the border and nearly 40% of all tourism spending in Scotland. Our natural environment is our biggest asset, and next year this will be celebrated nation-wide with the Year of Natural Scotland 2013.

The year is a key milestone in what VisitScotland has dubbed ‘The Winning Years’ and is already building momentum.

A partnership between the Scottish

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Government, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), VisitScotland and EventScotland, plus more than 20 organisations Scotland-wide this year-long programme of events and marketing activity aims to enhance Scotland's reputation as a place of outstanding natural beauty and the location of choice for sustainable active pursuits, outdoor events and festivals.

“The Year of Natural Scotland is an opportunity for us all to explore our own country,” explains SNH spokesperson Alison Bell. “We're calling on everyone in Scotland

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to make this their year to be curious about Scotland and our natural environment and experience it anew.

Set aside at least one day to get out and do something in the outdoors in 2013 that you might not usually do.

Make time to get to the summit of that hill you've always wanted to climb, get your boots on and walk one of our long distance routes, pack your binoculars and seek out some of the many wonderful species found in our country, visit your local green

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NATURAL SCOTLAND

Full flow: The Sligachan Burn near Sligachan, with a view to the Black Cuillin Ridge beyond, the Isle of Skye. Image: Scottish Viewpoint

space – be it park, field, moorland, or even your own garden – and look at it again through fresh eyes – there's always something new to discover in Scotland's unique natural environment.”

SNH will be hosting a programme of events and activities including encouraging people to get out and about to track down Scotland's 'Big Five' species and inviting young people to share their perspectives and experiences of natural Scotland through their favourite social network. One of the major areas of focus for the year will be the 100th anniversary of the great Scots-born naturalist John Muir's death in 2014.

An influential conservationist, he dedicated his life to protecting wild places and was a founding member of North America's national parks and conservation movement.

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The state of California, where Muir lived for many years, now has a public day to commemorate Muir's achievements, and celebrations for this in the UK will be led by The John Muir Trust, the Pitlochry-based charity founded in 1983.

Part of this will be the opening across central Scotland of a new coast-to-coast route called the John Muir Way. Wild Scotland is Scotland's nature tourism association, representing more than 110 adventure, wildlife and outdoor activity companies across the country.

Its aims include establishing Scotland as one of the premier nature tourism destinations in Europe and helping to protect the natural environment by promoting sustainability best practice. “From the association’s inception, sustainability and responsible tourism were

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important to our members,” explains Wild Scotland manager Caroline Warburton.

“All Wild Scotland members sign up to our code of practice, which publicly demonstrates members’ commitment to sustainability.

“We encourage our members to manage their impacts on the environment through training courses, such as WISE, a marine tourism accreditation course for skippers and crew; Leave No Trace, a set of principles designed to help people enjoy the outdoors whilst reducing the impact they have on the environment around them, and our recently launched Wilderness Guide Training Programme, which provides comprehensive training for professional outdoor guides working on a wide range of leisure trips and instructional courses. By its nature, many of the activities our members offer take place >>

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Into the deep: Sea kayaking at the Bow Fiddle Rock, Portknockie, Moray. Image: Paul Tomkins / VisitScotland / Scottish Viewpoint

in rural areas and so play an important role in supporting jobs and other services in the fragile rural communities.”

For the Year of Natural Scotland, Wild Scotland's members will be promoting activities from sea-kayaking and mountain biking to whale-watching off the West Coast.

Forestry Commission Scotland will also be promoting its wildlife watching sites up and down the country, including the Peregrine Wild Watch Centre at Huntly and David Marshall Lodge at Aberfoyle in the Trossachs, where visitors can spot buzzards, red squirrels and ospreys. Scotland's woodlands and forests are also home to endangered species such as the capercaillie and wildcat.

Another key attraction is The National Tree Collections Scotland, which aims to involve tree collections at sites around the country in a

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national arboretum (collection of specimen trees) for Scotland.

For example, the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Inverleith in Edinburgh, Benmore in Argyllshire and Dawyck in the Borders contain many exotic specimens grown from seeds collected in the Himalayas, China, Japan and South America. James McDougall, promotion and events manager for FCS, points out that people don't have to travel miles to enjoy Scotland's woodlands and forests.

“It's not just about tourists to Scotland, but also what's on people's doorsteps in terms of opportunities to get into woodlands,” he says.

“There are more and more opportunities in urban settings.

“For example, we manage woodlands in Drumchapel and Easterhouse. The Year of Natural Scotland is important because it allows

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to communicate these messages about what we do out to a wider audience.”

Keep Scotland Beautiful, Scotland's leading environmental charity, will be supporting the Year of Natural Scotland by promoting increased participation and interest in three of its annual community campaigns – National Spring Clean, Beautiful Scotland and It’s Your Neighbourhood. The aim of these is to engage organisations, businesses, groups as well as individuals in making a positive contribution to a cleaner, greener and more sustainable Scotland. For example, more than 150,000 volunteers representing businesses, communities and public organisations volunteered to support this year's National Spring Clean campaign, removing an estimated 1,200 tons of litter and waste from parks, open spaces, roads, lanes, beaches,

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NATURAL SCOTLAND

Time to reflect: Looking across the calm waters of Loch Linnhe to Fort William and a snow dusted Ben Nevis from Ardgour.

Image: Allan Jamieson / VisitScotland / Scottish Viewpoint

important community places and areas of natural beauty.

“These campaigns, and the awards that go with them, celebrate the outstanding effort of the many hundreds of groups and thousands of individuals who go that extra mile to take forward environmentally enhancing initiatives to improve many of Scotland’s cities, towns, villages and neighbourhoods,” explains Keep Scotland Beautiful chief executive Derek Robertson. “It's all about people and our aim is quite simple. We want to support and encourage as many volunteers as is possible to take local action to ensure that our towns, villages and countryside are attractive and desirable places to live and work.

VisitScotland, working with colleagues in Event Scotland say the Year of Natural Scotland is the perfect opportunity to

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showcase Scotland’s unique natural environment and grow tourism spend in every corner of the country. The organisations’ Chairman, Mike Cantlay, believes everyone has a part to play, from the smallest B&B and activity providers, to visitor attractions and resort hotels: “Our natural environment is the number one reason why people visit Scotland – so let’s celebrate it and work

together to seize every opportunity.

And let’s not forget that enhancing Scotland’s reputation as a place of outstanding natural beauty can also and must also create economic benefit for Scotland. Working collaboratively with all our partners and across all our marketing channels we’re helping to show tourism businesses how they can engage with and benefit from the year.” n

Our natural environment is the number one reason why people visit Scotland so let’s celebrate it and work together to seize every opportunity

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HOSPITALITY

SUMMER 12

It’s got to be...

Perfect There are scores of wonderful hotel businesses in Scotland. So what can you do to run the ‘Perfect Small Hotel’. Kenny Kemp visited the Parklands Hotel in Perth to find out The quest for the ‘Perfect’ small Scottish hotel’ is probably as elusive as Brigadoon. But it can be a fun experience trying to find it.

There are simply a myriad of truly outstanding places across Scotland that might qualify – but Business Quarter has identified one highlyrecommended establishment in the Fair City of Perth. The Parklands Hotel in Perth, five minutes from the River Tay, has been picking up a batch of awards for its hospitality and its food. So what are its secrets?

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And what can other businesses in Scotland learn? Scott and Penny Edwards bought the Parkland Hotel in August 1993.

It is a four-star small hotel, which is a category of 20 bedrooms or under.

The Parkland has 15 rooms and a shared twin bedroom is in the £51.25 to £64.50 prices range, a bit more for deluxe rooms. Average occupancy throughout the year is 75%, an excellent ratio for any Scottish hotel.

“What we do as a business is constantly

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innovate. We are looking around at what is happening in the market place and then moving things on.

“We try and behave like a bigger hotel: so we offer free wi-fi, 140 channels of television, DVD players, iPod docking in the bedrooms.

We also offer colour copying and all the things that make it easier for a business person during the week,” says Scott.

“One night you might be staying in a big chain hotel in Glasgow and the next night a ‘wee’ hotel in Perth, but you can still get the same quality services,” he says.

For Scott Edwards, the food has to be outstanding selling point too. “We make a big point about our food and we have a top restaurant associated with the hotel.”

The Parklands’ numerous awards, include gold

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SUMMER 12

medal award for ‘Best in Perth’, Business Excellence, Design and its restaurant. It has an accolade from VisitScotland as a Four Star establishment, and the hotel’s bistro, No 1 The Bank, won the Scottish Hotel Award for Best Bistro in both 2009 and 2011, while its chef Graeme Pallister, Executive Chef of the Year in 2010, is now regarded as one of the most exciting prospects in Scotland.

“Food is huge part of what we do. Too many business travellers say, ‘The hotel was lovely but the food was shocking’. That’s never the case with us.

“We’ve a team of chefs – led Graeme Pallister - working between our dining places.”

“Graeme was shortlisted in the final four for Scottish Chef of the Year, which is just fantastic for Perth. People want to come and work for him.”

Breakfast is a huge part of this success story.

None of the lack-lustre fare of UHT milk, Weetabix, followed by fat-soaked bacon, scrambled egg and dreary black pudding.

“If the breakfast is average, then many people will view the hotel as being average too. We emphasise the fact that our breakfasts have over 50 choices for guests to come and sample. Gone are the days of having to pre-order the night before and it being slapped in front of you.”

Scott, now in his mid 40s, also says that

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having a friendly team that is prepared to look after the customers is essential in aspiring to that tag as the Scotland’s ‘Perfect Small Hotel’.

“From arrival to departure, we are always keen to look after the interests of the guest.

We’ve got a solid team with our core working with us for some time.”

Despite running The Parklands for nine years, Scott and Penny, surprisingly, are not steeped in the hospitality industry. Originally from Helensburgh, Scott worked for a private equity business in Frankfurt in Germany, while Penny, from Sussex, worked as a personal assistant in for an office administration manager.

What kind of investment is required to keep a hotel at the top of its game?

“From what I’ve seen across Scotland, not enough people put capital back into the business. There is simply not enough re-investment into the business with too much taken out. This is a bad trait for a lot of Scottish hotels. Hence, if you travel around

HOSPITALITY hotels in Scotland you will see some that are tired and under-invested.

“Some hotels look like they were back in the 1980s. That’s not us.”

The Parklands Hotel attempts to do something every six months so that regular guests can see a notable improvement from their previous visit. “That can be small things, like the glasses that we use in the restaurant, or bigger things like televisions.

“We are now on to our third set of flat-screen televisions in nine years in the hotel.”

The hotel introduced free wi-fi in 2003 before it became de rigueur in most boutique hotels in the UK, and has upgrades its speed and capability since then.

“Hotels were charging £20 for 24 hours of wi-fi, which was often an extra expense that annoyed people already paying a premium for a bedroom.”

When he arrived there was a single PC that was five years old with a dial-up modem connection. “This month our website database has 3,500 guests, so we can send them a e-newsletter, and we have seven PCs in the business, including one for the chefs. We are all on email and with EPOS to manage our reservations, and 70% of our business is online reservations.”

At the beginning, it was bare mattresses with a linen sheet on the top; now it is a mattress topper, with an over-cover, then a sheet. “That is a product innovation but it costs a lot – and the customer might not actually see it, but they will feel it when they lie in the bed and have a comfortable sleep.”

Then, rather than a plastic kettles in each room, they were replaced with stainless steel ones. Again 15 new kettles at £20 a time of £300. Crockery and cutlery in the restaurant all needs to look sparkling with designer plates, dishes, cups and teapots, while designer wallpaper comes in at £75 a roll, >>

What we do as a business is constantly innovate. We are looking around at what is happening in the market place and then moving things on

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HOSPITALITY

nd high-quality carpet at £50-60 a square metre.

“All these things have to be paid for. This is all about putting enough capital back into the business. Otherwise, you can’t move your hotel up the ladder.”

Scott sees the continuing capital spend as a marketing bonus too using all the technology to woo the busy business person.

“You can market the fact that you are constantly improving and people are prepared to pay for that as well.”

“In the last few years, we’ve invested around £6,000 a year in January and February in our property. You can’t do that if you are going backwards.”

With Scotland’s summer weather showing signs of arrival, Perthshire is well placed for the leisure market and those wanting a ‘Staycation’ break to a beautiful part of the country that’s within an hour and a half drive for 90% of Scotland population.

“At the moment we are focusing on improving our gardens and our external surroundings. Again, this required spending and attention to how it will look, so that people can sit outside and enjoy the surroundings and have cool drink. Anything that we can add to our guest experiences is good for us.”

Scott was chief operating officer of a health

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and fitness chain called Elixir with over 150 outlets and several hundred staff, now down to around 20. He received financial support from Royal Bank of Scotland to make the purchase. “The principles are the same. I did a lot of mergers and acquisitions within the private equity business, but you still apply sound business planning to buying and running a small hotel, obviously at a much smaller scale.

“It’s your own money, rather than someone else’s. It’s not investor’s cash, it comes out of your own pocket.”

Perth has a number of significant corporates based in the city, including Scottish & Southern Energy, Aviva, Edrington Group, Stagecoach, so there is a vibrant business market.

So how important is setting the right room rates at the Parklands so that it is competitive?

“We serve a number of corporate companies in Perth and pricing is very important to us.

However, we are not into rate matching with

three-star places. We market ourselves for our better service and, therefore, there is a price premium on that point to justify being four-star,” he explains.

He says that having a quality of life balance is important, particularly in an unforgiving industry such as hospitality.“I worked longer hours in private equity. I don’t work a seven-day week now.

“There are lots of hotels in Scotland where husband and wife work opposite shifts and it’s a business with very tough margins.

“We are not in that business, we are in a business that is sustainable that can employ well-trained staff to do their jobs.

“It works for everyone. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, and what you’re doing is not fun, then stop what you are doing, and do something else.”

He says this continued focus on service is what ultimately ensures the repeat business.

“We are in a niche of great food, great hotel.

You can’t make everyone happy all of the time. But the majority love staying here and we have huge repeat business. We’ve got a loyal following and you can’t get upset by what one or two people might write on TripAdvisor.” The Parklands Hotel has dealt with 65,000 customers over the last nine years, yet there are around 130 reviews on TripAdvisor, which prompts a strong response from Scott.

“The bad reviews tend to be for those people who haven’t told you face-to-face if there is a problem. They’re not brave enough, they just go away and write it on a website, which is shocking.” In Scott Edwards’ view, a hotel’s product needs to stay fresh and up-to-date, always on the look-out for anything that can enhance the guest experience.

In the search for perfection, the Parklands Hotel in Perth is clearly in the running for such a mythical award. n

This is all about putting enough capital back into the business. Otherwise, you can’t move your hotel up the ladder

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HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

Business Case Study

All information correct as of June 2012

Growth is plain sailing for Ferry Inn One of Orkney’s best-known hotels is looking forward to the summer after a change of ownership last year was funded by Bank of Scotland.

Local hoteliers Gareth and Karen Crichton took over the Ferry Inn in Stromness before undertaking an immediate and extensive refurbishment of one of the island’s most popular watering holes.

The new-look Ferry Inn was back in business in four days as the new ownership moved quickly to make sure they didn’t miss out on the summer visitors attracted to Orkney’s gateway harbour town.

The takeover and the refurbishment, which included reconnecting an adjacent property as an annexe to create six additional rooms, was enabled by a loan from Bank of Scotland.

Gareth and Karen, who already operate The Shore Rooms Restaurant Bar in Kirkwall, were well aware of the Ferry Inn’s attraction and potential. Despite the inn’s previous financial difficulties, Gareth had no doubt it could and should be saved.

He said: “I had been tracking The Ferry and was aware that it been under-performing. The trick for us was to find a way of financing the purchase and initial refurbishment without putting undue pressure on The Shore, where our programme of capital refurbishment has continued into our fifth year.

“The loan provided by Bank of Scotland allowed us to do this and by working closely with the bank, we were able to turn the refurbishment around as quickly as possible and we are now looking forward to welcoming guests throughout the summer.”

David Henderson, Relationship Manager at Bank of Scotland, said, “The rapid turnaround in fortunes at The Ferry Inn is extremely encouraging. This deal demonstrates not only the Bank’s commitment to the hospitality sector but it also underlines our continued activity in the tourism industry.

“We could see the investment that would be required to get The Ferry back up to the mark, but felt with the right financial support that we could turn it around pretty quickly.”

Gareth Crichton, Owner of the Ferry Inn Left to right: David Henderson (Bank of Scotland Relationship Manager) with Gareth Crichton of the Ferry Inn

Bank of Scotland plc Registered Office: The Mound, Edinburgh EH1 1YZ. Registered in Scotland no. SC327000. Telephone: 0870 600 5000.

Licensed under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 under registration number 0593292.

We subscribe to The Lending Code; copies of the Code can be obtained from www.lendingstandardsboard.org.uk

“We are pleased to support a project that is strengthened

by Gareth and Karen’s background in the trade, and we look forward to a long and prosperous future for the Ferry Inn.”

Any property given as security which may include your home, may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage or other debts secured on it.

All lending is subject to a satisfactory credit assessment.

Information is available in large print, audio and Braille on request.

CONFERENCES

SUMMER 12

A delegate balance for business Conferences are back on the agenda and that’s a vote of confidence for Scotland. Neil Brownlee, head of VisitScotland’s Business Tourism Unit, talks to Vicky Masterson

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Centre stage: The Edinburgh International Conference Centre. Image: Paul Tomkins / VisitScotland / Scottish Viewpoint

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In the aftermath of the banking crisis, conferences and events were scored off agendas in boardrooms across the globe.

“There was a time two and a half to three years ago when conferences were really being talked down,” explains Neil Brownlee, Head of VisitScotland’s Business Tourism Unit.

“They were seen as frivolous and a luxury, especially certain types of conference in certain types of hotel. It got so crazy that companies were booking meetings but avoiding mealtimes. For example they'd start at 9.45am and finish at 11.45am so the delegates didn't get breakfast or lunch.

“That's pretty tight. There's been a recovery since then - not least because businesses realised they can't go on forever not speaking to their customers or staff.”

With its world-renowned reputation for innovation, heritage and hospitality – and a choice of venues from castles to conference

CONFERENCES

centres – Scotland is well placed to capitalise on this recovery and is already a big player in the conference, meetings and incentive trips market. Business tourism is worth more than £800m to Scotland's economy – a fifth of total tourism spend north of the border – and plays a vital part in enhancing Scotland's credentials in key industries and extending tourism beyond the traditional peak seasons.

“For a small nation, Scotland certainly

continues to punch above its weight,” Brownlee says. “For example, Edinburgh and Glasgow host a quarter of international association conferences, making them second only to London in the UK. A high number of business tourists attend these conferences and can spend nearly twice as much as leisure tourists, so we're really doing everything we can to get these people into Scotland.”

These delegates are often highly influential >>

Business tourism is worth more than £800m to Scotland’s economy - a fifth of total tourism spend north of the border

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Meetings on a grand scale: The Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. Image: Paul Tomkins / VisitScotland / Scottish Viewpoint

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CONFERENCES

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Creature feature: The Clyde Auditorium – also known as The Armadillo – part of the Secc- Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow. Image: Paul Tomkins / VisitScotland / Scottish Viewpoint

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in their own right, will typically visit during the October to November and March to April conference seasons, and will often return later on holiday.

“There's a high propensity for them to come back as leisure visitors,” Brownlee explains.

“They like it when they come here with their company. Hopefully they'll come back with their partner and kids.”

Business tourism also has a very long supply chain. Not just the hotels and conferences centres, but the florists, caterers, outdoor facility providers, gift retailers and others who support the industry.

“For a small chocolate shop in Blair Atholl, 400 turn-down gifts for a corporate event is a very nice order,” he adds.

To help boost Scotland's reputation as a host of major international conferences, VisitScotland has launched a new £2m 'Conference Bid Fund' with support from the Scottish Government.

It will help Scottish cities and destinations compete for international conferences linked to 12 key sectors, including life sciences, food and drink, creative industries and energy.

“Countries or cities like Hong Kong, Vienna, Vancouver and Washington often have a fund to help them attract international conference business,” Brownlee explains. “It's a hugely competitive market, because we know for example that an international conference with 3,000 delegates will spend about £5m to £6m over a four to five day conference. The idea of the bid fund is to level the playing field. As long as the local authority puts up money first, we can match fund. t’s not huge sums of money, but it can swing a decision, so we’re pleased to have that tool at our disposal. It shows our commitment as a country to the meetings industry.”

A key attraction for international association events is Scotland's reputation for innovation and inventions like the television, telephone and Dolly the Sheep – alongside ancient universities like Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen. A recent VisitBritain study also ranked Edinburgh and Glasgow among the top three European cities for value for money in hosting association conferences. With the increasing importance of sustainability to Corporate Social Responsibility agendas,

HARNESSING THE WINNING YEARS

Global aims: Neil Brownlee sees a bright future for business tourism in Scotland

Scotland has a lot to offer and we’ve got to position ourselves to get that message out to everyone Scotland's growing reputation for green tourism scores crucial points.

The social programme is another important factor in the decision-making process for conference organisers. “Scotland has a distinctive culture, music, dance and world-renowned hospitality that delegates to Scotland will perhaps remember well after they've forgotten about the conference,” Brownlee suggests. “Delegates who come to Scotland can play a round on one of more than 550 golf courses and sample the 'the water of life' from one of more than 100 whisky distilleries.”

Tourist attractions and conference venues across Scotland are themselves investing around £2bn in a series of major refurbishments and openings.

Highlights include the Victoria & Albert (V&A) at Dundee, which will be an international

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CONFERENCES centre of design for Scotland when it opens in 2015, and the opening in 2014 of the Scottish Hydro Arena in Glasgow, the UK's second biggest after the O2 in London. Other developments include the extension of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre – adding a further 2000 sq m of function space – and the refurbishment of Edinburgh's 18th century, Grade A-listed Assembly Rooms, due to reopen this summer.

This follows the opening last year of another three flagship venues: Glasgow's Riverside Museum and the National Museum of Scotland and Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

“It's very important to show that we're evolving, and there's a lot going on at some of the most important venues in Scotland, including the EICC, SECC and AECC,” Brownlee says.

“All this investment is great and is helping is build an increasingly high profile for the conference, meetings and incentive travel industry in Scotland.”

Looking ahead, the Business Tourism Unit is working more closely with partners including Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International on initiatives such as the Ambassador Programme, which recruits academics and professionals in fields of particular expertise who can act as recommenders. Plans include bringing 20 of the world's most influential meetings brokers to Scotland via the Chicago-based Professional Convention Management Association, which represents brands such as Nike, Oracle, Cisco and Microsoft.

“We're seeing a return of visitors from lucrative North American markets bringing incentive business to the country,” Brownlee adds. “Although the Eurozone crisis has seen things go pretty quiet from Spain, we're seeing a real upswing from France – almost enough to replace Spain – and Germany is steady as she goes.”

The London 2012 Olympics and 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow have also prompted an increase in enquiries for Scottish venues. “Scotland has a lot to offer, and we've got to position ourselves to get that message out to everyone if and when the recovery comes,” he concludes. n

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OPINION

SUMMER 12

BQ Magic…

If you had a magic wand what is the one thing you would change about Scotland?

“The thing that I would change about tourism here on the West Coast is to make people more aware that we are a year-round destination! There is superb winter climbing and hiking, even skiing. If that’s not your bag there is nothing like a crisp winter blue-sky day sitting at the side of the loch watching otters, then sitting by a roaring fire in the evening with a wee dram.”

Kirstie Black, who owns and runs the Cuilcheanna House, with her mother, Mary. It is a four-star guest house in Onich, situated between Glencoe and Fort William. It has seven en-suite rooms with a view of either the loch or the hills. www.cuilcheanna.co.uk

“I would fix the ‘weakest link’. What do I mean by that? I think tourism is an industry where consistency is everything. You can have the most superb hotels, terrific attractions, world-class golf courses but if the taxi on the way to the airport is dirty, if a local tea shop provides poor service.

It really detracts from the

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overall visitor experience.

So I would really like to see the weakest link being sorted.

Crawford Gillies, Chairman of Scottish Enterprise. He has a law degree and an MBA from Harvard business School. He was appointed chairman in February 2009 and worked with Bain & Co, the international management consultants.

“Most of our international visitors have to change flights to get here. We need more direct flights – which is what the new owners of Edinburgh Airport want too – when easyJet started flying directly to Amsterdam, there was a surge in Dutch bookings.

That tells the story.”

Neil Smith, owner of Smith’s Guest House, a budget bed and breakfast in Edinburgh, with seven rooms. www.smiths.uk.com

“As an incomer to Scotland now in my eighth year, I am still struck by the wonderful array of sights and experiences Scotland offers - so there is not much I would change about

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Scottish tourism. However tourists, just like the rest of us, expect quick and reliable internet connections - smart phones make checking ferry times or booking hotels easy - so making sure we’ve got excellent connection speeds across the country is a must for me. Upgrading the main route on the east coast the A1 too.”

Christine Vincent, runs The Townhouse, Kelso, a beautiful Georgian building overlooking the Square with three letting rooms. www.thetownhousekelso.co.uk

“The product is a world beater and we need to develop the infrastructure to make sure it complements what we have on offer. Far too often we hear tales of poor and expensive accommodation; tailbacks on the main arteries and expensive train fares. Build it and they will come.”

Inglis Lyon, Managing Director, of Highlands and Island Airports, based in Inverness Airport.

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