VisitScotland chairman Lord Thurso confident of "rebalancing" of tourism in Highlands
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The chairman of VisitScotland says he shares the frustration over the irresponsible actions of some tourists in the Highlands but believes 2020 will be seen as an exception.
Lord Thurso believes Scotland is ideally placed to develop a sustainable tourism sector which brings economic benefits with minimal impact on communities and the environment.
“I’m an eternal optimist," he said. "Put it this way: I think I’d rather deal with the problems of success than the problems of having no tourists.”
Lord Thurso (66) had an extensive career in the hospitality industry before serving as Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross from 2001 to 2015.
He has been chairman of VisitScotland since 2016 and is a member of the Scottish Tourism Recovery Taskforce which is plotting the way ahead for tourism and hospitality in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis.
Speaking at his home at Thurso East, Lord Thurso said: "Obviously, having spent my life before being in politics in the hospitality business, I feel great sadness that a few people are making such a negative impact.
“There is huge frustration that a very small minority have behaved so badly. The vast bulk of people behave extremely well.
"It’s not actually the Highlands that’s the problem, it’s the whole country. It’s happening everywhere.
"The problem is because the vast bulk of the population live in cities and they have been in lockdown – first the total lockdown and then eased lockdown.
"Many young people live in small, cramped flats and they’re desperate to get some fresh air and freedom. Normally they would probably be going on a package holiday to Spain or somewhere like that, all of which they can’t do.
“So you have a large number of people who have been cooped up, who are desperate to get out and about, whose normal holiday places are unavailable, and naturally they head for the hills and the coasts.
“The south of Scotland has got this problem, the Trossachs have got the problem, all the coastal towns have got the problem.
“It’s about understanding that this is a particular circumstance and hopefully in future years we will see a return to more normal tourism.
"I think also there’s an opportunity in this. I’m one of the members of the taskforce that the cabinet secretary [Fergus Ewing] has set up – I’m part of the subgroup that’s looking at investment.
"And I have made a suggestion that what we need to do is use one of the government funds, say the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund, so what we can actually create the facilities people need, particularly the campervans.
“If you look at France, for example, every little commune has a gîte, a site where you know that if you arrive at the end of the day you’ll be able to go somewhere that has the basic facilities.
"If we were to invest in that through central government giving funds to councils, that would mean that the need to go somewhere other than a proper place would be removed.
“That in turn would allow you to look at the possibility of a degree of regulation. Iceland did this a few years ago – they just got to a point where every passing place and layby had a campervan in it and they said ‘no’. So it became the law that you had to go to the specified places or have the permission of the owner of the ground, one or the other.
“This is not to stop wild camping, because wild camping was never about wheeled vehicles anyway. Wild camping is where a chap parks his car in a car park, puts his tent and everything on his back and sets off across the hill.
“It’s not about waking up in the morning and finding your drive has been blocked by a van so you can’t get out, and then when they do go they’ve left their rubbish behind for you to clean up.
“That, I think, is something we should be looking to regulate more but you can only regulate for it if you have made the provision, so it’s an even-handed approach.
“I think there’s a lot that we can do to invest, to ensure that we get the maximum economic benefit for the minimum environmental and social disruption to the host community, while also providing for the leisure of our citizens. That’s what we are looking at – how do we help to be part of that positive progress?”
Further investment in upgrading roads from single-track to double-track would make a big difference, he says, not only along the North Coast 500 route but in other parts of Scotland.
“In my time driving round what was then the constituency there were quite a lot of bits that were improved from single-track and it’s good for everybody," Lord Thurso said.
“If the wealth from tourism into the nation was reinvested in better roads, that would be a very positive and beneficial thing.
“What tourism does is to bring wealth into areas that might not otherwise have it. I know for a fact that there are some facilities and some village shops that get revenue from people travelling – whether they’re staying in B&Bs and hotels or whether they’re camping – and if that revenue was not there, their existence would become more marginal."
Lord Thurso continued: “What I hope is that we positively work to up-skill and up-quality the natural offerings that we have so that the economic visitor, the tourist who is coming here because they love the things we’ve got, is also spending a lot of money and supporting the local economy. This year, to me, is a bit of an exception because of the fact that our cities were closed down and people can’t do what they usually do.
“At the moment Glasgow and Edinburgh hotel occupancy is sitting at under 20 per cent. Holiday homes outside the cities are sitting at 90 per cent occupancy. Normally Edinburgh would be 100 per cent occupied.
“We are in the middle of August, we should be in the middle of the festivals. This time last year everybody was complaining like crazy that you couldn’t move in Edinburgh, it was terrible and ghastly...
"You can do anything you like in Edinburgh at the moment, but there’s a heck of a lot of businesses that are probably not going to reopen.
“At VisitScotland we’ve been criticised by some people for not banging the drum hard enough and not being more positive about welcoming visitors which I think is misguided because what we have recognised from day one of planning for the restart was that there would be anxiety in communities and we were likely to have some people who might not know how to behave.
“Our chief executive Malcolm Roughead has spent a lot of time on Zoom calls with communities all over Scotland. We created the Good to Go scheme to give an assurance that people who are offering accommodation provision have got good guidance and know how to operate so that they provide a safe environment for their guests.
“One of the reasons I think people are taking to caravan and campervans is that they control that environment and it’s therefore perceived to be safe.
Looking ahead to the post-pandemic landscape, Lord Thurso said: “I am convinced that the combination of stunning environment and stunning produce and wonderful Highland welcome, which I think will remain undiminished, will attract people who will want to come and stay in Scotland and who will want to spend money, and we will again be an important industry.
“The week before lockdown I was at a meeting where we were looking at one of the best years on record. We were anticipating £11 billion or £12bn into the GDP of the country – 10 or 12 per cent of Scottish economic activity. A week later a switch was flicked and broadly 90 per cent of that stopped.
“You’re talking about nine per cent of the economy stopping dead overnight and that’s an amazing impact to have.
"As somebody said, we flicked a switch to turn it off but it’s more like very slowly turning a dimmer switch to get it back on – which is what we’re doing.
“Once cities are able to reopen, when we get to the point where sport, business events, festivals and things like that can come back – which may be into next year, I suspect – once that happens then I think we will get a rebalancing back to the tourism that we’ve had in the past.”
