Rain and recession take toll on tourism

Visitor numbers at tourist attractions throughout the north and north-east plummeted this summer as bad weather and the recession took their toll.

The slump means the vital industry is almost certain to miss ambitious targets to boost its income.

Last night one expert said the sector would have to change the way the country sells itself, to lure more people from emerging markets such as China.

Operators had been set the goal of increasing revenue by 50% between 2005 and 2015. But Richard Arnott, head of the Scottish Government’s tourism unit, revealed yesterday that the industry was on a “level trajectory”.

He told Holyrood’s economy, energy and tourism committee: “It’s clear we are not on trajectory to meet 50% growth in the decade up to 2015.

“I think this is probably widely accepted because there have been significant changes in the world economics and several events in that period which have affected tourism.”

He told MSPs 2009 was a “difficult year in economic terms”, although tourism “performed better than many sectors in Scotland”.

A spokeswoman for the National Trust for Scotland said visitor numbers at its properties were “down slightly” on last year. But Peter Ellis, who manages the trust’s Barry Mill near Carnoustie in Angus, said he expected visitor numbers to be half of last year’s 4,000 total.

He said: “We have had a couple of moderately busy Sunday afternoons, but that has been about it this year.

“A few weeks ago we had only three people in on a Sunday. I cannot remember it ever being that bad.”

The chairman of the Friends of Stonehaven Open Air Pool, Mike Robins, estimated that it had 4,000 fewer visitors this season than last year’s 30,000.

The manager of the Archaeolink prehistory park near Oyne, Donald Fraser, said the centre had more than 7,500 visitors between April and August last year and “a few hundred” fewer this summer.

Between May and August, the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Kingussie, saw a drop of 2,000 customers on last year’s 65,974.

Visitor services manager Daska Mackintosh said: “The economic downturn has not affected us as much as we feared.”

Operations director at the Discovery Centre in Dundee, Mark Munsie, said there had been a slight decline in the local market compared with last year, but that the number of foreign visitors had increased by 5%.

The average number of visitors to Aberdeen Art Gallery every month for this financial year was 12,666 – compared with 14,691 in 2009. However, the average number of visitors to the city’s maritime museum rose to 7,631 a month, compared with 6,382 last year.

Director of the Scottish Centre of Tourism at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Andrew Martin, said achieving the revenue target for 2015 would be “very challenging”. He said Scotland would have to change its marketing policy to succeed and not simply drop prices to increase business.

He added: “When money is tight and we have a summer of poor weather like we’ve had, people will just buy a cheap holiday in the sun.

“But we have to make sure we are offering the right product at the right price. In the past Scotland has sold itself too cheap, and we have to have the guts to charge a premium price for the tremendous product we have in this country.”

He added that Scotland needed to look further afield than the traditional domestic and North American markets because of the struggling economies.

“We have to look to the east, to places like China where the economy is still strong, and sell ourselves there as an all-year-round tourist destination.”