Already tourism to the north-east has started to pick up since the oil and gas downturn.
This is just one recent finding of VisitAberdeenshire, the newly forged organisation which is taking on the mantle of driving tourism on behalf of Opportunity North East (One).
The destination management organisation (DMO) was formed in the merger of three bodies – VisitAberdeen, Visit Royal Deeside and Banffshire Coast – in April.
Steve Harris, the organisations’ chief executive, admits that the consolidation of the groups has taken longer than expected to bed in – but the group also has the enviable position of being the only DMO in the country to get funding from a private organisation like One.
The Sir Ian Wood-backed group will support VisitAberdeenshire to the tune of £800,000 per year for the next five years.
Mr Harris also has hopes this could increase to £5million over the same period subject to further support from Aberdeen City and Shire councils
He said: “The most important thing is to reposition the region in the mind of the travelling public so they see something beyond oil and gas as somewhere you might want to visit for its own sake.
“We are extremely confident in the product that we have already got, but we have got a massively improving product and a massively improving number of opportunities, particularly with investment in the airport, the harbour and the new AECC.
“There are large number of new hotels too.
“We are extremely lucky that the product is being invested in at the moment.”
In January, VisitAberdeenshire is set to launch its first major marketing campaign which will “start to do the big repositioning job”, Mr Harris said.
The £250,000 campaign will primarily target the leisure tourist planning their spring and summer holidays, although Mr Harris added: “Business tourism will benefit as well because the region will be seen as a more attractive area.”
Already figures have revealed that hotel costs – once driven sky high because of the oil and gas industry – have reduced and that more people have come to take a holiday in the region as a result.
“The green shoots are the summer hotel occupancy figures, which have shown a 3-4% increase in visitors overall,” Mr Harris said.
And while September figures were down on the same month last year due to the 2015 Offshore Europe exhibition, the figures still showed leisure visitors in the month were up 10%.
“That is the strongest performance we have seen for any month for any weekends for over two years,” he said.
“Simply because we have become more competitive as much as the effort we are putting in.
“We now have something to sell that is at a reasonable price and people like the product and are going to come. When the marketing kicks in we hope there will be even bigger numbers.”
He admits the going has been tough – although VisitAberdeenshire is now “buzzing” as it now has its resources in place.
He said: “I won’t try and pretend amalgamating everything hasn’t created its own challenge.
“It has slowed us down a little bit more than I thought it would but we do seem to have that behind us now.
“We have a fully functioning organisation with some experienced people in it. That does give us a little bit of an advantage.
“We have a lot more stakeholders now, which is a good thing because it means we have a lot more people funding us.
“But it also means that we have to spend some time servicing their needs – and that provides challenges.
“We have a really strong team and some of them have been with me now for four years.
“Now they have got the resources to do what we employed them to do in the first place- you can see there is a real buzz about the place.
“Now the numbers are beginning to go in the right direction that gives people more of a sense of purpose.”
Mr Harris also sees the potential upside of the fall in the value of sterling – which makes the UK more affordable for international tourists, although he questions how long this effect might last.
“Scotland needs to get its act together in terms of trying to make itself more competitive.
“We have very high VAT rates and air passenger duty (APD).
“We need to find a way to fund the promotion of Scotland in a sustainable manner.
“There are challenges ahead of us, but at the moment, for Aberdeen we have a double whammy – our prices have come down so we have become more competitive and the value of the currency has gone down do we have become more competitive still. We are good value.”
The group is now looking further ahead to consolidate support once its five year funding package is spent.
“I’ve not supported a bedroom tax but I’ve supported a levy of some description that is paid by the tourist or the visitor,” he said.
“It is probably the only way forward – no one has come up with any alternative yet.
“I think one has to accept that in the medium term, public sector funding of destination marketing organisations is probably not going to be sustainable.
“We are very lucky we have two councils pledged to support us, Scottish Enterprise has pledged to support us over a period and we have One pledged to support us as well.
“There is no other DMO in the UK that has an organisation like One supporting it.
“We are very lucky. But all of that will stop at some point. We have to find an alternative.
“My point about APD and VAT – there is a win/win here. There is enough money sloshing around it is just about making sure it gets to the right place.
“It has to be hypothecated. It has to go nowhere near central government or local authority coffers – it has to go directly into marketing organisations that are designed to boost tourism.”
He added: “There’s a huge opportunity.
“Tourism globally is growing dramatically. We are not getting our share as the UK or Scotland.
“We need to do something.”
