Highland Tourism group set up to promote the brand and help recovery after Brexit and Covid
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A NEW organisation hopes to give a unified voice to the Highland tourism sector as it meets the challenge of recovery from Covid-19 and the impact of Brexit.
Sustainability will also be an important factor for the new group, as well as finding ways to promote the region to potential customers and support its members.
Highland Tourism is a new community interest company set up Yvonne Crook, who runs catering company Good Highland Food with her husband Mike and has over 20 years of experience in destination management in Scotland and Europe, and Sam Faircliff, the managing director of Cairngorm Brewery who played a pivotal role in establishing the Cairngorms Business Partnership.
They hope the organisation will be able to play a strategic role in helping the sector adapt to the challenges of the 21st century, and unify the region's tourism sector in a single brand.
"Tourism is a £541 million business in the Highlands, employing 19,000 people, yet there is no single trade body to advocate for it at a time when we are trying to deal with the impact of Brexit and Covid," Mrs Crook said.
These factors may be presenting an unprecedented challenge to the sector, but Mrs Crook points out that Highland tourism was already showing signs of decline before the pandemic, with 2018 figures showing overnight visitors down seven per cent and day visitors down 15 per cent.
Although she stressed that local destination organisations such as North Coast 500, Visit Inverness Loch Ness, the Cairngorms Partnership and Lochaber's Outdoor Capital of the UK are doing a good job for their own areas, she believes the area is handicapped by the lack of a single group to manage the Highland brand – Scotland's second best-known brand for overseas tourists after Edinburgh.
"There are destination organisations and community groups doing a great job but there is no single body to manage the Highland brand, lead and drive a vision and strategic context for tourism recovery," she said.
“The Highlands has one of the best natural environments in Europe. We have a passionate Highland tourism community with a huge amount of energy. We have an amazing array of outdoor activities and experiences. We have access to global research on tourism trends as well as best practice in destination development. We just needed an industry body to lead and drive.”
Mrs Crook, who was a director of the Highland Food & Drink Festival for almost a decade and runs her own strategic marketing agency, View Marketing, envisions Highland Tourism as a fleet of foot organisation which will be capable of a swift response to circumstance and would be industry led.
"We are the ones working on the ground and making the economy tick," she said.
Highland Tourism is intended to have a two-pronged approach to the challenges the north tourism sector faces.
The first will be to work with businesses to encourage networking and development as well as a social and environmental mission, while the second will focus on presenting unique experiences and activities for visitors and positioning and marketing the Highlands as a place that cares.
"We have had such a great response so far that I am confident that we will build an organisation for the whole of the Highlands," Mrs Crook said.
"We would like to see it established as a leading industry-led body that has the ability to develop and lead change and be there to support businesses to thrive and survive."
Highland Tourism's website, www.highlandtourism.org, is expected to go live on Friday to create a platform to engage with the business community in the Highlands and beyond.
It will be followed by the launch of a second website, Escape to the Highlands, which will showcase some of the unique experiences, activities and places the Highlands have to offer and will also focus on "Conscious Travel", by promoting sustainable and meaningful travel experiences.
