Tackling Seasonality
Seasonality is one of the main
challenges to the sustainability of Scottish tourism.
The concentration of tourism trips in
certain periods of the year has a major effect on sustainability.
Not only does it reduce the viability of enterprises to maximise
capacity utilisation and offer year round employment, it can also
place pressure on communities and natural resources at certain
times while leaving surplus capacity at others.
Seasonality of demand makes it very difficult to plan and manage
the provision of tourism facilities efficiently. A process of
stimulating demand at less busy times of the year, taking up spare
capacity, would enable revenue from tourism to grow while putting
less pressure on the environment and community.
Free sustainable workshops
To help businesses understand how sustainable practices can ease
seasonality issues, improve their bottom line and in turn aid
growth in Scottish tourism, VisitScotland has instigated its first
sustainable tourism events programme.
These free workshop events will be held around the country, with
the first event taking place in Peebles on 11 February. It was well
attended by a good mix of tourism businesses from the Borders area.
Attendees participated in an interactive session and received lots
of useful information and advice from Waste Aware Business and The
Business Environment Partnership.
Real inspiration came from Paul Easto of Wilderness Scotland and
Pete Ritchie of Whitmuir Organics who shared their experiences of
sustainability.
There was good feedback on the workshop, with attendees
saying:
- “it was very useful, picked up some good tips”
- “great presentations and interaction with delegates”.
Future events will provide an opportunity for tourism businesses
to interact with experts, through workshop sessions and expert
consultancy support including the Energy Savings Trust, Waste Aware
Business, The Carbon Trust, Scottish Business in the Community and
Envirowise. Experts will again be joined by a number of
sustainability champions, who will share their experiences and
provide valuable advice with attendees.
Your Views
We are looking for your views on sustainability in tourism. Is
this approach useful to your business? Do you think there are
aspects that could be included in this project? If you attended,
plan to attend, or don’t see the sustainable workshops as useful,
we want to hear your views.
Please use the Comments facility to keep us updated on what you
think.
