Foreign travel requires a significant amount of personal disposable income, and so the people who take holidays abroad tend to belong to the middle and higher socio-economic groups. They are spread throughout the ages, although there is a slightly higher proportion of people aged between 35 and 55 travelling abroad. (This reflects general population trends in most countries.) People are now much more experienced travellers with high expectations of the quality and service they should receive.

Scotland’s international visitors have a similar profile to this. Another notable feature of our visitors is that around three-quarters of them travel as couples – only a minority are families. From our research on what visitors do on their holidays, we can see that they are people who enjoy nature and exploring the country, who like to learn more about other cultures and enjoy meeting the local people. While the majority of people from our international markets are visiting Scotland for the first time, some are return, even regular, visitors. As direct flight connections are an important factor in choosing a holiday destination, we find that many of our visitors live in the large urban centres, such as New York, Amsterdam and Barcelona from which there are direct flights to Scotland.

For more information and statistics on our visitors, visit the International Market Research section