Industry and Events Directorate

Supporting destinations, sectors, and businesses to help develop a strong and dynamic tourism and events industry for Scotland.

This directorate has a strong focus on collaboration and partnership working, developing and maintaining strategic relationships with a wide range of partners.

Its main aim is to ensure that tourism and events is seen as an important and valuable industry for Scotland. It harnesses the power of partnerships, collaborating locally, nationally, and globally with a range of partners and stakeholders. These include:

tourism businesses
Scottish events sector
industry and sector bodies
destination management organisations and communities
local authorities
enterprise agencies
UK and international partners

The team leads the delivery of our role in national tourism and events strategies – Scotland Outlook 2030 and Scotland the Perfect Stage 2024-2035.

Find out more about Scotland's national events strategy.

Director of Industry and Events – Rob Dickson

Rob Dickson joined VisitScotland in 2021. He has a wide range of senior leadership experience, including with Scottish Borders Council where he was latterly Interim Chief Executive and Executive Director (Corporate Improvement & Economy).

Before that, he worked for the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames. He was pivotal in setting up the South of Scotland Enterprise agency and was seconded to Scottish Government to support this work.

He led on economic development in the Scottish Borders, including on the reopening of Borders Railway, and has worked closely with stakeholders and public agencies across tourism and events.

Rob is a former international rugby referee and carried out military service for four years with The Royal Scots.

Director of Industry and Events, Rob Dickson

Destination and Sector Development

This team is led by Ken Massie and is focused on:

VisitScotland’s contribution to the development of regional and destination strategies
identifying regional priorities, and opportunities with a focus on key outcomes, data and insights to inform our work
championing tourism and events as part of the Regional Economic Partnership (REP) structures across the country
supporting the development of transformational national and regional investments
informing spending and planning on investment in infrastructure to realise maximum tourism impacts, including delivery of the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund (RTIF)
engagement with relevant national initiatives and policy outcomes
providing leadership, prioritisation and coordination for all our sector-based work
building strong relationships with key sector groups and a clear understanding of national sector strategies
developing sector plans and inputs as part of regional plans

Events

Rebecca Edser leads the Events team. Its primary focus is to build on Scotland’s credentials as a leading events destination. As part of this, they:

develop a diverse and strong sporting and cultural events portfolio with the help of direct investment and other support
build strong relationships and work with partners to bid for and secure major sporting and cultural events
help drive Scotland’s National Events Strategy, Scotland the Perfect Stage 2024-2035, with partners and align work with VisitScotland’s strategic priorities and goals
maximise and help measure the impact of events in Scotland
manage investments via funding programmes to support public-facing sport and culture events staged in Scotland
delivering event-based industry engagement and development opportunities, including in-person and webinar workshops
delivering events-specific resources, support and knowledge sharing through our business support model

Discover funding opportunities for events on support.visitscotland.org.

Find out more information on Scotland’s National Events Strategy.

Contact our events department.