Boosting domestic demand

Keeping Scotland top of mind for UK travellers

Our UK domestic visitors are a core market for Scotland and key to growing the visitor economy.

Making up 71% of all visits to Scotland, this market remains a crucial part of our marketing strategy for 2025 / 2026, promoting Scotland as a must visit, year-round destination, driving regional and seasonal spread.

All our marketing activity is informed by insights. For the domestic market, pressures concerning the cost of living continues, and subsequently the appetite for travel and days out have been impacted by lower forward booking levels.

Looking ahead, our activity will focus on boosting domestic demand – encouraging people to prioritise trips and experiences and ensuring a holiday in Scotland is front of mind throughout the year.

Image: A family enjoys Blair Drummond Safari and Adventure Park. © VisitScotland / Luigi Di Pasquale

Inspiring the domestic market

In strengthening demand for this market, we work closely with the industry to inspire our visitors by ensuring that the right products and experiences, that we know our audiences are seeking, are bookable and discoverable.

We’re also focusing on inspiring visitors to re-visit places where they’ve had a good experience, enjoy nature and being outdoors – a huge strength for us as we have stunning outdoor scenery in abundance. As well as wellbeing and relaxation, connecting with friends and food and drink.

Some of our recent highlights

Partnership activity
- We teamed up with RSPB Scotland and Museums Galleries Scotland. Both campaigns generated inspiring coverage across multiple popular UK newspapers.
- Our STV and Scottish Thistle Awards partnership reached over 1.8 million adults in Scotland, celebrating the very best of Scotland’s tourism and events businesses through a mix of marketing activity.
- Continuing to work with Expedia and Tripadvisor to inspire trips to Scotland and encourage bookings. Our activity with Expedia saw a 22% increase in searches for Scotland on their platform. Both partnerships generated an average return on ad spend of £9.4 for every marketing £1 spent, through flight, room and activity bookings.
- Partnering with LNER and Avanti to encourage residents from London to escape the everyday commute and adventure to Scotland by train. These campaigns involved a wealth of activity centred around a plethora of digital inspiration. As part of the partnership activity, we worked with Refinery29 and Adara to amplify our messaging.
- We teamed up with Sustrans to promote exploring Glasgow by bike, and our Instagram reel highlighting attractions and businesses on the cycling routes, was viewed over 5 million times.
PR and campaign activity
- Our Great Days Out campaign encourages Scots to get out and explore what Scotland has to offer, over spring and summer. This campaign used a mix of activity including working with industry partners and businesses to offer responsible and affordable visitor experiences. Find out more.
- Meeting and engaging with top media contacts in the UK to pitch stories around off-beaten-track locations for summer trips, new products such as the Paisley Museum and Inverness Castle Experience, as well as whetting appetites for shoulder season visits and inspiring articles.
- Highlight coverage has included the Telegraph, Daily Mirror, National Geographic, The Sun, and The Scottish Sun; all priority media to engage with our target audiences in the UK, including Scots.

What’s coming up…

We’ve invested additional funding into marketing to our domestic audience this year – looking at spotlighting lesser-known destinations and spreading the benefits of visiting Scotland at different times of the year.

Marketing to our UK visitors

Days Out

Following on from our popular Days Out campaign, we’ve rolled out our next phase for May and June, promoting great value days out, and summer breaks across Scotland targeting residents living in north England and Scotland. We’re working with Scottish suppliers and rail operators.

This will also be supported by PR and media partners, social media and our email marketing programme.
Publishing partnership activity

Our global marketing team is working with News UK as part of a publishing partnership. This includes online and in-print articles, and travel supplements across various newspapers such as The Times, Sunday Times Travel section, and The Scottish Sun.

Ideas promoting things to see and do across Scotland this summer will also feature across various radio stations.
Social storytelling

This summer we’ll be building a network of storytellers to help share the enriching experiences visitors can have across Scotland’s regions. As well as creating our own in-house content, we’ll also be working with influencers to help bring to life Scotland’s story in an authentic and inspiring way that will resonate with new audiences.

To further amplify this activity for the domestic market we’ll complement this with paid social media posts. Read more on our approach to storytelling. [add link when live]
Planning ahead to autumn and winter

Planning is well underway for activity that will encourage visits across the shoulder seasons – autumn and winter – and into next year. We’ll be working closely with industry to map out these experiences as part of this activity.