Collaboration is key to Scotland's UNESCO trail success

What is Scotland's UNESCO Trail?

Scotland’s UNESCO trail was launched in October 2021 and was designed specifically to support ambitions to showcase Scotland as a world-leading responsible tourism destination.

At the time of launch, it included all 13 of Scotland’s established UNESCO designated sites. The Flow Country, Perth City of Craft and Folk Art and Isle of Arran Geopark have subsequently been added to the reworked UNESCO Trail which has been embedded on visitscotland.com. The trail includes World Heritage Sites, Biospheres, Global Geoparks and Creative Cities.

The trail has received numerous accolades including a prestigious international award for responsible tourism (‘Tourmag - Césars du Voyage Responsible' Award’, Marseille March 2023), the Santagata Foundation Award and Wanderlust Sustainability Award (both November 2022). 

What were the objectives of Scotland's UNESCO Trail?

The project was led and facilitated by VisitScotland in partnership with the Scottish Government, the UK National Commission for UNESCO, Historic Environment Scotland, NatureScot, the National Trust for Scotland and Scotland’s UNESCO designations. It was the first time UNSECO designations had collaborated on a single project.

The UNESCO Trail Strategic Business Plan, published in 2020, outlined clear objectives for the initiative. A few of the key aims were to:

• encourage collaborative working between designations and the wider tourism sector
• identify sustainable characteristics and opportunities for local businesses to contribute or be involved
• engage industry in Scotland
• engage with and involve local communities

Industry collaboration and the evaluation results

Today (17 July), we have published an evaluation of Scotland’s UNESCO Trail which looks at these strategic objectives. This report demonstrates where the UNESCO Trail has contributed the greatest influence and impact. 

Feedback from partners and designations in the impact report highlighted a strong consensus on the positive impact of collaborative working.

The evaluation report found that the goal of encouraging collaborative working between designations and the wider tourism sector “was fully achieved”.

100% of designations agreed that the trail had "successfully established new and productive working relationships both between sites and across the wider tourism sector".

It was also demonstrated that promoting the trail has improved links and engagement with similar international designations. An example of this is the 'UNESCO Creative Cities Network' (UCCN) which includes a sub-cluster of 71 cities focused on music, established to foster international cooperation and collaboration among cities.

Pictured: King Tuts in Glasgow (UNESCO City of Music). Credit: Glasgow Life / Cameron James Brisbane