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Article published 25/03/2026

Scotland on show at ITB Berlin

Our Chief Executive, Vicki Miller, led Scotland’s presence at the 60th annual ITB Berlin, the world’s leading travel trade show.  

The three-day event is an important part of our global events calendar, allowing us to build strategic relationships across businesses to business to business, travel media, marketing and transport providers; to understand visitor expectations, and influence how Scotland is positioned in global itineraries.  

To give an idea of the enormity of the event, the venue, Messe Berlin, is one of the world’s major event campuses— and its 190,000 square metres of exhibition space could comfortably accommodate Hampden, Edinburgh Castle and Stirling Castle shoulder‑to‑shoulder. 

Five Scottish tourism businesses joined us within the VisitBritain exhibition area, supporting their ambitions to expand internationally: Atholl Palace Hotel; Visit Inverness Loch Ness; Inverness Castle Experience; ICMI Luxury Collection & Murrayshall Country Estate; Best of Scotland Holidays.  
 

Doing business with tour operators

With over half of international visitors booking through travel companies like tour operators who sell itineraries to visitors, our meetings and relationships with them are vital for delivering sustainable tourism, growing regional and seasonal spread, and increasing economic value. 

Face‑to‑face engagement remains central to our market development work and, building on our successful 2025 Business Development Mission in Frankfurt, we continued engaging with tour operators developing new Scottish product for 2026 and beyond. 

 

Germany is one of our key international markets with visits bolstered in recent years by the popularity of TV series Outlander and the presence of Scotland’s football fans - The Tartan Army – at UEFA Euro 2024.  

Learn about the German market

ITB Berlin travel trade impact

Our team were extremely busy across the three‑day global gathering, delivering more than 80 engagements, including 28 tour operators — four of them brand‑new partners. They sat down with over 40 editors from key consumer and trade titles such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die WELT, and Rheinische Post.  

VisitScotland staff at the exhibition stand (left to right): Keith Campbell, Juliane Frank, Lyn Donnelly, Melanie Telford, Judy Mariens and Lynette McLennan. Credit: VisitScotland

 

Raising Scotland’s profile and influence

Aside from connecting with the tour operators, travel media and transport operators, there were five key activities we took part in: 

  • strategic partner at VisitBritain’s Embassy Reception  
  • hosted our own breakfast networking event, with more than 40 German and international travel industry partners and influential trade publications fvw and TRVL Counter present 
  • Vicki spoke on a sustainability panel discussion at the ITB Convention, with a live audience of over 200 delegates — with more watching online  
  • met with the Austrian National Tourist Office, one of the other leading sustainable and community-focused destinations 
  • joined an exclusive Travalyst breakfast – an organisation to promote sustainable travel with partners like Google, Booking.com, Skyscanner, Tripadvisor and Visa  

Through these sessions, we emphasised our sustainable destination development based on regional and seasonal spread and a value‑over‑volume approach, putting quality of experience — and community benefit at the heart of our approach. 

By the end of the week, our team had achieved far more than just make connections. We demonstrated leadership, ambition, and kick-started future collaboration. 
 

German visits to Scotland between 2014–2024

+176,475

Increased visits

53%

Growth

+£193.5 million

spend increase (before inflation adjustment)

116%

Growth (before inflation adjustment)

Source: Scottish Tourism Observatory 2026

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