Visit Scotland | Alba

Overview

  • With a vast mainland and home to 23 inhabited islands, the scenery and landscape in Argyll & the Isles will take your breath away. From white sandy beaches to outdoor activities and world class whisky distilleries, there is always plenty to do here. 
  • Statistics on the volume and value of visitors to individual regions of Scotland are collated from several national surveys. These include the International Passenger Survey, the Great Britain Tourism Survey and the Great Britain Day Visits Survey.
  • These national surveys were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel restrictions. Prior to the pandemic, three year average figures were produced for individual regions due to some having lower sample sizes on an annual basis.
  • We are currently reviewing the full year 2022 data to establish what is feasible at a regional level. It may be that some regions will require to be amalgamated to produce an indication of regional performance until more data is available.
  • The latest factsheet available is for 2019.

Argyll and the Isles factsheet 2019

Published January 2021

Updated: March 2021. This report provides a summary of statistics on tourism in Argyll and the Isles. It gathers information from a suite of tourism monitors, national statistics and commissioned research.

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In this article:

1. Key statistics

993 thousand

overnight visits

5.5 million

day visits

3.96 million

nights

£443 million

total spend

Figures shown represent tourism performance for Argyll & the Isles, 2017-2019

2. Scotland Visitor Survey 2023

We are currently conducting a visitor survey across Scotland. We are speaking to overnight visitors on the ground in Scotland and then will follow up on their return home so that we get a full picture of their visitor experience.

We will be carrying out the research during 2023 and results will be available in 2024. It will gather insight on motivations for visiting, experiences in Scotland and how visitors have rated aspects of their trip. Where we have a robust sample size we will look at the data at a regional level.

Previous research was conducted in 2015/2016.

Scotland Visitor Survey 2015 and 2016 - Argyll & the Isles summary

Published April 2017

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