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Visit Scotland | Alba

Overview

  • 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 detailed factsheet available is for 2019. Headline statistics for 2022 are available on page.

Highland factsheet 2019

Published December 2020

This report provides a summary of statistics on tourism in the Scottish Highlands. It gathers information from a suite of tourism monitors, national statistics and commissioned research.

1. Key statistics

1.9 million

overnight trips by International visitors and GB residents in 2022

6.6 million

day trips by GB residents in 2022

7.3 million

nights spent in accommodations by International visitors and GB residents in 2022

£1.1 billion

total spend by International visitors and GB residents in 2022

Figures shown represent tourism performance for the Highlands, 2022. Sources: International Passenger Survey, Great Britain Tourism Survey, Great Britain Day Visits Survey, 2022

2. Scotland Visitor Survey 2023

We recently conducted the Scotland Visitor Survey. For this, we spoke to overnight leisure visitors at 135 sampling points across Scotland. The survey gathered insight on

  • motivations for visiting
  • experiences in Scotland
  • how visitors rated aspects of their trip

Where we had a robust sample size we looked at the data at a regional level.

Regional factsheets will be available in spring 2024.

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