VisitScotland: Marketing Strategy for a Sustainable Tourism Destination^[1]

VisitScotland is a Non-Departmental Public Body, reporting to the Scottish Government. It is a national organisation with 14 VisitScotland Network Offices and over hundred Tourist Information Offices. VisitScotland, as Scotland's National Tourism Organisation, has a strategic role to develop Scottish tourism in order to get the maximum economic benefit for Scotland. It exists to support the development of the tourism industry in the country and to market Scotland as a quality destination. It does not control the tourism sector in Scotland, nor does it have a direct role in running attractions or accommodations. Rather, VisitScotland seeks to provide leadership and co-ordination for the industry. The core objectives of VisitScotland are to:

Attract visitors by building a successful Scottish tourism brand

Engage and work in partnership with the tourism industry

Enhance the visitor experience

Provide strategic direction to the industry

Produce quality assurance and niche market schemes, including the Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS), to which individual businesses sign up.

To achieve these objectives and others, VisitScotland has identified what people are specifically interested in doing whilst on their visit and, as a result, promote Scotland according to these interests, highlighting events, identifying the best time of the year for these interests and promoting added value offers from relevant tourism businesses. For focus, these interests have been grouped together in what is called Scotland's Product Portfolio:

Active (golf, hill/long walks, climbing, cycling, fishing, water sports, etc.)

Freedom / Touring (touring, gardens, island hopping, wildlife, etc.)

Culture and Heritage (history, traditional culture, performing arts, visual arts, literary, music, film, museums)

Cities (shopping, nightlife, food & drink, etc.)

Business Tourism (conferences, meetings and incentive travel etc.)

VisitScotland has also defined Scotland's key tourism markets and their contributions to the industry in 2007 as follows: (a) UK leisure tourism market including Scots themselves and people visiting friends and relatives - this category generates around 50% of total tourism revenues; (b) Overseas leisure tourism market which generates around 25% of total tourism revenues; and (c) UK and overseas business tourism which generates 25% of total tourism revenues.

Having defined Scotland's product portfolio and its key markets, VisitScotland is targeting and directing its marketing activities at various segments in its three key markets including Youth, Seniors, Families, City-breakers and Business Tourists. Extensive consumer research by VisitScotland across these segments shows that the most important factors for tourists in choice of Scotland as a leisure destination are scenery, natural environment, sightseeing, friendly attitude of local people. The criticisms most commonly mentioned are the weather, exchange rate, quality and cost of transportation and accommodation.

In March 2007, the Scottish Tourism Minister Patricia Ferguson delivered a speech in the beginning of Scottish Tourism Week. She said that "Tourism is one of the leading sectors of our economy. With record investment being pumped into the industry and overseas visitors at an all time high we are already outperforming the rest of the UK. We want to motivate everyone in Scotland, because tourism is everyone's business and this week should help us do that". The chair of VisitScotland said "Scottish Tourism Week is an excellent opportunity to highlight how one of Scotland's largest and most sustainable industries helps support our economy. It is great to see our industry taking the lead in this way. Hundreds of countries are competing for the same visitors and we need to leave people feeling that there is always more to do in Scotland if we want to succeed in growing tourism revenues by 50 per cent in ten years."

Recent trends in the tourism market

From its extensive market research, VisitScotland recognises that the tourism market is changing. It confirms that today's travellers want: customised and flexible travel to a destination; special interest holidays and special experiences; an authentic experience; and good value for money. Other key trends identified are the increasing prevalence of late Internet booking, strong trends towards shorter breaks, and higher awareness and interest in environmentally-friendly tourism destinations. Building on these trends, VisitScotland has undertaken a number of scenario-planning work. This paints a picture of what Scottish tourism market could look like in 2015. This picture suggests that the main opportunities for growth could come from the UK market, along with Europe and North America. Therefore, VisitScotland is committed to Scottish Government ambition to grow tourism in Scotland in a sustainable way, both through its own activities and advice for the tourism industry in Scotland.

In the promotion of the country, a whole new marketing strategy was built to promote Scotland and its product portfolio as a strong brand that reflects what visitors want to buy. This new customer-focus strategy permeates all what VisitScotland does and is most telling feature on the new approach. The brand is built around attributes people associate with Scotland - the brand essence: enduring, dramatic and human - and is captured in UK marketing in a proposition that a visit to Scotland is such a unique and powerful personal experience. The marketing of Scotland is also done on a geographic basis where areas and places have particular resonance with visitors - for example, Loch Lomond, Edinburgh Castle, Loch Ness, The Highlands etc. Most promotion link both geography and products from the portfolio - for example Freedom and Heritage trails. Other marketing activity, using the same brand and product portfolio building blocks, focuses on time of year - for example, Edinburgh Festival during the summer.

This approach to marketing has been successful over the past years in giving Scotland a distinctive voice in the very crowded market. VisitScotland is continuing in doing such marketing activities with a concentration on refining the approach through better understanding of the market, analysis of competition, effective segmentation and CRM. But more importantly is the promotion of Scotland as a sustainable tourism destination, a concept that many other tourism destinations are adopting^[2].

Planning for the future, VisitScotland together with The Scottish Government and other tourism industry partners have outlined an ambition to grow the value of tourism in Scotland by 50% by 2015. However, is this sustainable? Is it sustainable for the Scottish economy, community, and environment?

Sustainable tourism in its purest sense is an industry which attempt to make a low impact on the environment and local culture, while helping to generate income, employment and the conversation of local ecosystems. It is responsible tourism, which is both ecologically and culturally sensitive. Genuinely, sustainable tourism requires that all the benefits and costs, economic, environmental, social, of tourism activities be taken into account in the planning and development process. Sustainable tourism will ensure that Scotland's key tourism assets, natural heritage, and built heritage and communities will survive and thrive. VisitScotland wants for Scotland to be Europe's most sustainable destination. Becoming a sustainable tourism destination will give Scottish tourism businesses a competitive edge by generating greater community support for tourism, achieving cost savings and creating marketing opportunities.

VisitScotland is aware that many of visitors are attracted to Scotland because of the clean, unspoiled environment and diverse wildlife; and this is something that they would like to build on it. If Scotland is to be promoted as Europe's most sustainable tourism destination, there is a need to ensure that tourism growth doesn't result in the degradation of the very environment which is one of Scotland's unique selling points. Therefore and to meet its ambition, VisitScotland does not necessarily need to be creating a lot of additional accommodations or visitor attractions. Instead, they should consider improving the current product portfolio, extending the season beyond the peak months, and ensuring that the whole industry is as green as possible to protect the environment that many of visitors come to see. VisitScotland have to work with tourism businesses to promote sustainable tourism to socially-oriented and environmentally-conscious visitors.

For achieving the growth ambition in a sustainable way, VisitScotland needs to have an integrated marketing strategy bringing the marketing activities of VisitScotland and those of private sector in line behind a common brand concept. In developing such a marketing strategy, there needs to be higher level of awareness of what is happening in the marketplace, of consumer trends, what competitors are doing, and how this intelligence could be used for delivering improved products and service. The whole approach to tourism development in Scotland must be sustainable - economically, socially and environmentally.

As part of the development process, VisitScotland would like to appoint a consultancy team to reassess its current marketing activities, and make suggestions as to how they might develop/advance their marketing strategy to meet the ambition of growing tourism in Scotland by 50% by 2015, and in the main time promoting Scotland as a sustainable tourism destination.

Source: This case was prepared by Essam Ibrahim of the University of Edinburgh as the basis for analysis and class discussion and not to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.

Question:

As part of the development process, VisitScotland like to appoint a consultancy team to reassess it current marketing activities and make suggestions as to how they might develop/advance their marketing strategy to meet the ambition of growing tourism in Scotland by 50%, and in the mean time promoting Scotland as a sustainable tourism destination.