Assessing the economic impacts of nature based tourism in Scotland

Cruise ship holidays
Visits to nature reserves and
protected areas
Special interest holidays
(volunteering)
Scotland
Scotland
Scotland
Outdoor culture and heritage in which tourists participate can also be nature-based, but
including all of this would overstate the tourism importance of the natural heritage.
3.3 Area coverage
Although the main interest of this study was in establishing impacts within Scotland,
and regions (particularly the Highlands and Islands) where possible, some reports on
particular areas provide results of wider relevance – either because they appear
representative or because an activity is focused in particular parts of Scotland.
Going back before the year 2000 would have provided more evidence for the study,
but the relevance of this to current nature-based tourism would either not be possible
to assess or would be known to be low.
3.4 Activity types, locations and participation requirements
A synopsis of the types of people who participate in particular activities, the main types
of location for these activities, and participant requirements (skills, equipment, support,
etc) is provided as Appendix 1.
Some activities (e.g. wildfowling, sub aqua, ice climbing) would only be carried out by
experienced people – except where training is provided – and these tend to attract
specialist visitors to Scotland. Activities such as mountain biking are available to
anybody who has or hires a bike, and provision can be graded by the user’s
experience or endurance (e.g. by colour or length of trail).
The following sections, 4 – 11, summarise the analysis of the reports identified in Table
1, above.
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