Assessing the economic impacts of nature based tourism in Scotland

Finally we used an approach based on the Visitor Experience survey (Harris, 2008).
This survey has some similarities with the tourism attitude survey mentioned above
(System 3, 2000) and gathered general views and opinions from a cross section of
visitors to Scotland, providing a snapshot of the tourist experience. A total of 1,257
visitors were recruited whilst on holiday in Scotland and a comprehensive telephone
interview was then conducted with 650 of them on their return home. The survey
focused on visitors from England and Wales; Scotland; USA; Spain; Netherlands; and
Sweden.
13.2 Total volume and value of tourism
VisitScotland (2009) gives the following figures for holiday visits to Scotland in 2008
(i.e. excluding business trips, visits to friends and family that are not holidays and visits
for other purposes such as study). Figures for employment and GVA relate to all
tourism, so the proportions that relate to holiday visits is used.
Table 48 - Impacts of holiday tourism in Scotland
Total spend by UK holiday visitors £1,986,000,000
Total spend by overseas visitors £640,000,000
Total holiday visitor spend £2,626,000,000
Total tourism related employment (64.6% of total) • 140,957
Total GVA (64.6% of total) £2,609,840,000
Applying ERM’s 49% proportion for natural heritage-related visits to the reported
2008 GVA would give an updated estimate of £1.287 million for tourism spend,
69,069 tourism related jobs and £1.322 billion GVA equivalent. However, as the 49%
does not include some activities which would be regarded as nature related, this
would be a conservative estimate.
13.3 Tourism outside Edinburgh and Glasgow
The rationale for taking the value of tourism outside Edinburgh and Glasgow as
approximating the value of rural tourism is that, while there is some crossover with
people visiting the countryside while on holiday in the city or having more than one
base for their holiday, Edinburgh and Glasgow are the main city break destinations in
Scotland. Such crossover might be balanced by visitors on a city or urban break to
other parts of Scotland.
The total number of holiday trips to Scotland in 2008 was 9.45 million (VisitScotland,
2009). Edinburgh had 1.44 million holiday visitors from the UK (UKTS, 2009) and
709,000 from overseas (IPS, 2009). Glasgow had 930,000 holiday visitors from the
UK (UKTS, 2009) and 296,000 from overseas (IPS, 2009). Subtracting these gives
6.075 million holiday visitors to Scotland outside Edinburgh and Glasgow, 64.3% of
the overall total.
Figures for UK holiday spend in Edinburgh and Glasgow are available from UKTS
(2009) - £375 million and £230 million respectively. For spend by overseas holiday
visitors it has been necessary to take the appropriate percentage of overall overseas
visitor spend in each city.
• As noted earlier in our report, this tourism-related employment figure applies to specified sectors of
the economy and is not an FTE estimate from visitor spend, which would be much lower.
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