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Professor John Robertson OBA
From the Observer, yesterday:
It may not offer a reliable tan, but Scotland has become the place to be this summer – midges and all. The most recent figures on Scottish tourism are from 2023, when almost 4 million international visitors set a new record. And Jill Walker, director of marketing and digital at VisitScotland, says early 2024 figures surpassed this by almost half a million, with anecdotal reports from this summer suggesting no slowdown.
From Daily Business in October 2024:
There were 1,975,000 international visits to Scotland in the first half of 2024, according to the national tourism organisation VisitScotland. This is a 14% increase on the same period the year before, and a 46% increase on the same period in 2019. International tourists are estimated to have spent almost £1.5 billion in the country, an increase of 2% on 2023 and 30% on 2019, after adjusting for inflation. VisitScotland CEO Vicki Miller said: “These figures show that Scotland continues to be a destination of choice for international visitors in 2024 and is still outperforming other parts of the UK.
https://dailybusinessgroup.co.uk/2024/10/surge-in-visitors-sees-scotland-outperform-uk/
Also, from the Observer yesterday:
It used to be a weary trope. Living north of the border, you got mildly irritated hearing about heatwaves and drought down south as rain battered the windows and you lit the wood burner. You saw nothing remarkable in TV weather graphics forecasting 15C in Scotland and 30C in the south-east of England.
As the world burns, could Scotland take on a new role, a Monaco of the future where the scenery is beautiful and rainfall abundant? A sanctuary for better-off climate refugees, inconvenienced by unbearably hot summers, who have the means to escape? I have pondered the question whimsically in the past – now I suspect I might be right.
Some things back up my theory. Sales of Scottish property to foreigners, especially Americans (though they may be fleeing Trump, not climate), are said to be up. I have European friends who’ve relocated here for business; when I apologise for the foul weather, they laugh: after living with temperatures in the high 30s, they adore it. Savills recorded sales above £500,000 rising 21% last quarter, with a growing number of London-based “super-commuters” relocating but maintaining careers in the south.
Meanwhile, National Records of Scotland reports high levels of inward migration swelling the population, which is projected to grow by more than 6% to 5.8 million in the next 25 years. In fact, figures suggest that Scotland, along with Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland, will experience some of the biggest proportional population rises in Europe.
Of course they’re coming. People are moving north, like swallows. It makes sense. If half the world’s 4,000 species are doing it, why wouldn’t humans? Even if we did invent air conditioning.
There’s little reporting of the above trend in the Scottish media in the last month. BBC Scotland has only stuff about the Outlander-effect and too many tourist shops in Edinburgh while the Scotsman suggests the SNP is putting it all at risk by regulating short-term lets in Edinburgh.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
It’s not always and good thing, tourism can be great for a country, but too much can be counter productive, and some cities in Japan and I think Spain or Portugal, are struggling to cope, residents have started to get pretty hacked off with the problems of housing etc.
Air b&b’s should be regulated more, and limited because the city of Edinburgh is awash with them (16k I think!), rents for private lets are waaay beyond what local people can afford, I am looking for a place, and the English run Tory/Lab/Libdem council have all but scrapped access to social housing (‘a difficult decision’) as I have said before, and are instead facilitating ‘mid market rents’ for people with higher incomes! Yep, private companies benefitting from public money once again.
There’s always been ‘too many tourist shops’ in the capital that’s hardly the problem though, it’s the English run council that is the problem wasting public money on shifting the bins and rubbish collections like the deckchairs on the Titanic. I can hardly make head nor tail of what they are proposing re that now, having had even more letters about it, and wasting paper!
It’s getting to be a massive joke on the people of Edinburgh, but of course who the heck is getting the contracts for masses of road and pavements works, and the bins, the freakin on street bins which were replaced recently with new ones and now are to be sold off or ‘recycled’ and why and to who?? I just despair and I’m not the only one.
I welcome tourists, it’s great to meet some from all corners of the globe when out on local walks, but the English run council refuses to impose a tourist tax as well which would bring in a huge sum to pay for their city wide, polluting creating, mostly unneccesary roadworks (while some potholes are massive and could cause terrible accidents imo) and maybe help build some er social housing for the growing population so therefore reduce homlessness etc.
Sorry for my long, local probs rant.
PS, I wonder what English run councils like Edinburgh will do with the money that the SNP have just given them to reduce homelessness?? Hmm..let’s see shall we.
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they do not deserve any.
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