Our Year's Activities
Business Tourism Marketing Strategy
We're working with everyone in the industry to grow tourism revenues by 50% by 2015. Tourism is vitally important for Scotland employing over 200,000 people all around the country from urban to rural communities.
Our core function is to help deliver growth by maximising the economic benefits of tourism. To achieve this we operate a highly-effective, innovative marketing strategy and our priority is to market Scotland and its outstanding assets to visitors in all parts of the world.
In recent years we've carried out research into the Scotland brand and we have developed an individual communications strapline for each of our three brands - UK, Business and International. For Business tourism marketing communications we use 'Only in Scotland' which encapsulates our tradition of innovation and hospitality.
Business Tourism on the Increase
In addition to leisure visitors there is an active global market in 'business tourism' hosting conferences and Scotland has developed an excellent reputation as a destination with many and varied venues for these types of corporate events.
The business tourism market has strong potential for growth and it is our ambition to make Scotland one of the world's foremost destinations for corporate conferences, association conventions, meetings and incentive programmes.
Business Tourism Unit
Our Business Tourism Unit (BTU) works with industry partners to make sure that venues and services on offer across Scotland are top of the agenda for those planning business and association events in the UK and overseas. BTU also works with Scottish Development International (SDI) and GlobalScots to encourage business from these overseas contacts. (SDI and Scottish Enterprise manage the relationships between Scottish companies and GlobalScots, a network of over 900 influential business leaders with unrivalled access around the world).
Vital Statistics
Business tourism is already worth more than £900 million a year to the Scottish economy.
- It's a growth market with higher yields than leisure tourism
- It operates all year round with an impact on all of Scotland and a spread of venues nationwide
- It's a key contributor in the industry's vision to achieve a 50% increase in revenues by 2015
In Scotland:
- business tourism accounts for 22% of total tourism spend
- 77% of business tourism spend originates from the UK market. The US (28%) and Germany (6%) are our main overseas markets
- spend by business visitors is 2.5 times higher than that of leisure visitors. Spend on overseas business trips is 1.75 times that of UK business trips
- 27% of all international association conferences held in the UK are hosted by Scotland
- in the UK, Edinburgh and Glasgow are ranked second only to London in the number of International Association meetings the cities host
- Customer satisfaction levels with events held in Scotland, and with the BTU's input, remains high. In an independent survey, 95% of customers said they were quite or very satisfied with their event
