“Sustainability is key strand in the Tourism Scotland 2020 Strategy.”
Sustainable tourism is the form of tourism which is committed in the generation of a minimal impact on the environment and community around, through responsibly actions while also generating revenues and employment for the local community, eventually helping in the overall social structure. Sustainable tourism, alternatively referred to as ecotourism, works with an objective to ensure economic growth and development through tourism, which essentially offers a positive experience for all stakeholders involved, like the local community, tourism industry as well as the tourists.
Tourism holds a special association with both the environment as well as the society of Scotland when compared with various other economic events. This is because of the unique reliance of tourism upon the quality environments, cultural uniqueness, social collaboration, security and welfare. Tourism can either damage, preserve or boost these unique characteristics, with significant consequences to the socio-economic and the overall environment of Scotland.
Tourism, as an industry in Scotland has flourished for more than two centuries now, regardless of the two great wars that shattered the whole world, several economic depressions in various parts of the globe and the incessantly increasing competition, exhibiting incredible pliability and suppleness in comparison to various other industries of the Scottish economy.
The Significance of the Visitor Economy
A robust visitor economy is highly necessary for positioning Scotland on the global platform while the economic impact of the tourist spend expands from being the conventional part of the Scottish tourism industry into various other diverse industry verticals like arts and crafts, food and beverage, cultural undertakings, sports events, retail, and lastly even into several of the core priority industries of the Scottish Government that are deemed as being pivotal for the economic development strategy of Scotland. “The total annual direct and indirect contribution of the visitor economy is £11.6 billion and it supports more than 292,000 jobs.” In successfully accomplishing this pivotal role in the nation’s economic development VisitScotland pushes beyond all of its former boundaries and takes on a practical and pre-emptive role in various fields like air connectivity, skill building at a national level, planning at both the national and local level, which comprises of even the National Tourism Development Framework for Scotland. VisitScotland also has a clear and rational vision for the Scottish Visitor Economy, which is presented in the later parts of this paper.
VisitScotland – Scotland’s National Tourist Organization
Tourism is actually one of the most important drivers of the Scottish economy, as it employs roughly about 200,000 people in 20,000 different types of businesses and also generates more than £4 billion of annual revenue.
Several unique icons of the nation like the various cities, exquisite backdrops, flora and fauna, as well as diverse cultures, among others, need to be safeguarded in order to ensure that tourism accomplishes its potential as the Scottish economy’s foundation for several future generations.
Tourism has a pivotal role to play in the above process, with sustainable tourism being defined by the Scotland tourism as: “Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.”
The Scottish Government Economic Strategy and the Tourism Framework for Change has issued a clear mandate for VisitScotland for driving sustainable tourism within the nation. The Sustainable tourism Strategy 2015 of VisitScotland clearly delineates its rational and proposed strategies for delivering its aspirations in promoting sustainable tourism within Scotland. As part of its efforts for promoting sustainable tourism within the nation, VisitScotland plans to implement various strategies of sustainable tourism, both at the national as well as the local level, all over the nation.
Vision and Objectives of VisitScotland for Sustainable Tourism
The vision of VisitScotland in relation to promoting sustainable tourism within Scotland is its high degree of aspirations in transforming the nation into the most economically, ecologically and socially sustainable tourist destination of Europe.
As an organization, VisitScotland aims to be identified as a pioneer in the development and promotion of sustainable tourism, not only within Scotland alone but also across the European continent and at a global level. VisitScotland also strives for the reduction of the ecological impact, and enhance both the social as well as economic benefits, of the operations of the organization.
Benefits of Sustainable Tourism
There are myriad range of benefits that a nation can derive by promoting sustainable tourism, in case the same is used as a tool by the local communities instead of the massive external interests. Yet, the results of fostering sustainable tourism is regarded as being a direct reflection of the impetus and inspiration that drives the overall efforts of promoting sustainable tourism as a project. As such drivers are often a blend of various aspects, the eventual outcome is also normally a mixed one.
Sustainable tourism – The Practical Reality
Typically, sustainable tourism efforts that are put into practice comprise of several things. A few of them are as follows:
Greener or Sustainable transport
Transport is one of the most important things in relation to tourism. However, it is also something that exerts tremendous degree of pressure upon the natural resources of the nation and eventually contributes to the impact upon the global environmental. Several steps like promoting tourists to rely on public transport instead of choosing private transport, and various innovations in terms of offering cleaner transport options will be of great help.
Periodic and topographical pressures
A more uniform extent of tourists minimizes the degree of pressure on the natural as well as manually built surroundings and locations, as well also upon the local communities, while it also boosts the degree of economic benefits. VisitScotland modifies its marketing campaign for encouraging and welcoming a uniform spread of tourists all through the whole year who visit almost every part of the country. One pertinent example of such marketing efforts of VisitScotland is the Surprise Yourself campaign.
Understanding the impacts
It is important for any nation and its tourist department to get associated with partners for measuring the impacts of tourism, both environmental as well as social, so that they can ensure that sustainable tourism development fosters and offers a constructive and encouraging experience for the local population, various tourist business enterprises as well as also the tourists themselves.
Sustainable choices for accommodation
A sustainable tourism industry is something that all the providers of accommodation reduce their waste, energy and water consumption. “The Green Tourism Business Scheme encourages businesses to reduce their environmental impact.” With more than 800 Scottish members, the above scheme is believed to be one of the largest and unique of its kind in the entire European continent.
Economic benefits to the Scottish Tourism
As it is believed to preserve and uphold the very resources upon which the Scottish tourism relies heavily, adopting a sustainable way of developing tourism is possibly the only way for making sure there is long-term development of tourism in Scotland. Disregarding or overlooking the environmental as well as the social impacts of the tourism development will eventually challenge and destabilize the success of the Scottish tourism industry in the long-run.
It is generally believed that tourists actually benefit a lot from a sustainable outlook to tourism as such a strategy or initiative would pave way for tourists to have better association with the local communities during their visit and stay to the destination, while also offering them a high quality tourism experience as well as a natural as well as manually created environment which is taken care of by both tourists as well as the local communities.
Conclusion
It can thus be concluded that transforming into a sustainable tourist destination will bestow the Scottish tourism businesses with the much needed competitive edge as it eventually creates increased community support for the tourism industry, while also resulting in cost savings and creation of new opportunities for the tourism industry at large.
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