Tourism Matters? Well to us it certainly does and this blog was set up to provide a source of both news and opinion to businesses and individuals involved in hospitality and its associated markets across Scotland and beyond.
Who is the "us" above?
The blog belongs to Plan B - a tourism and marketing business based in Ayrshire. The original blog was launched in 2008 but we quietly let it slide a few years ago as we started rebranding. However we kept on finding relevant articles in the blog cropping up all these years later so have decided to resurrect for 2017.
With almost a quarter of a century trading, Plan B remains involved in a range of activities across the length and breadth of Scotland touching several hundred clients in hotels, golf courses, restaurants, tourism and destination organisations and other related sectors such as tour operators and travel providers.
Plan B is also the owner of the bespoke tourism and hospitality focussed Claymore Content Management Solution which is the power behind websites for more than two hundred businesses and destinations large and small. .
In relaunching the blog, we look to maintain the concept we had nine years ago.
Tourism Matters is an independent blog in the sense that we say what we feel about what's going on in the tourism and hospitality sector without fear or favour - sure the site will flag up what some of our clients are up to and investing in but it does, and will increasingly, feature convincing arguments and comments from a wide cross section of contributors but that's half of the fun. If you can't have a good argument with ourselves we wouldn't be Scottish would we?
If you have news that you wish to get our to the rest of the Scottish Hospitality sector we will happily take the information and do the best we can with it. If however the press release includes comments such as "worth x million to the Scottish Tourism economy" or "will create an expected 1500 tourism related posts" or any mention of the phrase "economic impact" we shall reserve the right to parody the piece relentlessly.
If you wish to express your opinions then we will quite happily provide that platform too. You will have to put your name against any articles but we think that's fair.
Tourism Matters is intended to inform generally but holds no claim to be definitive or authoritative. What concerned us all too often in the past was the amount of subjectivity that is being circulated in official press releases dressed as objective analysis. Some of the tourism statistics we are fed on a regular basis are truly shocking. (In our opinion of course!)
There is still little enough open and honest comment on Scottish Tourism in this small country of ours. Perhaps, cynically, driven by too many people being too close to their next public funding support package? There are certainly not enough serious questions asked about tourism statistics, strategies, marketing plans, duplicated public sector spending, education and training or even serious analysis of future markets.
We don't understand why we the tourism sector have to be seen to be agreeing with each other publicly all the time and if that means stirring things up a little is that not what debate should be about. Open and honest discussion rather than always choosing the quiet diplomacy behind closed doors.
So that's how we view Tourism Matters.