Incase you weren’t already aware, 2009 is the year of the Scottish Homecoming. An events programme celebrating Scotland’s many and great contributions to the world and an SNP initiative designed to boost tourism and retail in Scotland.
Late last year and at the beginning of 2009, much was made of the celebration and the increased tourism and retail revenues for the Scottish tourism industry that would result. According to Philip Riddle, chief executive of VisitScotland, the Homecoming is set to bring £40 million in additional tourism revenue and an additional 100,000 tourists to Scotland this year.
Scotland's Homecoming 2009, but where is everybody?
However, according to a number of Scotland’s largest and most popular hotels, there has yet to be any sign of the expected increases. While it is possible that the current economic climate and recent outbreak of global swine flu could have seriously impacted upon the number of tourists and therefore revenues, with news that The Gathering, the worlds biggest clan gathering and one of the highlight events of the year, is on target to bring in an additional £8 million to the Scottish economy, you would expect some of that to filter through to boost hotel revenues wouldn’t you?
Despite hoteliers claims that they have been proactively advertising for Homecoming accommodation, I have yet to see any real sign of this. Only a handful of popular Scottish hotels (Malmaison, Hotel du Vin and Edinburgh Capital among the few) even appear to have a page or any information about the Homecoming and any offers they are tying in with it. Shockingly, there aren’t any Scottish hotels running Pay Per Click on the term “homecoming” which had 2.25 million searches in March alone according to Google. What’s more shocking is that the only Scottish “business” competing for this term on PPC is a Dunblane artist. This reeks of missed opportunity for the Scottish tourism and retail industries and goes some way to explain perhaps why the tourism industry has yet to see significant benefit from the year long celebrations.
Obviously the current economic climate means that many businesses will be tightening the purse strings, however, with a one-off opportunity like the Homecoming 2009, where half the battle of marketing has and is already being done by the Scottish Parliament, how can Scottish businesses not afford to try and take advantage of the situation?
Given that the Homecoming is celebrating Scotland’s contributions to the world, it’s ingenuity and creative genius of the likes of the bard Robert Burns, the box John Logie Baird, the bacteriologist Alexander Fleming and the tax dodging ba$t… uhm… Sean Connery, it’s a little ironic that Scottish businesses aren’t taking inspiration from this (well not Sir Sean) for their own benefit by using the celebrations as a means to further promote their business on an international stage.
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