Tourism sector concerns voiced
Tourism businesses in Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park are facing losing at least half a billion pounds in lost visitor income, a former area tourist chief has warned.
James Fraser, chair of the Friends of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, has claimed income generated from visitors to the national park – which includes part of St Fillans and Loch Earn – could drop by as much as £500 million in the coming months.
As the anniversary of the first COVID-19 lockdown approaches, Mr Fraser, who was chief executive and chair of the area tourist board for two decades, said there seemed to be no end in sight for the current shutdown of tourism, with travel restrictions of some sort likely to remain in place for some time.
He said thousands of tourism jobs linked to the national park have already gone, with “many more under threat”.
And he added that the lockdowns last year and so far this year have resulted in tourism revenues falling at a staggering rate in the park with more than £300m in losses racked up already and a further £200m in the pipeline, including valuable advance bookings from the important English and overseas markets.
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Scotland, with more than four million visitors a year generating spend of £420m and sustaining more than 6000 jobs directly and indirectly.
Mr Fraser warned the current prolonged lockdown, along with recent Scottish Government ministerial advice not to book Easter or summer holidays, means many tourism businesses in the national park and throughout Scotland continue to be in limbo “clinging on by their fingertips in survival mode” and unable to plan ahead with any certainty.
Mr Fraser said: “Tourism and hospitality businesses are looking into the abyss with fixed costs increasing due to the recent lengthy cold snap and severely depressed levels of income from forward booking deposits, which are normally buoyant at this time of year.
“They are becoming more desperate. “While the various closure and sectoral grant schemes are helpful, they fall well short of monthly fixed overheads, with many businesses having now exhausted their reserves and borrowing more heavily on top of previous borrowings.
“More permanent tourism business closures have taken place and more are inevitable the longer the lockdown continues.
“When businesses eventually do reopen, various trading restrictions are likely still to be in place limiting capacity and trading potential, meaning they could be quite exposed in cashflow terms without more support.”
Mr Fraser believes there has been a massive dip in forward bookings from the important overseas and English markets and there is going to be greater reliance on the Scottish market this year.
Even with an uplift of a third in 2019 compared to 2018, at 7.7 million trips and a value of £1.4 billion, this represented less than 25 per cent of the overall value of tourism to Scotland in 2019.
Friends of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs was established in 1978 and is the only independent conservation and heritage charity working to promote the area covered by the national park.