The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Connections are key to tourism success
One of the most important reasons our region is well connected is to allow its rich and vibrant tourism sector to grow.
Without suitable infrastructure we risk limiting ourselves in terms of what we can offer visitors and may lose out on vital business to neighbouring areas that are better connected.
With the completion of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR), the construction of the Aberdeen South Harbour under way and the recent upgrades made to Aberdeen International Airport, the north-east is certainly going in the right direction in terms of what we can offer visitors.
But what still needs to be done?
I sat down for a virtual coffee this month with Chris Foy, chief executive at VisitAberdeenshire, to see where improvements still can be made.
He said given the social distancing measures in place as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, tourists coming to the area are looking to travel in their own bubbles within cars.
As a result, for the immediate future there will be less demand on other types of public transport.
Mr Foy said: “In the short term there is uncertainty around public transport. From a visitor perspective what is coming out of surveys by ourselves and others, it seems, is the vast majority of people are looking to travel themselves in their own cars in their own bubbles. That’s very much the preference at the moment.
“Encouragingly, there was a survey called the Scot Travel Index which tries to get under the skin of the Scottish population to see what they want to do in terms of holiday – how people get around and how they want to travel. Quite encouragingly, around two-thirds of their respondents said they are keen to take a holiday in Scotland when they can.
“Part of what they have to look at is how visitors are welcomed and how they should react to local communities and so on, but quite clearly from a transport connectivity point of view, the security of travelling by their own car lends itself quite well for Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
“There is easy access into rural areas and the city. In that respect what we are looking to do for the rest of the summer is to accommodate people who are travelling by car.
“Longer term, when people start to feel more confident in terms of travelling by train and aeroplane or by coach then clearly the issues that were issues before coronavirus will still be there.”
Mr Foy said these include journey times to access the north-east and ensuring the region is on a level playing field with other parts of Scotland.
He said: “Aberdeen Airport has been quite consistent about their call for a level playing field for airport passenger duty (APD) with Inverness, so that’s clearly something that remains a live issue.
“Whether that’s scrapping APD or keeping it, the key thing is around being comparable with Inverness on the trunk routes down to London and other cities when it comes to the tax.
“Rail journey times also remain really important. The journey time from Edinburgh to Aberdeen is the same as from Edinburgh to York and York is 205 miles from Edinburgh.
“There are some structural connectivity issues which, if they were overcome, could make it that much easier to access the region. Currently there are lovely Azuma trains running up from Kings Cross so it would be great to see more people travelling by train from a sustainable travel point of view.”