Stay home to save the life of our tourism industry
THE weather may be dreich and the skies dark, but Scotland has now taken another step out of lockdown. The five-mile travel restriction was lifted on Friday, and we are allowed to stay in ‘self-contained’ accommodation such as holiday homes, rental cottages, cabins or static caravans.
It is a much needed restart for a tourism sector which is on its knees. Covid-19 has already robbed owners and operators of a third of the year’s weekend break market and utterly wiped out the Easter holiday season.
But even this limited restart comes with warnings attached.
Distancing rules will affect hotel restaurant and bar capacity and potentially even restrict room occupancy, making it all but impossible to make back in the second half of the year what these businesses have lost in the first.
The difference in lockdown rules between Scotland and England leaves the homegrown sector lagging behind.
South of the Border, the whole accommodation sector – including hotels, guesthouses and B&Bs – was allowed to throw open its doors to visitors yesterday. Scottish counterparts must wait until July 15 in order to do the same.
With the Scottish school holidays already started and many people wanting their children to let off steam and enjoy themselves after the oddest, most destabilising period of restriction in their young lives, who would blame parents for loading up the car and heading straight for the Lake District or Northumberland coast?
I can only imagine the demand at family adventure parks – usually requiring parents to drain their bank account, this year it will probably need them to remortgage as well.
But spare a thought for those closer to home. Scotland relies on its tourism sector for so many things. Already employing nearly a quarter of a million of our countrymen and women, pre-Covid Scotland welcomed more than 15 million people for holidays, weekends away and overnight stays.
Tourism is – or was – a £5 billion industry that helped to leverage a wider spend of more than £10 billion into the Scottish economy.
While those are big numbers, the people behind the numbers matter more.
The family-run hotel welcoming repeat custom every year, or the couple who left office jobs to live the dream of running a Highland guest house.
The remote island communities where renting a self-catering cottage is just one income stream for a family having to wear several hats to keep their finances afloat.
AND that’s before you get to every young person who got their start waitressing during the school holidays or being a chambermaid over the summer while home from university.
The pull of summer sun, a poolside bar and Mediterranean cuisine is never stronger than when it is chucking it down outside. Having not made it abroad for a couple of years, Jen and I were really looking forward to having our first ‘proper’ family holiday with our toddler son – getting the armbands on him and splashing about in the children’s pool.
But we decided a few weeks ago to stick a pin in that this summer and look a little closer to home. All the uncertainty since – over travel restrictions, quarantine rules, ‘air bridges’ and political spats about whether what is allowed in one of the home nations might be barred in another – has vindicated that decision.
I also feel a sense of wanting to do my bit. Growing up, I was lucky enough to enjoy a summer holiday almost every year, with my parents alternating between abroad and home.
I remember the cottage in Cove, the guest house on Arran and static caravan in Argyll (where it was so wet we had to leave a day early as we had no more dry clothes to wear).
They are as much a loved part of my growing up as the French campsite, choppy ferry crossings or blistering Cypriot sun. There are parts of Scotland that rely on tourism. Fiona Thomson, from the Portree and Braes Community Trust, says: ‘On Skye the whole island economy is built around tourism. The effects of having no visitor season would be devastating.’
Of course, we must all be as responsible in our travels as we would be at home – observing social distancing and respecting protocols put in place to keep us safe. But if we can, we should consider supporting our homegrown tourist trade – even if only for a weekend or an overnight stay.
There are a quarter of a million Scots who have never needed our custom more.