STA Activity – December
November has been quite possibly the busiest month of the year for the STA (almost like a second Scottish Tourism Month!) and our team have been out and about the length and breadth of the country attending various events.
On behalf of the Strategy Steering Group, Marc and Karen have been taking the draft strategy out to tourism businesses across Scotland, attending 23 events in the last six weeks to present the strategy and encourage as many people as possible to contribute their views through the online survey. Their efforts have seen around 2,500 people engaged in the development of Scotland’s future tourism strategy.
We held one of our new regional networking events, kindly hosted by Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen last month and welcomed around 50 businesses from Aberdeenshire and the North East to enjoy an early evening reception and learn more about the work of the STA and what we do as the voice of Scotland’s tourism industry.
We were delighted to welcome over 100 guests to our annual Patrons’ and Business Leaders Dinner in November; a thank you to them for their support which enables the STA to be as active as we are in representing the voices of all of our tourism businesses across Scotland. Fiona Hyslop, MSP Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs joined us for the event, acknowledging the work of the STA in her address and also the huge efforts of our tourism industry in delivering a world class tourism product.
The STA co-organised the Cruise Tourism Conference in Aberdeen in November with Cruise Forth; a hugely popular event and one which we can see will grow year on year, not least as next year is of course the Year of Coasts and Waters 2020. There is a huge appetite for delivering world class cruise tourism experiences with many opportunities to capitalise on this in the months ahead.
The STA also contributed to the Scottish Government transient visitor levy consultation and hope that many of you across the industry will have taken the opportunity to feed your views into shaping the legislation what will almost certainly be a detrimental policy for our sector with long term implications for the tourism economy.
We, along with our counterparts at the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, the Scottish Beer and Pub Association and UKHospitality met with Kate Forbes MSP, Minister for Public Finance and Digital Economy in November to raise our concerns regarding the method of calculation of business rates for our sector and will continue our conversations with the Finance Minister in the new year.
And…while we’ve been at home in the Old Town Jail, our communications team have been hard at work to produce a whole new raft of communications exclusively for STA Members which we are very much looking forward to launching in January.
We are absolutely focussed on ensuring that you get the most out of your STA membership so for 2020 we are delighted to bring you the following publications:
- STA Member Toolkit to engage with your MSP
- Making the most of your STA membership brochure
- Getting the most of out your STA Patronage
- The STA Policy Manifesto for the 2021-2025 Scottish Government
- We will also be launching the new STA Blog and a dedicated Members’ Forum
