Press statement: Scottish Tourism Alliance responds to Chancellor’s Budget and Spending Review announcement

Marc Crothall, Chief Executive of the Scottish Tourism Alliance said:

“The measures outlined by The Chancellor today will be welcomed across many sectors within Scotland’s tourism industry, particularly the move to cut APD on flights between UK airports; the STA has campaigned for the reduction in APD over many years and this marks a hugely positive step forward for the recovery of our travel and aviation sector.

The simplification around alcohol duty and announcement of the new draught relief will give a much-needed boost to our hard-hit supply chain and hospitality sector.  The move to implement a new one year 50% discount on business rates for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors across England, Wales and Northern Ireland offers encouragement that the Scottish Government may follow suit by extending the current business rates discount for the sector and again go further than the UK Government.

Increased funding to the Scottish Government through Barnett Consequentials with £170 million direct funding for Scottish projects through the levelling up fund is also welcome news and we look forward to further detail around that in due course.

There is clear recognition of the fragile state of the tourism and hospitality sectors across the UK in today’s Budget; we would hope that our discussions with the Scottish Government over the coming weeks will shape and influence a similarly positive spending announcement in the coming weeks, with further support being allocated to the sectors within our industry which have been hardest hit and will take longer to recover.

We are however disappointed that there is yet to be a firm commitment to extending the 12.5% VAT rate beyond March 2022; the STA along with our counterparts will continue to press on the issue.”