Press statement: Tourism industry responds to draft Scottish Budget announcement

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

“Today’s budget announcement sends a clear and stark message to Scotland’s tourism industry that the short-term extension of business rates relief is effectively the one last lifeline of support available.  The cliff edge the Finance Secretary refers to will only be delayed until June 2022 when the impact will be felt hard by businesses across all sectors within our industry.

Whilst smaller businesses with a rateable value of less than £15,000 will be relieved to know that they are exempt from paying rates, businesses that fall into the higher bracket, especially larger businesses, will be underwhelmed, disappointed and finding themselves with even tougher decisions ahead, particularly in this current climate of uncertainty.  Many businesses are already expressing disappointment and shock that the future relief doesn’t match what has been announced by the UK Government.

Given the impact of the pandemic on Scotland’s tourism industry over the past two years, we are of the strong view that today’s budget announcement does not go anywhere near far enough in delivering the level of meaningful, long-term or indeed short-term support required by our tourism businesses to recover.  It will certainly not enable our industry to deliver the successful business activity, entrepreneurship and innovation Ms Forbes refers to as part of a ‘wellbeing economy’.  The reference to the resumption of work around a visitor levy will cause widespread alarm across the industry today.

Tourism is a major economic contributor to Scotland’s public purse; it will be key to moving our country through recovery to a much stronger position.  Many of our businesses continue to operate in survival mode, cash reserves have dwindled and the weeks ahead of the ‘golden season’ which would have been an opportunity for businesses to recoup lost income have certainly lost their sheen due to the arrival of the Omicron variant along with a degree of consumer uncertainty from a public health point of view.

All businesses I have spoken to across all accommodation sectors have experienced widespread cancellations over the past few days resulting in a huge loss of revenue which would have been vital for recovery.  This has also hit the wider hospitality and supply chain, in fact businesses I have spoken to today are considering closing for the next few months as they have neither the reserves, staff nor custom to trade viably.

There is no doubt that financial support will be needed in the coming weeks and an ongoing requirement for the Scottish Government to press hard for greater measures of support for Scotland’s economy from Westminster.

We will continue to work closely with Scotland’s leading business groups to influence policy decisions to give our sector and indeed Scotland’s economy, a much greater chance of long term, sustainable recovery, however for the short-term, we find ourselves very much back in crisis mode.”