Elaine Wilson
Policy Support Consultant
Elaine Wilson is an experienced policy, research and communications professional, with extensive knowledge of the Scottish and UK political and policy landscapes.
She joined the Scottish Tourism Alliance team on a freelance basis in August 2022 to lead on developing the organisation’s policy advocacy work, including representing the tourism and hospitality sector by producing consultation responses, pre-Budget submissions, parliamentary evidence, and coordinating industry survey activity.
Elaine has an integral role in identifying and developing strategic policy priorities for the sector, working closely alongside STA’s Policy Working Group, Council, Destination Forum and Board membership. This has included overseeing work on influencing the visitor levy legislation, producing the organisation’s Policy Agenda for 2024-2028, and developing a Public Affairs Strategy that guides STA’s activities in raising awareness of the sector in the run up to the Holyrood elections in 2026.
In recent years, she has also worked with the Open University (OU) in Scotland to conduct a strategic review of its positioning and policy priorities ahead of the last Scottish Parliament elections and continues to support them in evidencing the social and economic impact of access to flexible and open learning, including the benefits of reskilling and upskilling opportunities for businesses.
Elaine previously led V&A Dundee’s evaluation report for the public funders of the £80.11m project, and project managed the economic impact assessment of V&A Dundee pre- and post-opening, which demonstrated its value to the visitor economy at a local, regional and national level.
She also contributed to Dundee’s successful bid to become the UK’s first UNESCO City of Design, analysing community responses crowdsourced for the earlier bid for UK City of Culture 2017.
More information about STA’s policy activities can be found here.