ABERDEEN and Aberdeenshire are, or should be, a leading UK tourism destination.
I say ‘are’ because the product is there and ‘should be’ because the visitors aren’t.
We have a tendency bordering on an obsession to run our home down.
People believe and proselytise this thinking when actually we have so much to be proud of.
We have 500,000 potential ambassadors here but few are active.
This is not to be all happy clappy about our city centre, we all know there are things that need to be improved and, indeed, they are being improved.
Having limited vision and just looking at UK cities and towns of similar size, Crawley, Swansea, Barnsley, Mansfield, Northampton, Rochdale, Swindon, Luton, Warrington and York are our ‘competitors’.
Of those, only York could be any sort of rival. It’s a city with history and attractions and is surrounded by picturesque countryside. This quick comparison might portray a similar offering ... but it isn’t even close.
We have an airport with connections to almost 50 destinations and connections to every key European hub.
We have 4,000 hotel rooms, two five-star hotels, with another on the way, and another 14 hotels in the pipeline that we are aware of.
York does have York Minster, which is tough to match, a boat trip, five museums, Jorvic, a dungeon and a tower. It has a castle, five notable buildings and three National Trust properties.
However, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire have three cathedrals, 14 castles, five museums, nine Scottish National Trust properties, gardens and buildings of interest, architectural and otherwise, Old Aberdeen, Footdee, a working harbour, harbour cruises, two beautiful rivers, seals, dolphins and puffins, 50 golf courses, 17 distilleries and the whisky trail, Royal Deeside and Balmoral.
This is not to make fun of York. York is a lovely city and it does a number of things better than us.
In 2013, travel and tourism contributed £114billion to the UK’s GDP.
In terms of its direct GDP, travel and tourism is 87% the size of the banking sector in the United Kingdom.
The industry supports 2.5million jobs and represents 8% of the UK’s total employment figure. We have the product and we have a growing market opportunity.
VisitAberdeen is your local destination marketing organisation (DMO). Established in 2012 we are supported by Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeen Inspired, and have a small income stream along with project funding, but we remain small.
Attracting the traditional leisure tourist, and indeed business conferences, to the city in recent times hasn’t been easy.
With constrained hotel capacity, and the consequent high pricing in midweek, the city hasn’t been competitive.
That pointed us to our obvious product - weekend Breaks. We have four target markets: our near neighbours, the Northern Arc, Scandinavia down through Germany and the Netherlands, and any city with a cheap flight.
And lastly, what our business plan calls “any other medium-term opportunity that presents itself”.
For us that currently means China, the potential is huge. A comparison with the US gives some perspective.
Thirty per cent of Americans have a passport but just 5% have crossed an ocean - so our potential market is just 16million. Yet in 2012, 83million Chinese travelled outside of China and by 2014 that number had already risen to 116million. It is predicted that 500million Chinese people will travel abroad by 2030.
And so, what has VisitAberdeen achieved so far?
Primarily, we have focused our efforts on digital marketing as 96% of travellers start their research on the internet.
We are currently 5th most engaged with on social media out of all UK cities. Our is the premier source of information for visitors and potential visitors. Forty thousand people view our site at least once every month - that’s over 1,000 people researching visitor information every day.
In terms of physical evidence, Aberdeen International Airport had a record year in 2013 and, incredibly, added another 8% in 2014, which equates to 450,000 passengers the last two years.
Midweek demand for hotels in the first two months of the year has dropped as oil and gas struggles (-5.5%).
However, against that trend, the focus of VisitAberdeen’s activity, the weekend, has continued to show positive growth (+8.8%).
That increase has been worth about £390,000 of revenue to the hotels alone. If each extra visitor spent just £50 a day on food, drink, shopping and entertainment, that would be another £1.36million a year. And for Norwegian visitors you can put a nought on the end of that £50.
This growth is on top of the 5.7% achieved in 2013 and 2.1% last year. If this year’s rate of growth remains at current levels, that would mean 17.4% growth in weekends over the three years.
As a region, we need to decide whether we want to capitalise on this. The “Oil Capital of Europe” image is never going to cut it with tourists, nor anyone you want to live here.
Aberdeen city and shire has a profile and perception problem with tourists and that isn’t going to be corrected without substantial effort.
The challenge is to compete with other cities and to find a method of funding that allows that to happen.
Across Europe and North America, tourism promotion is funded by either a levy on accommodation or by the public sector.
Currently in Scotland, a “bed tax” is ruled out and the public sector’s ability to fund tourism promotion is being reduced.
We have a year to commit to a way forward. It would be a crying shame if, having got an effective DMO off the ground, it was left hamstrung by under-resourcing.
We have a magnificent and improving product. We have a vast opportunity and it is vital that we take it.
This article is taken from a speech Steve gave to the SCDI earlier this year.