Scotsman editor Alan Young hears from specialist writer Alison Campsie on the proposals to introduce a tourist tax
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TravelTranscript
00:00ALAN YOUNG Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily
00:03Bulletin for Friday. I'm Alan Young, I am editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today by
00:09our specialist writer Alison Campsey to take a look at some of the main headlines. Hi,
00:13Alison.
00:14ALISON CAMPSEY Good morning, how are you?
00:15ALAN YOUNG Good. Happy that it's Friday. Let's have a
00:18look at the front page. And you can see there why Alison is here. We are leading on her
00:25exclusive today which is around plans for a new tourist tax to target both cruise ships
00:33and also potentially motorhomes. That's a hot topic in the Highlands in particular.
00:39I will mention at the top of the page their disappointment for Scotland. Heartbreaking
00:44really after fighting back against Poland to lose 3-2. We dissect the result in today's
00:51edition and also look ahead to the trip to Portugal over the weekend. So, Alison, talk
01:00us through today's story firstly.
01:02ALISON CAMPSEY Hi, so this story I suppose you could say
01:05is perhaps in a long time coming. We know that tourism in Scotland is getting bigger
01:12and we know it's kind of changing as well. And I think that's kind of been witnessed
01:18probably since the pandemic when people started to really get into the idea of getting motorhomes
01:25and getting away and hitting the road and heading to sort of like beautiful places.
01:30But so many people had the same idea. You've kind of now got really big clusters of motorhomes,
01:35particularly in the Highlands and Islands. Understandable to some degree, but it comes
01:41with challenges. So, you've seen this big growth of motorhome use and as well there's
01:47been a big growth in cruise ships coming into Scotland and there's been a lot of economic
01:51development around ports to kind of boost availability of berths and berths for bigger
01:58ships. So, you've seen like expansion on the Isle of Lewis, you've seen expansion at Greenock
02:06and Cruise Scotland has estimated that one million people will come in to Scotland on
02:12a cruise ship this year. So, you're talking about huge amounts of people. Now, with people
02:19generally come problems, particularly when you're talking about people in large amounts.
02:26So, authorities all over Scotland at local and national level, at government level, are
02:32really wondering how to manage this kind of growth in these areas of tourism. So, we have
02:40the so-called tourist tax or the transient visitor levy, which has been passed by Parliament
02:47and that will allow councils to set a percentage charge on overnight stays in Scotland. But
02:54crucially, this levy doesn't apply to most motorhomes or to cruise ship passengers. They
03:00were left out of this legislation and they were left out because it was actually seen
03:04as really difficult to how do you kind of like track a motorhome user who might be going
03:09through several local authority areas and the same with cruise ships as well. They might
03:15stop at Edinburgh before heading up to Cromarty Forest before going to Orkney. So, how do
03:20you manage that? So, the transient visitor levy, which has been passed, as I say, doesn't
03:26apply really, broadly speaking, to motorhomes and cruise ship passengers. So, they're now
03:32looking at bringing in separate legislation to deal with both these groups. And so, there's
03:37a meeting at COSLA today with the 32 local authorities to discuss how a cruise ship levy
03:44and a motorhome user levy might work in practice in Orkney. Yesterday, Mairi Gougeon met with
03:51cruise industry leaders and with politicians to talk specifically about the cruise market.
03:57Orkney, it should be noted, is the most popular destination in Scotland for cruise ship arrivals
04:04and really deals with some massive, massive ships coming in. Interestingly as well, I
04:11thought like Scotland's become more popular in recent times for cruise ships because of
04:17the war in Ukraine, all the Baltic ports have become off limits. So, Scotland has become
04:22very much more attractive as a safe destination. But the pressures on infrastructure, roads,
04:30historic sites caused by these really kind of fast pulses of people coming into ports
04:37has to be tackled. And where do you get the money from? We know public spending is in crisis.
04:42Orkney said its finances are at a breaking point. So, it does see this kind of levy on
04:47cruise ship passengers as being a really important source of income to help pay for the mitigation
04:52measures that are needed from mass tourism. Indeed. It really is a double-edged sword,
04:58I guess, and a balancing act because the last thing any local authorities will want to do
05:03is to drive away tourists because it's so important economically to the highlands in
05:12particular. But that does have to be balanced against the people who live there.
05:19Well, that's it. I mean, every week you're writing and seeing information about communities
05:24who feel really aggrieved that their sort of peaceful, lovely villages where they're very,
05:30very happy are literally being overrun in some cases by motorhome users who perhaps,
05:36and certainly not in all cases, but there's definite recorded instances of motorhome users
05:42not acting respectfully or responsibly when they're visiting these places and perhaps just
05:47don't have the knowledge on how to be a good motorhome visitor. There's various codes and
05:54rules surrounding motorhomes and they're quite sort of disparate. So to bring them together
06:00in sort of easy, accessible information is perhaps something that's not been done
06:06super successfully well, perhaps the messaging hasn't got through the way it should.
06:10And the thing about motorhomes as well, and I'm speaking fairly generally here,
06:15you want to get in your van, you want to hit the road, you don't really want to bother about
06:19anything. You know, you just sort of think, yeah, I've got, you know, my stuff's in the back,
06:24I'm heading north, happy days, but actually with that, there does come quite a bit of responsibility
06:30and I don't know really how much that's filtered through to people.
06:34A really interesting story today, Alison, thanks for talking us through it. You can read it now
06:40at Scotsman.com and in today's paper if you are on the site. Please do keep an eye on it for all
06:48the very latest news and analysis. If you can, do subscribe, then you can read and watch everything
06:54that we do. And if you're out and about today, do pick up a copy of the paper from me and from Alison.
06:59It's bye for now. Bye.