Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, 24 Oct 2007

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Official Report 214KB pdf

---

Tourism Industry Inquiry

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the sixth meeting in session 3 of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. I hope that everyone had a splendid recess and feels refreshed for the fray and all of that. My advice is that Gavin Brown will be here later.

After considering the first four items on the agenda, we will—not before 11 am—take evidence from Sir George Mathewson, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Agenda item 1 is our inquiry into the tourism industry. A paper has been circulated that contains clear recommendations on the title, remit, structure and timetable of the inquiry, and which also deals with issues to do with visits and whether we need an adviser for the inquiry. I am happy to take views on how to proceed, but I think that the paper broadly reflects our previous discussions on the matter. Does anyone have any comments?

I felt that in our previous discussion we had come down rather more on the side of narrowing the focus of the inquiry to avoid it spreading into every possible nook and cranny of the tourism sector. I thought that we had inclined towards placing an emphasis on examining two particular barriers to growth—skills and standards—rather than all the barriers. Clearly, if untrammelled, the scope of an inquiry into the tourism industry is potentially enormous. The clerks have set out some options, so I suppose that I am making an early pitch for one of the narrower options. In addition, as presently defined, the remit seems to be extremely broad, so I wonder whether other members share my view that a slightly narrower focus might be helpful in allowing us to identify what we want to examine and what conclusions we can reach.

I am happy to take other views on that but, before I come back to Lewis Macdonald, he might wish to reflect on which areas of consideration he would like to knock out, because that is the only way in which we will achieve a narrower focus.

Does anyone else have a view on the breadth of the inquiry?

I favour an emphasis being placed on standards and skills and training, which have been a huge focus of the debate. My pitch is for the inquiry to deal with skills and training because that is such an important area, which I would like to be high on the agenda.

I am quite content with the proposal that is before us. Without again rehearsing all the arguments about the skills issue and whether it is part and parcel of our remit, I go along with the convener's point that if we were to narrow the scope of the inquiry, we would have to knock out some of the bullet points under the terms of reference. However, we cannot knock out the first bullet point because it is covered by the suggested remit. I am quite content with the direction that it has been proposed that we take. I do not care what we call the inquiry—we have been given a number of snappy titles, but I do not regard that as the most important aspect. The proposed remit is fine, as are the suggested structure and the indicative timetable. I am content with the proposal as it appears in the paper.

There are two broad areas that I would be sorry to see being put on the sidelines. The first is the notion of Scotland's balance of payments on tourism, which is frankly catastrophic for a country that is supposed to be a major tourist magnet. Far more people go abroad than holiday here. The second issue, which has been mentioned previously, is what we do with the long period when Scotland is a very dark land indeed. At the moment, our reaction to it is to wall ourselves up in our houses over Christmas and not do anything at all beyond watch old movies such as "The Great Escape". It would seem to me—the First Minister and I have discussed the issue in a mild way—that we ought to be thinking about expanding the Scottish tourist season to concentrate on the winter. We could have a Scottish advent season during the period when many of our resources are desperately underused.

In fairness, Edinburgh does a fairly good job at hogmanay, around which there is a big festival.

There have been two disasters in the past five years.

The weather is the weather.

We must weather-proof Scotland.

We will not debate that subject right now, but we will have a lively debate on it later.

As David Whitton and Dave Thompson do not wish to pitch in at this point, I will think about how to proceed, unless members have clear ideas about which aspects of the inquiry they want to knock out. What Christopher Harvie has just said about the balance of payments is covered by the first bullet point, which was our starting point for the inquiry—that is what our discussions at the away day proceeded from. If members remember, the evidence and advice that we took that day were strongly focused on that top line.

I take Brian Adam's point about not being bothered about the title of the inquiry. The issue is how many of the five bullet points underneath the main one we want to deal with. I fully accept Marilyn Livingstone's argument that skills and training are part of what we should look at. That was demonstrated at our away day and in the evidence that we took as a committee in September. It is clear that skills and training should be a component of the inquiry. If the committee wants me and our clerking team to refine the remit and terms of reference and to pull them together in a slightly tighter form, we would be happy to do that. I am of the view that although, as Lewis Macdonald says, we should not aim to address all aspects of the tourism industry, the broad areas that are outlined in the paper are those that emerged at our away day and in the evidence that we took at our meeting in the middle of September.

Sure. I was not involved in the away day or the committee's evidence session and I do not want to cut across conclusions that were reached before I joined the committee. However, from the discussion at our most recent meeting, my understanding was that we wanted to have a clear focus on specific areas.

My concern is around the fourth bullet point, which asks what challenges we face and then lists a wide range of issues that we might consider. My concern is that if we have such an open question, we are liable to spend quite a long time coming to a conclusion on which of the challenges we require to focus on, instead of focusing on specific areas. We need a balance between the broad range of potential matters for investigation that are laid out in the fourth bullet point and the idea that, with a slightly clearer focus at the outset, we might be able to come to conclusions more quickly.

That is fair. With the proposed timetable, we must publish terms of reference by the week commencing 5 November, so we need to get on with it. If members agree, I will work with the clerking team in the next week or so to refine the terms of reference, draw them together in a slightly tighter form and then circulate them by e-mail. If anyone is unhappy with the proposal, we will bring it back to the committee for discussion. Are colleagues content to proceed in that way?

Members indicated agreement.

Do colleagues have any views on the three paragraphs on the final page of the paper, which relate to research, fact finding and, particularly, an adviser? Our clerking team is looking for advice from colleagues on whether we wish to have an adviser for the inquiry. We can probably decide on the other two issues as we roll forward. Do members, particularly those who have served on committees and done such pieces of work in the past, have views on whether an adviser is worth the candle or whether we should not recruit that particular service?

We should have an adviser, because we can sometimes get too focused on what we are up to internally. It would be helpful to have someone with a background in the area to give us a little steer, especially when it comes to drafting the report.

I totally agree with Brian Adam—that is the correct approach. I have found having an adviser useful on previous committees.

I certainly share that view and I do not see any member disagreeing, so we will proceed on that basis. We had one excellent candidate at the away day, but I rather suspect that we may run into the David Whitton problem, which is that the rates that are paid may not be attractive to that individual, but there we go. If colleagues are content, we will proceed on that basis.

I have an idea that I want to lay before the committee. I found out about the matter only a fortnight ago. In the middle of July 1919, the first return flight between Scotland and America took place—in fact, it was the first trans-Atlantic flight by the R34 airship. It was a proper event—the airship landed in the middle of New York and a civic reception was held. It was a big deal and not the same as Alcock and Brown pitching up a bit later in an Irish bog. We could do something to mark 90 years of trans-Atlantic air communication, of which Scotland was bang at the front. The airship took off from East Fortune, where we have a stuffed version of Concorde. Such anniversaries are the sort of thing that Americans respond to. They gave the airship a real welcome when it went to New York, with ticker tape and everything. We could look on that as a possible counter to the coming Olympics—we could get our act in first. That is just an idea.

Thank you for that idea—that is something to consider. Are there any other views?

I apologise for being late this morning, convener.

I have one brief point. I have had a couple of meetings on tourism with stakeholders. One idea that arose was that, as part of any inquiry, it would be interesting to speak to key worldwide tourism operators and hoteliers that do not operate in Scotland. We should find out whether there are any big five-star players that do not do anything in Scotland and investigate why they have not considered operating in Scotland and whether they would consider doing so in the future.

That is an eminently sensible idea. I recall that one of the globalscot officials at our Scottish Enterprise day made a similar point—we have kept the details. I absolutely agree with Gavin Brown that it is important to find out why such players are not here.

Excuse my voice, convener, but I have the Dave Thompson throat now.

I will pick up the point that Gavin Brown has just made. If we are going to consider skills, which I am particularly keen for the committee to do, we should consider the Fairmont group, which brings people over to the St Andrews Bay hotel to train them. It would be interesting to have an insight from that group as to why it does that and what training it carries out. We could also find out whether the group hires anybody locally or whether all the workers are incoming and how that benefits the group.

That is a good suggestion and I am sure that we can work it in, too.