Kingsbarns Distillery) • With regards to cost of living crisis, 83% of respondents believe the worst is yet to come Recruitment challenges • 83% of the sector facing challenges with recruiting staff, predominantly, but not exclusively, in front of house roles • To address this, 1 in 3 are planning to further increase wages. 7% planning to increase wages above inflationary rate. • A further 34% are paying national living wage or real living wage • 17% are providing further flexibility with work patterns or rotas • 13% introducing further additional benefits beyond pay, e.g. incentive vouchers, additional holidays, refer a friend bonuses etc • 27% cite lack of access to EU migrant labour as detrimental to business operations Biggest short-term barriers to business • Cost of living crisis and impact on visitor numbers and spend i.e. a fall in consumer confidence • Increasing costs of doing business - for distilleries this is the biggest concern due to its high energy dependency and the slower return of international visitors • Recruitment and retention of staff • Overstretched resources impacting on business operations • Insufficient funding support/inability to access funding Top measures to further aid economic sustainability • Further government intervention to reduce the cost of living for the consumer • Further government intervention to reduce the cost of doing business, with Gordon Morrison reflecting that DRS had come up in many of the responses • Increased funding support/increased opportunity to access funding • Increased national marketing activity/spend targeted at a rest of UK audience • Increased national marketing activity/spend targeted at international visitors 6 In summary he concluded that the key ask of the visitor attractions was ‘help us help ourselves’ and cited the recent Days Out Campaign as a good example (although timing last year was unfortunate due to coinciding with the arrival of the Omicron variant and noted this year’s campaign was not supported by funding from the Scottish Government but was wholly driven by Visit Scotland and ASVA).