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Environmental Advisory Forum for Renewable Energy.
VisitScotland's "Concern" Paper.
Tourism is Scotland's most important industry employing over 200,000 (9% of the Scottish workforce) and generating some £4.5B to the Scottish economy. Tourism pays the wages of more people than oil, gas and whisky combined and employs four times more than agriculture and fishing.
Tourism is a key driver of economic activity across Scotland and sustains many small businesses and remote rural and island communities. Tourism cannot however operate in isolation and requires to interact positively with other sectors, e.g. farming, forestry, fishing and aquaculture and relies heavily on a dynamic and vibrant countryside and prosperous rural communities for much of its quality product and infrastructure.
A large majority of visitors to Scotland come because of the landscape, scenery, the wider environment - both natural and cultural - the unspoilt wild countryside and peace and quiet. Primary activities whilst here include walking, cycling, wildlife watching, golfing and visiting historic sites.
The richness and diversity of the Scottish landscape provides the major backdrop to our quality tourism product, with landscape imagery contributing a strong core focus to many of our marketing messages and campaigns. Landscape through tourism is a major economic asset.
VisitScotland supports the development of renewable energy as a fundamental cornerstone in the fight to ameliorate the adverse impacts of climate change. Nonetheless the legitimate interest of tourism both at the national and local level must be factored into the overall renewable energy equation, particularly as that relates to the likely dynamic growth in the development of on-shore wind farms in the short to mid term and the possible adverse cumulative impact.
As the organisation responsible for marketing Scotland both at home and abroad, and in addition providing strategic leadership it would be particularly remiss of VisitScotland not to highlight the above.
Indeed given the ambitious industry target of growing tourism revenue by 50% by 2015 the contribution of tourism to the Scottish economy is given even greater prominence. In addition the Scottish Executive has encouraged VisitScotland to place increasing emphasis on rural tourism.
Further to the above it is important to reiterate two points made at the EAFRE meeting on the 15 th of December 2004.
VisitScotland commissioned consumer (visitor) research on the Impact of Wind Farms on Scottish Tourism, the full results of which are available on scotexchange.net. From a tourism perspective a quarter of visitors say they will not return to an area where they feel a wind farm has been insensitively sited and where it detracts from the scenery which has been the major reason for their visit.
In addition, VisitScotland has absolutely no evidence to support the thesis that wind farms in themselves could become a visitor attraction and would urge caution as to this concept gaining any credence whatsoever.
As Scottish tourism strives to deliver a quality product and enhanced quality of visitor experience in an increasingly competitive international market it is imperative that sectors of economic activity are not treated in isolation but are considered both fully and appropriately in a comparative setting.
In conclusion therefore VisitScotland is firmly of the view that tourism interests, where relevant, should be afforded significant consideration in the siting of windfarm developments.
Neil Black
18 th January 2005