Just over a year since we first went into lockdown in Scotland, how is the Scottish population feeling about holidays and tourism in 2021? During 2020, we launched the Scottish Tourism Index and tracked the feelings of the Scottish population through the first lockdown and the initial easing of restrictions. How have things changed one year on?
When COVID-19 lockdown began on 23rd March 2020 in Scotland, little did any of us know how long we would be living under the restrictions of the pandemic. Back in that first lockdown period, we realised that there was a real need for information to help the Scottish tourism industry – how were Scots residents feeling about the prospect of holidays when lockdown restrictions eased, what were their concerns and would they overcome them to take a holiday? If so, where – and would the potential of a Scottish staycation appeal, especially among those more likely to take summer holidays abroad?
We launched the Scottish Tourism Index, and ran the survey across four months of 2020 – firstly in early May, when lockdown was at its toughest, to gauge opinion, then we repeated the survey a month later in early June when our pathway out had been mapped by the Scottish Government. We continued to track opinions and likely behaviours in early July, a week before the official re-opening of Scottish tourism, and then undertook a final wave for 2020 at the end of August. In this wave, we took more of a retrospective – looking back at the holidays that had been taken over the previous 6 weeks, their nature and characteristics, and the extent to which they lived up to expectations.
At that stage, we were hopeful that with possible vaccines on the horizon and case numbers relatively low, we hoped that we might not need to run the Scottish Tourism Index again. However, as we all now know, as we moved into winter, transmissions increased and the emergence of new variants have cause a second major ‘stay at home’ lockdown since the festive period. The vaccination programme does provide grounds for optimism however, and as the restrictions begin to be eased again, we felt it was important to run a fifth wave of the Scottish Tourism Index to see how Scots were feeling about holidays this year.
In this report we examine how Scots feel about travelling and holidays generally, and specifically their intentions for 2021, focusing on their likelihood to take a Scottish staycation. What might it look like, when and where are they considering and what is important to them? We also revisit the potential impacts of incoming tourism on local communities – again, comparing with last year.
The results are presented below from Wave 5, and he headline findings are summarised below:
