I’d like to shamelessly blow the trumpet for a Scottish success story and say hats off to Shetland for the recent accolades given in the National Geographic Traveller magazine. For those of you that missed this story, Shetland was awarded joint third place in a survey of the best unspoilt island against tough global competition .
In an ideal world, I would like to think that the exposure the Islands gained through the BBC Springwatch programme and this recent news came about purely as a result of the work we did on preparing the Shetland Tourism Plan…but I suspect that the hard work put in by people like Linda Coutts and the Economic Development Unit at Shetland Islands Council, Jonathan Wills/Shetland Tourism Association and Andy Steven at VisitShetland might have had something to do with these successes..!
I remember addressing a tourism meeting in Scalloway where (being devil’s advocate) I suggested that making Shetland a ‘hedonistic’ destination might well have the same economic impact as making it a quality destination – given the hedonistic nature of some of the islands at the bottom of National Geographic Traveler’s list, I’m grateful that this (not serious) suggestion was rejected outright!
Anyway, congratulations to Shetland and I would urge readers to visit at any time of the year for an unforgettable experience.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Destination research, Marketing strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.