Travel Massive Edinburgh is Local at Heart

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The Travel Massive Edinburgh community enjoyed a fantastic networking evening on the roof of the Forth View Suite at The George Hotel Edinburgh on Thursday 14 July 2016. Read more

Scotlandhour

Discover Monthly Scottish Twitter Travel Chat Scotlandhour

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The Scottish Twitter travel and tourism chat Scotlandhour was founded in early 2011 by tweeter, avid traveller and proud Glaswegian Dougie Baird.

As well as spawning multiple “hour” chats on Twitter across the world, our monthly #scotlandhour chat has also had some interesting developments of its own including:

  • Being the subject of a motion and debate by MSP’s and the Tourism Minister in the Scottish Parliament
  • Being showcased at Social Media Week Glasgow and to tourism audiences in San Francisco and Iceland
  • Teaming up with #Blogmanay to celebrate Hogmanay in Scotland
  • Joining Twitter forces with the Scottish Government to celebrate St. Andrew’s Day and Robert Burns Day

The Scotlandhour core team has also experienced some changes, with new additions Glen Moyer, and Vivian Maeda joining Dougie Baird, Aileen Lamb, Lesley Judge, Mark Calpin, Fiona Drane and Sam Weston.

How does Scotlandhour work and what is it for? It’s a Twitter travel chat, dedicated exclusively to all things Scottish, and it takes place on the last Wednesday of each month, from 9-10pm GMT/BST. Each month there is a travel theme, and we crowd-source the questions which people can offer via our Twitter feed or Facebook page.

We also invite volunteer co-hosts to help us with the chat on a monthly basis, so for example if our chat is about heritage or food and drink, we’ll look for relevant organisations or those with links to those subjects.

The 6 chat questions are published on the Scotlandhour website one week before the end of the month chat, to let people prepare their answers, images and more.

To take part, prepare your answers, join in the chat, and make sure you tag your answers with #scotlandhour.

Check out the tab of themes and guest co-hosting tips if you’re interested in helping us out.

Follow us on Twitter, check out the Scotlandhour website and join us the last Wednesday of each month at 9pm.

Destination Leaders Programme Summer News

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Destination Leaders Programme Scotland – Summer 2016 Updates

DLP Year 3 Graduate on 19 May 2016

Congratulations to the latest DLP 3 cohort of twenty-one Glasgow and Edinburgh industry professionals, (pictured above) who graduated from the Destination Leaders programme at Edinburgh Napier University on 19 May, with the 2015/2016 intake producing what was agreed to be an excellent round of group projects and presentations. At the time of writing, two DLP Year 3 projects have secured support for further development.

Programme leader Kenneth Wardrop said: “The standard of presentations in DLP 3 was exceptionally high. We were delighted to see a diverse range of collaborative group projects and the combination of Glasgow and Edinburgh professionals has generated valuable debate and partnership working. We are confident that this will have a significant impact on future working relationships between these two great cities.”

DLP Alumni Network Continues to Grow

The DLP alumni network continues to grow, now with 60 professionals having graduated with an Executive Certificate in Destination Leadership from Edinburgh Napier University since the initial DLP programme in 2013. Participating destinations to date have been Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Argyll and the Isles and Glasgow.

DLP Year 4 Applications Open for Aberdeenshire & Tayside

The Destination Leaders programme looks forward to its 2016/2017 intake, recruiting participants from Aberdeenshire and Tayside, and will hold a number of recruitment roadshows in June 2016. Find key dates here.

Read the full DLP newsletter or watch DLP alumni talking about their experience of the programme here.

the women in tourism team

Women in Tourism at Scottish Tourism Week 2016

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Together with my industry colleagues, we were proud to take part in the very first Women In Tourism (WIT) event at Edinburgh’s EICC in partnership with Tourism Society Scotland on Thursday 17 March 2016. Read more

Love Loch Lomond Pack More In

Love Loch Lomond in Unique Collaboration to Attract New Visitors

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A new tourism collaboration designed to boost the number of short breaks taken in Glasgow and Loch Lomond has been awarded £34,000 by VisitScotland.

Destination marketing organisations Love Loch Lomond and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB) have joined forces with ScotRail for a £68,000 marketing campaign, match-funded via the national tourism organisation’s Growth Fund.

Aimed primarily at potential visitors from Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the campaign plans to highlight the close proximity between the urban experiences of Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow, and the beautiful scenery of Loch Lomond.

A key message is the fact that ScotRail operates a regular train service between Glasgow Queen Street and a number of train stations in the Loch Lomond area, including Balloch which has a maximum journey time of 50 minutes.

Marketing activity will also include the creation of a website landing pages and a short film as well as radio, online and press advertisements.

The money will also be used to host press trips and to allow the partners group to attend Travmedia International Media Marketplace in London – a showpiece media event for the travel trade.

Karen Donnelly, Manager at Love Loch Lomond, added: “Love Loch Lomond is delighted to be working in partnership with GCMB and ScotRail on this exciting new Growth Fund project linking the outdoor and urban tourism product. Our focus will be to offer visitors an even greater experience by providing a wider range of activities to participate in by linking the city with the beauty and tranquillity of Loch Lomond, The Trossachs and the Clyde Sea Lochs.”

Elaine Dickie, Senior Marketing Manager at GCMB, said: “GCMB’s role is to create customers for Glasgow and having been named by travel industry bible National Geographic Traveler as one of the 20 best destinations in the world for 2016 we know that awareness of the city, at home and overseas, is strong. Our focus now is to capitalise on that awareness. VisitScotland’s Growth Fund award will allow us to strengthen our existing partnerships with Love Loch Lomond and ScotRail and work more strategically to implement joint marketing activity that will drive increased visitor volume from our target markets over the next 12 months.”

Liz Buchanan, Regional Partnerships Director at VisitScotland, said: “Many people may not realise just how easy it is to get from the urban excitement of Glasgow to the great outdoors of Loch Lomond. The VisitScotland Growth Fund is all about encouraging Scottish tourism businesses to work together and it is great to see GCMB, Love Loch Lomond and ScotRail join forces to promote these two fabulous destinations, both of which offer unique experiences for visitors.”

Alasdair Smart, ScotRail Tourism Manager, said: “We are involved in much more than simply moving people from A to B. This initiative offers a joined-up approach to encouraging visitors to explore what Loch Lomond has to offer, and makes the train part and parcel of the entire experience.”

Find out more about the #packmorein campaign here.