In this guest blog, Aileen Lamb, Tourism Manager, Scottish Enterprise, talks about the activities and impact of the Destination Leaders Programme and a recent learning journey to the city of Amsterdam.
The Destination Leaders Programme – developed by Scottish Enterprise – is a first in Europe and by May 2015 thirty eight individuals will have graduated with an Executive Certificate in Leadership awarded by Edinburgh Napier University.
The second DLP cohort, pictured above, recently spent 48 hours with senior tourism operators in Amsterdam, who shared insights on how they’ve grown their business through collaboration. We learned that our Dutch colleagues are managing peaks in demand from visitors in Amsterdam city centre with smart visitor dispersal plans. The group was keen to hear how Marketing Amsterdam (the destination organisation) has helped simplify to manage a complex range of partners delivering tourism.
Attendees from Edinburgh were pleased that the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG) model for destination collaboration was identified as best practice and something which Amsterdam was learning from.
Some tips which can be applied by our Destination Leaders to help grow tourism here in Scotland included:
- Help your residents be your advocates – “Love your city”.
- The most powerful collaborations are built on a clear business rationale (but a social element often helps open doors too – have a beer together!).
- Use your icons – particularly in far away markets.
- Manage partners expectations – not every partner should equal – it’s ok to say no.
Before the group set sail on a canal tour of the city our group was hosted by ijVenues. This is an impressive, innovative new collaboration which can host 1,900 conference delegates just 5 minutes from the centre of the city.
The partners, 5 star Movenpick hotels; Passenger Terminal Amsterdam and the state owned Bimhuis (one of the world’s Top 10 live music and jazz venues) have significantly increased revenues and sales by delivering an integrated product. The hotel now reports 89% occupancy, much of this from new business tourism guests, and Movenpick will embed this collaborative model across their brand worldwide.
There was a great feeling of optimism amongst our Destination Leaders who have taken their learning on destination leadership and will be putting it into practice in their final projects and within their destinations and tourism developments in Scotland.
DLP participant Annabel Meikle of The Whisky Belle said: “What struck me is the openness of the Dutch people, the openness that they have working together in collaboration with other businesses and not seeing that as a threat. I was struck by the leadership and the trust: that the ability to trust allowed the partners to develop their businesses and so the experience that they could offer visitors was much bigger and much more valuable and enjoyable as a result.”
Aileen Lamb, Tourism Manager, Scottish Enterprise, 23rd March 2015.
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