In the wake of the Covid pandemic and Brexit, and with incomes squeezed by the cost of living crisis, in 2023 the tourism industry in Scotland was facing a very challenging time. As Scotland’s national tourism agency, VisitScotland, needed to understand how visitor behaviours were changing to support the industry to meet these challenges. Progressive was commissioned to conduct the Scotland Visitor Survey with the aim of providing VisitScotland and the Scottish tourism industry with insight into why visitors choose Scotland, how they plan and book their trip, what they did when here, and how they rated their holiday experience in Scotland.
Progressive developed a two stage approach to gather the views of both domestic and overseas visitors. Firstly over 11,500 face-to-face interviews conducted were conducted across 135 sampling points covering the whole of Scotland from Shetland and Orkney in the north to the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway in the south. Email addresses were collected to allow the second stage online survey to be sent to respondents. This survey explored a variety of aspects of the visitor experience in detail in order to better understand visitor motivations, attitudes and behaviours. Both surveys were translated into five languages to maximise the response from overseas visitors. A final sample of more than 3,000 online surveys was achieved. As well as the main survey, a series of 25 vox pops interviews were filmed throughout the fieldwork to illustrate visitors’ sentiment about their trip to Scotland – you can see the results on VisitScotland’s website – Scotland Visitor Survey – Domestic & International | VisitScotland.org.
A variety of outputs were produced including raw data and reporting (split into 11 separate topic specific mini reports), as well as 23 tourism factsheets for each of Scotland’s regions. The findings from the study have helped VisitScotland and its partners understand what is particularly important to visitors and has been shared across the tourism industry to help strategic planning both at a national and regional level.
“The team at Progressive managed this complex project very successfully on our behalf. It was a huge logistical challenge to enable robust coverage of all Scotland’s regions and VisitScotland’s key markets. The resulting insight and knowledge will enable us and the Scottish Tourism Industry to fully understand Scotland’s visitor and ultimately enable us to grow the visitor economy in Scotland”.
Jacqui Souter, Senior Marketing Insight Manager, VisitScotland
Q Court, 3 Quality Street
Edinburgh, EH4 5BP
Abbey House, 2-10 Bothwell Street
Glasgow, G2 6NT
