Quote Originally Posted by mi16 View Post
....I feel that we turned our backs on tourism as "Caithness didnt need tourists" all the while Orkney and other areas were adapting to embrace the tourist indistry and now have an established industry for the tourist.
Whilst indeed Orkney has becoming very accommodating for the tourists, its not always the "golden goose" that some may like to think. The tourist can be a very fickle creature, especially this far north where they have to be very hardy souls! Add in some economic uncertainty and a 2 week package holiday to Majorca suddenly seems a lot more viable, especially in terms of £/degree centrigrade.

Here in Orkney, we get huge numbers of cruise boat passengers, but very little economic benefit. Sure, the council rakes it in with harbour dues, pilotage and whatever, but various surveys have shown that the actual spend of the tourist once ashore is quite minimal. They have paid for, and take breakfast before leaving the ship, and scuttle back there for their evening meal. As one of many ports on their itinerary, they can maybe afford to buy a small souvenir or trinket in each port, but thats about it. In exchange, the rest of us that are supposed to be reaping the benefit, cannot get moving in town for tourists wandering all over the place, and roads closed to accommodate them.

With regards to some of the money which tourism "injects" into the local economy, a lot of that hardly has time to settle and its off again. Self catering tourists have either stocked up in Tesco on Wick on the way by, or do the same in Tesco in Kirkwall, buying up all the non local produce that Tesco favours, with their money heading straight off to Tesco HQ down south. Sure, a few locals get a wage out of it, but its not a huge return on the headline grabbing figures that tourism is "supposed to be worth".

Those tourists in serviced accommodation paint a similar picture, with many of their catering providers buying in their supplies, again non locally produced, from Tesco or wholesalers.

Now, don't get me wrong - Many tourists do spend locally, and this is a welcome boost. But I wonder what fraction of the "however many millions of pounds the tourist industry is worth to the local economy", flies away back down south without barely touching down here?

Caithness, like Orkney also likely suffers from the biggest bane of the tourism industry here, and thats the very short season. June to August is good, but after that, its all quiet again. Some hotels have even taken to closing in the winter, as its not worth their while to stay open. Of course, that means seasonal only jobs, which get filled by itinerant workers who come to Orkney for the summer, work their socks off for not a lot of money, then head off somewhere else in September to their next job, and to spend the money they made here.

Now, if Caithness could persuade their tourists to come all year round, and to spread their money around the local economy, there there might be a more viable significant industry that will help keep the county going. From memory, I think tourism is supposed to be worth £32m a year to the Orkney economy - With about 21,000 of a population, thats £1,523 for every one of us. Useful, but not exactly enough to sustain us all year round, especially when much of that doesnt stay in Orkney more than a couple of days anyway!