The tourism industry tends to throw up a reasonably large number of surprises. The popularity of Scotland amongst the world’s richest people is precisely one of these. Taking the grim, damp and miserable weather into account, there seems to be no reason to come to Scotland. There is also the fact that Scotland is far from trendy in most people’s books, so just what is the attraction?
The answer to this often-asked question lies in the extreme friendliness of the locals, the fact that the language spoken in Scotland is the most popular in the world, the legend of Scottish whisky and, perhaps most importantly, golf. The sport has been estimated to bring at least L300 million to the Scottish economy on an annual basis.
The natural beauty of the country attracts golfers from all over the world, as Scotland offers highlands, lakes and oceans as background material for its numerous courses. The new course, set to spread over 5 km. of the Atlantic coast is set to improve the current situation in terms of the popularity of golf tourism in Scotland. The estimated cost is around L30 million. However, this seems to be a sound investment, taking the success of other courses into account. Wealthy foreign entrepreneurs, mostly from Australia, see nothing but success for the new course and have started to construct multi-million pound hotel complexes around the course.
The soaring success of the Scottish tourist board has been reflected in Scottish tourism statistics. Last year saw a 12% increase in international visits to 2.7 million and revenue was up ans astonishing 17%, to L1.4 billion. These figures suggest that the new tourists to visit Scotland spend much more money that the regular visitors. Scotland has become an official millionaire playground.
