Nairn Tourism “we don’t have the local promotion people” comments - Rosemary Young fights back

Rosemary Young, chairing the joint meeting of the Community Council meeting last night, was out to set the record straight on local tourism and she fired both barrels in the direction of Michael Green who is reported in the Nairnshire Telegraph this week as saying, among other things:

“I don’t want to be too parochial, but we don’t have the local promotion people that we used to have, but we’ve still got some fabulous asssets”

Rosemary read out a prepared statement, she said:

“Before we move on to tourism I would like to respond in public to the extraordinary article on tourism on page three of the Nairnshire this week. 

To say a void had been made by  the absence of tourism hard hitters from yester year is not only inaccurate but once more denigrates the hard work being done right now here in Nairn

I would point out the following:

1. There is a dedicated band of accommodation providers and food providers  – out there 24/7 with pride and passion and real work ethics.  Owners and their staff  who meet visitors on a daily basis and achieve high standards not always seen in other parts of Scotland or England.  They market their own properties and carry on regardless of what VS do or don’t do to help them.  They have earned the respect of the ‘many’ and countless numbers of visitors who return as repeat guests.

2. These nowadays ‘personalities’ are joined by many more who although they may not know it are component parts of the tourism industry.  Golf Clubs, Sports Clubs, Retail shops, Ceilidh evenings, Music Nairn, Cinema Nairn, Pub entertainers, Pipe Band, Highland dancers, NICE, Rotary and the Nairnshire Challenge,  Beer Festivals, Book and Arts Festivals, Sporting event organisers, Keeping Nairn Colourful, Museums, games Day,  farmers show, the churches, the community and arts centre, the swimming pool,  the wonderful and cheerful chap who cleans our streets and last but not least the actual history of Nairn itself with Dr. Grigor being the first real personality for tourism……

I could go on and on  ….. the butcher, the baker the candlestick maker……

These are the core workforce for real tourism and many of them linking tourism to actually raising money for charity.

 Added to them comes the fantastic website for Nairn - VisitNairn.com with on line booking devised and managed by Iain Fairweather who was also the innovator behind the introduction of the new Nairn Guide and for its enlarged distribution.

All these people and more are indeed the personalities we do need in Nairn who work tirelessly in an austere economic climate and still manage to put on a great show.

The ‘old school personalities’ had a bucket of public money and their only problem was how and where to spend it.  How sad VisitScotland seemed to have admitted that they only react to the big swash buckling personalities.

Well I have a message to VS and that is to sit up and react to the personality of a truly wonderful town with the best beach in Scotland  - Nairn

Well done Nairn and the Nairnites of today  – tourism is here to stay.”

Rosemary received considerable applause. 

Michael Green responded and stated that we have to engage with Visit Scotland as  they  are the people that promote Scotland. He went on:
 ”Now we’ve all got opinions. My opinion about Visit Scotland is well known about how effective a job they do but you need to engage with them. Their Chairman Donald Graham, he said, “tourism is all about personalities”. Basically what he said was that they’ve engaged in years gone by with grants or various funds which we know. That seemed to be missing, the point now is how do we reconnect with Visit Scotland?”

He talked about a meeting with Visit Scotland where “We’ll discuss what we want to discuss because they’ve got resources that we want to get.”

Rosemary then said: “Just before I open this up to everyone, even in those days they didn’t actually do anything for us. It might have been all right swashbuckling around and spending money but they didn’t actually do anything – Visit Scotland themselves and as for people saying people went abroad, I bankrolled all that so all the trade shows and stuff like that – a waste of money, never brought anything much.”

There then followed more debate about the merits of Visit Scotland (more of this later if time permits this week).