Scotland and Tourism

The Long View, 1700–2015

Alastair J. Durie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317520689
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Tourism has long been important to Scotland. It has become all the more significant as the financial sector has faltered and other mainstays are in apparent long-term decline. Yet there is no assessment of this industry and its place over the long run, no one account of what it has meant to previous generations and continues to mean to the present one, of what led to growth or what indeed has led people of late to look elsewhere.

This book brings together work from many periods and perspectives. It draws on a wide range of source material, academic and non-academic, from local studies and general analyses, visitors' accounts, hotel records, newspaper and journal commentaries, photographs and even cartoons. It reviews arguments over the cultural and economic impact of tourism, and retrieves the experience of the visited, of the host communities as well as the visitors. It questions some of the orthodoxies – that Scott made Scott-land, or that it was charter air flights that pulled the rug from under the mass market – and sheds light on what in the Scottish package appealed, and what did not, and to whom; how provision changed, or failed to change; and what marketing strategies may have achieved. It charts changes in accommodation, from inn to hotel, holiday camp, caravanning and timeshare. The role of transport is a central feature: that of the steamship and the railway in opening up Scotland, and later of motor transport in reshaping patterns of holidaymaking. Throughout there is an emphasis on the comparative: asking what was distinctive about the forms and nature of tourism in Scotland as against competing destinations elsewhere in the UK and Europe. It concludes by reflecting on whether Scotland's past can inform the making and shaping of tourism policy and what cautions history might offer for the future.

This prolific long-term analysis of tourism in Scotland is a must-read for all those interested in tourism history.

1 Introduction

Tourism is now a worldwide industry of major importance to many countries. Amongst these is Scotland, where it has been a staple for a long time and indeed has both outlived and outperformed many of the traditional pillars of the Scottish economy such as shipbuilding or coal. It is a continuing success story, creating and sustaining employment, attracting interest in heritage, generating spend and shaping culture. And one which developed, as this study will show, from a very small base with virtually no government support or even interest. Not until after the Second World War did government start to get increasingly involved in the promotion and development of tourism in Britain.

Where tourism differs from other industries and indeed other leisure activities is that, whereas not many people have worked in coal mining or steel making, nor are sport or music or theatre the enthusiasms of all, virtually everyone has first-hand experience of holidaymaking. Every household has its albums or snaps, cine or video, knick-knacks and souvenirs; every individual their memories, good and bad, of travelling away from home. The destinations may be much more far-flung, and it is remarkable how once remote locations have become commonplace, yet there is a commonality of experience with travellers a century ago; we worry over the same things as them: getting there, the quality of accommodation, what to do and to see.

One of the key problems is to define just what tourism is. When is a traveller a tourist? Are all forms of travel other than that for business some form or another of tourism, whether for pilgrimage or for wine tasting or golf, to visit the seaside or the hills? If the accepted definition nowadays is travel¹ involving at least one night’s stay away from home, does that exclude the day tripper, or the Sunday School or works outing? Usage has changed, and blurred. The term ‘tourism’ used to be confined to those who were on a tour – scenic, literary or cultural – respecting a schedule already defined by cultural fashion, a pre-set agenda as to where to go and what to see. It broadened to include those who were travelling for the sake of their health – les hivernants overwintering on the Riviera at Cannes or Mentone, and sportsmen on the hunt for some quarry to kill – grouse in Scotland, chamois in the Alps or even tigers in India. Many of the traditional types of tourism still flourish, but there are now so many more forms which are either niche or general, for example, dark tourism, even death tourism. Here we will be using a broad-brush definition: tourism is any form of travel for pleasure, but excluded is business tourism.

If tourism is a slippery concept to define, so also are the reasons why people chose to go where. Some of course had no choice in the matter: the destination was chosen for them. Children went with their parents, servants and nannies accompanied their employers, ladies took companions and so on. It is much easier to be clear on the general reasons why tourists came to Scotland. Some arrived with very specific objectives in mind: scientists and botanists to explore the Scottish countryside, sportsmen for deer or grouse. Oxbridge students came north for reading parties.² In his travels Lord Cockburn noticed several such parties, including a group of twenty, with two tutors, spending the summer of 1840 at Inveraray, and others at Oban and Callander.³ Some came for their health, to a spa or hydro hotel, or for a spell at the seaside; others were attracted by scenery or literature. What drew people was often a variety of motives, which overlapped. A spell on the golf course was both sociable and good exercise, if not, depending on how one was playing, always pleasurable. Some were persuaded by advertising or word of mouth, or advised by their doctor. Others were just following in the steps of either people that they knew, or big names: the purchase of Balmoral and the Royal presence there every summer firmly put Deeside on the map. The degree of choice as to where to go and what to do depended on income and free time, but also reflected other variables such as class, age and physical fitness. Of course, some travelled regardless, as was true of Samuel Johnson – sixty-four years old and with a variety of physical problems. Some of the appeal was long-standing, such as the fascination with Walter Scott and those places he had captured in poetry and prose; some pursuits once established had a permanent popularity, as is the case still with grouse-shooting and deer-stalking. But some enthusiasms have been overtaken by time. Few now visit the many Covenanting memorials. The Scottish spas, never very popular, were to fade in the later nineteenth century and others were short-lived or ephemeral, as with the craze for collecting ferns. Places enjoyed a brief popularity, thanks to some literary or other association: there is (or used to be) a weather-beaten sign beside a rickle of stones beside the road at Tweedsmuir, claiming that this was the site of Tilliedlum, a castle to which Scott had referred. But with the decline in Scott’s popularity, who now cares? There was the short-term appeal of exhibitions and ceremonies, of which George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in 1822 was the trailblazer. But as we shall see, part of Scotland’s strength as a tourist destination was the number of strings which it had to its bow, and the ability to continuously add to its portfolio, not all of which are handed down from the Victorian period, such as the Loch Ness monster or the Hogwarts express at Glenfinnan.

What is clear is that tourism, which started as an elite experience, became one shared – with varying degrees of participation – by all levels of society and in every part of Scotland. By the end of the nineteenth century no part of Scotland was untouched. Some places were destinations to which tourists went, others places from which holidaymakers came, and some both source and destination with a crossover: as the visitors arrived so the locals departed, as was true of Edinburgh. Early visitors in Scotland had favoured such destinations as Callander and the Trossachs, Dunkeld and Iona, and these retained their appeal and popularity, but others, thanks to better transport, were later additions to the tourist map. Even the remotest parts saw visitors. Trips to St Kilda at the turn of the twentieth century were advertised with the slogan ‘come and see Britain’s modern primitives’. Locals would turn a profit by selling eggs and tweeds, as would the local post office from the sale of postcards, letters and stamps. Scots were partakers in tourism as visitors and holidaymakers and some were providers of tourist facilities. Least likely to be holiday takers were farmers and farm workers, yet even they might put up visitors and reap some benefit from tourism. Resorts and localities rose, but over time their popularity might falter. Glasgow was in the later eighteenth century an attractive city and worth visiting but became by the twentieth century one only from which to leave. Yet that has changed again.

If the definition of tourism is a problem, even more difficult is to profile it in terms of who went where, and for how long, those basic measures of activity. Government kept no statistics, and no count was ever kept of tourists entering Scotland. Moreover, while local authorities might undertake an occasional count of summer visitors in residence, as at Moffat 1866–1869 and 1872–1878⁴ and North Berwick in August 1918,⁵ there was no way of keeping tabs on the number of day trippers. On the Continent things were different, which gave their resorts more of a profile, but while the Scots were not generally backward in the collection of statistics, tourism was ignored. It was a weakness, or so Thomas Boyd, the editor of the Oban Visitors’ Register, thought in 1891, when he wrote: ‘It is a pity some sort of visitors’ census was not taken annually so as to enable one to form an opinion exactly how matters stand.’⁶ The decennial census might have been helpful, had it been taken in midsummer, as was the case in 1841, but after 1851, with the solitary exception of 1921, it was taken on the last weekend in March or the first in April, when the tourist season had hardly got under way. A few visitors ‘for the sake of their health’ show up at the spas,⁷ but not in any number at the seaside, although the census enumerator for the parish of Dunoon, where the population had risen from 2,416 in March 1831 to 4,211 in June 1841, considered that this was ‘attributable to the influx of about 1,000 persons for the benefit of sea bathing’.⁸ Exceptionally, the 1921 census was taken at the end of June, and showed some striking contrasts with the previous pre-war census in that, for example, Millport’s population had apparently trebled since 1911. But the increase was entirely due to the timing, which took in the arrival of the first summer visitors. While the census is not of much service in establishing levels of tourism, the enumerators’ books do contain a wealth of information about those who served the summer visitors, hotel proprietors and their staff, lodging house owners and the numbers of houses shut up, awaiting the summer arrivals.

Statistics are few and it is very hard to build up a picture of who went where and for how long. Transport agencies, railway and bus companies can help with figures for tickets sold, or receipts for landings at pier heads. But unfortunately such figures tend to be aggregates for all travellers without separately distinguishing tourists and holidaymakers. One can infer, however, that the increase in summer traffic reflects tourism. Newspapers carried estimates of holiday traffic, often generated by calling at the local railway station. But not till post the Second World War did counting become more than guesswork or occasional. There are, however, some indicators of where Victorian and Edwardian tourists were calling or staying. Hotels kept registers and all tourist attractions kept books or albums for visitors to sign; the date of the visit, their name and address were what was required, but sometimes a column for comments was provided, which further spices up their value for present day analysis, as well as being a source of amusement for contemporaries. Reading through the book or books whiled away many an evening before radio or TV. Most have been lost or have disappeared, including, for example, the album of visitors to Iona and Staffa kept at the Sound of Ulva Inn, which is known to have had poetry by Scott. But where they survive, they can be used to build a picture of visitor numbers, where they were from, and indeed why they were on tour. Mr and Mrs Robertson, who signed in at the Atholl Hotel in Dunkeld on 7 June 1836, announced proudly that they were on a ‘honeymoon tour’. The earliest surviving run in Scotland is for New Lanark for the years 1795–1799 with a second series for 1821–1832; the longest is for Abbotsford House from 1832 to the present day. Those for Tibbie Shiels, a fishing inn at St Mary’s Loch, cover with some gaps the period 1866–1922.⁹ Other surviving runs include books for Doune Castle, Heriot’s School and the Glasgow Necropolis, the last a popular attraction of the 1830s – now a form of tourism very much back in vogue – with its own tourist handbook.¹⁰ Sadly not a single register has survived for any of the Scottish hydros, though each and every one will have had them; they served not just to record who was in the hotel, but where left or lost property or mail could be sent. And of course, there was the Sunday register required of hotels and inns for the bona fide traveller. By law, the Forbes Mackenzie Act, drink could be sold on the Sunday only to those who were genuine travellers, on a trip of four miles or more, and the register had to ask therefore not just where a person was from, but where they were travelling to. Every hotel and inn will have had its Sunday register, and yet, as far as is known, that for the Tormaukin Hotel in Glendevon in the late 1930s is a unique survivor of the many thousands that there once were. Its Sunday visitors came from round and about, for a Sunday drive – and a drink. The Tormaukin Hotel register also has a column for time of arrival, mostly ignored, but one party from Dunfermline in June 1938 had no qualms about signing themselves in at 11.45 a.m.

Hotel registers are still part of present day life, and for B & Bs, and to be found open in many churches and great houses, though the turnstile has taken over at most attractions. There was another nineteenth-century source of information about where people were staying, the lists of visitors which were published in the local press, a genre which faded away after the First World War. The practice seems to have originated at spa resorts in England, such as Harrogate, as a kind of social register. The first that we have for Scotland are for Peterhead in the late 1770s, Peterhead at that time being a fashionable cure centre. These lists became a staple of the local newspaper in the nineteenth century, published on a weekly basis, sometimes as a freestanding supplement, as at Oban. Lists can found for Elie, Gullane, North Berwick, Pitlochry and Peebles, and indeed wherever there was a community of summer residenters staying in local villas, cottages and lodgings. These lists, however, took no account of day trippers and weekenders. Nor were hotels always willing to participate by supplying lists of their guests, but some did, and a few went beyond the basics of who from where. The Union Hotel at Inverness supplied the local paper with a list of arrivals and what their agenda was, whether making a tour, on their way north or south, on a fishing or botanical excursion, or en route to shooting quarters.¹¹ But the lists of visitors, when systematically analysed, do show the scale of this constituency of steady respectable summer visitors. The Badenoch Herald’s Strathspey Supplement for 18 July 1891 carried details of all the families staying in and around Grantown-on Spey, but also of those in the area at Advie, Aviemore, Dulnairn and Boat of Garten; the last had seven families, all from central Scotland And they also show how families came back year after year to the same locality. They played a considerable part in the summer life of such areas, playing sport, supporting the local bazaars, and attending church.

Other sources of information about holidaymaking, tourism and visitor experience are many. One of the greatest resources that the Scottish historian enjoys, as against his counterparts elsewhere in the UK, are the Statistical Accounts of Scotland. This is a parish-by-parish survey, each account being generally written by the local minister, with the First or Old Statistical Account published in the 1790s. The organising editor and driving force behind this scheme, Sir John Sinclair, had sent out in May 1790 a template as to what topics could be covered. It included no explicit question on tourism, although there was one on whether spa waters were present. Those compilers who did refer to tourism did so somewhat guiltily as they seem to have felt that they were straying from the task set them. The Rev. Fraser did draw attention to the recent increase in the number of travellers who had viewed the pleasure ground at Inveraray Castle: ‘This perhaps may not be considered as strictly analogous to the statistical account of the parish: at the same time, it would have been unpardonable to have passed over in silence, a place which is so deservedly an object of curiosity to travellers of all ranks’.¹² As we shall see, there are gleanings from this source to be had on the rise of visitors to particular localities, the arrival of sea bathing and spa regimes. This remarkable enterprise was run again for Scotland in the 1830s in the Second or New Statistical Account, in which tourism featured quite prominently. That the coming of the steamboat had open...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Tourism reaches Scotland
• 3. Tourism and transport
• 4. Forms of tourism
• 5. Distinctive features of Scottish tourism
• 6. Growth and fluctuations
• 7. The balance sheet in economic and cultural terms
• 8. The past and the future: tourism since 1945
• Bibliography
• Index