Connectivity: the role of transport in growing Scotland’s visitor economy

At VisitScotland, we’re committed to driving the visitor economy, growing its value to Scotland - and we recognise a successful tourism and events industry must be underpinned by strong infrastructure, transport and connectivity. To help support this, we work collaboratively with transport partners across many of our activities, to build demand for Scotland, develop memorable experiences for our visitors and grow strategic connectivity.

Building international connectivity is an important focus for us, benefitting not just tourism but wider trade, business and investment too. We want to strengthen our route network, particularly from those markets with capacity for growth now – and into the future. Targeting high-value travellers who will stay for longer develops a more sustainable visitor economy and supports businesses to thrive. 

Last year saw big wins, with the announcement of new and expanded routes from New York Newark, JFK and Toronto which are set to grow our capacity from North America in 2026. Our engagement with target air routes in 2024/5 generated £8.1million in net economic impact. This year, we’ll continue that work with partners in Transport Scotland and Scottish Development International to nurture and develop routes and extend seasonality. 

As well as encouraging both leisure and business tourism in the shoulder season, we also want to encourage longer stays and more sustainable travellers, using insight and data to guide our approach. Globally, 86% of travellers want to travel more sustainably (Booking.com, 2024) and we know around two thirds of international visitors use public transport of some form when visiting Scotland. This presents a real opportunity to promote and encourage visitors to use public transport, while also stimulating demand for Scotland in our key markets.

Over the past year, we’ve delivered fantastic marketing partnerships that tap into these attitudes. A first-of-its-kind campaign with ScotRail in France encouraged train travel in Scotland, leading to a 15% increase in visits to the ScotRail website from people based in France. And encouraging our domestic visitors to travel by rail, campaigns with Caledonian Sleeper, LNER and Avanti West Coast have also delivered results, from millions of people seeing our content to increased rail bookings and stays in Scotland.  

Beyond transport partnerships, our wider marketing activity promotes a slow approach to tourism, inviting visitors to stay longer, travel outside peak seasons and connect deeply with destinations. The latest trends research shows there is growing demand for visitors to ‘give back’ when they go on holiday, with 73% of visitors wanting their spending to benefit locals (Booking.com, 2025). Of course, the many unique community led tourism enterprises we have here in Scotland are well placed to capitalise on this. 

An important feature of our destination development work to maximise the growth of the visitor economy includes our delivery of the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund (RTIF). Since its inception, across seven rounds of RTIF, £24.5 million of grant funding has been awarded to 86 projects across rural Scotland. Investments have included motorhome facilities, increased car parking, EV / Ebike charge points - infrastructure for both visitors and communities.

At the heart of all we do is investing in the activities that will most effectively grow the value of our visitor economy, to deliver for our communities and businesses. For every £1 spent on marketing in 2024/5, we generated £18 for Scotland’s economy. Our combined activity over that period contributed an additional £244 million to Scotland’s economy.

By working collaboratively across sectors, we can strengthen connectivity and support more sustainable travel, ensuring the visitor economy continues to grow and thrive into the future. 

This article is sponsored by VisitScotland.

www.visitscotland.org