Date :
05/11/2013
Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, VisitScotland and a number of Scottish travel businesses are currently taking part in a collaborative travel trade programme of promotional activities across Australia and New Zealand to promote opportunities for Scotland in 2014; such as Homecoming 2014, the Ryder Cup and the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Also participating in the joint mission is Clyde, the official mascot for the XX Commonwealth Games and Glasgow 2014 athlete Gregor Tait, who is both a double Commonwealth Champion and an Olympian, together with Alba Tours, CIE Tours, JAC Travel, the Balmoral Hotel and Loch-Ness based Jacobite Cruises. Jacobite's Managing Director Freda Newton will show off a deconstructed kilt dress in Royal Stewart tartan custom-designed by Highland designer Coca Tenorio at a televised event in Sydney.
A series of media receptions, deskside appointments and travel trade events will take place in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Auckland between the end of October and first week in November.
Worth £100m annually to the national economy, Scotland welcomes around 130,000 visitors from Australia and around a further 20,000 Kiwis who contribute £16m per annum.
With several Australians and New Zealanders claiming Scottish antecedents, Scotland has long been a destination which holds a unique and original appealfor visitors from the Southern hemisphere.
The rise in popularity of genealogy, further inspired by TV programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are, has contributed to an increase in Australian visitors to Scotland keen to follow ancestral footsteps while they experience the Lochs, cities and villages, tartan, battlefield tours, whisky trails, Loch Ness, ancient castles and monuments and Scotland's rich history and heritage.