Date :
04/09/2015
The world’s leading travel authority, Lonely Planet has released a list of the top 500 places to visit, with 11 Scottish destinations ranking.
Edinburgh Castle, the Isle of Skye and Skara Brae in Orkney are the top three Scottish places in the list of all-time best places to visit. The Ultimate Travel List can be bought on Amazon, with detailed descriptions of places and pictures showing the beauty and attraction of the world’s top destinations.
Edinburgh Castle, which is cared for by Historic Scotland, is Scotland's most-visited paid tourist attraction, with over 1.4 million visitors in 2013. The castle has become a recognisable symbol of both Edinburgh and Scotland, and is unsurprisingly Edinburgh’s most frequently visited attraction - according to the Edinburgh Visitor Survey, more than 70% of leisure visitors to Edinburgh visited the castle.
The Isle of Skye is home to arguably some of the most beautiful and dramatic scenery in Scotland. National Geographic Magazine found it to be the fourth best island in the world, and Skye is also commonly known as one of the most romantic places in the world, with thousands of couples every year choosing to get married among the mountains, the water or the historic castles.
The Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae is the best-preserved group of prehistoric houses in Western Europe. The site is made up of eight clustered houses, and was occupied from roughly 3180 BCE–2500 BCE. Uncovered by a storm in the 1850s, the site presents an incredible picture of life around 5,000 years ago. Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney." It is older than both Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids.
Other Scottish destinations on the list include the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Ben Nevis, Iona, Loch Lomond, Glencoe, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling Castle, Fingal’s Cave of Mull and the Standing Stones of Callanish.
Tourism is big business in Scotland. The Tourism Scotland 2020 strategy outlines ambitious plans to grow tourism revenues by £1bn a year. The future of tourism is in the hands of individual business, to find out more check out Tourism Intelligence Scotland’s 2020 strategy.