Proud of their reputation as a friendly city, and a city well experienced at hosting major events, Glasgow Life wanted to ensure that the city’s tourism strategy would be contemporary and inclusive, in order for tourism growth to benefit the city’s businesses and residents as widely as possible.
Analyse the city’s tourism performance and identify challenges and major opportunities for tourism development
Review the relevance of the city’s main target markets and suggest optimal markets to target
Understand the opportunities for positioning the city resulting from new major events and attractions
Recommend an optimal governance structure and processes to support public-private collaboration in tourism
Scotland’s biggest city has developed a well-deserved reputation for hosting major events, offering an impressive array of cultural attractions, shopping and nightlife, and welcoming visitors with trademark friendliness.
The city’s authorities were keen to appraise work done so far to develop the city as a major leisure destination, and understand where improvements could be made. We started with a thorough review of all the main performance indicators, supported with interviews with specialists in each of the city’s main product areas (such as culture, music, nightlife and events). Informed by this, and an analysis of Scotland’s national tourism priorities and global benchmarks for Glasgow, we held a series of workshops with businesses from across the city’s tourism sector. We brought everything together in a report which then helped to guide the main stakeholders in jointly deciding the way forward. The result was a refreshed Tourism and Visitor Plan with strategic priorities that were well suited to Glasgow but aligned with national priorities, and a series of recommendations on setting up an optimal tourism governance structure for the city.
Multiple stakeholder workshops and in-depth interviews to identify challenges and opportunities experienced from city’s recent tourism growth.
Development of a new Tourism and Visitor Plan to reflect national priorities and local strengths.
Detailed proposals and national benchmarks put forward to guide the development of a new governance framework.
New KPIs developed to support the transition towards 'volume over value'.
Early recommendations on city’s tourism policy response towards the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are pleased to share the results of our project, demonstrating our commitment to delivering high-quality outcomes:
A refreshed Tourism and Visitor Plan, with local and national tourism development priorities aligned.
New guidance on target markets and positioning, using the city’s main tourism assets.
A new narrative for the role of tourism in the city, reflecting the importance for making it work for local communities.
