VisitScotland shake up and pointless media response

Philip Riddle, Visit Scotland’s CEO is going, said to have been dispatched by the new Chair of VisitScotland, Mike Cantlay.

The national media, never happy unless the can find or concoct conflict, are focusing on whether the Scottish Government knew this would happen and whether or not they had a hand in it.

What is infinitely more important is whether it was the right decision – and of course it was. The Scottish national media themselves have been persistently critical of VisitScotland’s pedestrian and unimaginative performance.

Leadership matters. It’s not something we’re generally very good at in the UK but Scotland’s tourism industry is one of the main keys to its economic development. It matters too much to get trapped in faffing around any longer.

We have seen Mike Cantlay in action at the Cowal Tourism Forum and he is decidedly impressive. An independent thinker, radical, analytic, focused, realistic and with a lot of important hands-on experience in Scotland and abroad. He is a good communicator and leaves his words unminced.

He is,without question, VisitScotland’s best chance. He’ll cause a lot of fluttering in the dovecotes and Riddle is unlikely to be the last to go over the side. The agency needs surgical revision and perhaps now it will get it.

Philip Riddle has had a long opportunity to regenerate Scotland’s national tourism body. He has stabilised it but not invigorated it. It is time to let someone else benefit from the stability and drive for growth with new energy and a new agenda.

There is little doubt that Cantlay has an agenda. That’s what he’s there for. If the Sc ottish Government did not know about his plans and did not support them, it would be guilty of negligence, given what has been wasted in well intentioned but failed efforts from VisitScotland.

Let Cantlay get on with it. If he gets it right, Scotland will benefit. If he doesn’t, it’s his head and his reputation in the stocks. The promotion of Scotland will not be any the worse.

Let’s see the major media services think themselves into a 21st century box and start using some judgment to dictate the lines taken in their copy.  We need to see them dealing with issues rather than endlessly cooking up conspiracies just to hot up their output. It’s very stale stuff.