Saturday’s Daily Record travel section to major on Argyll

Saturday’s edition (12th June) of the Daily Record’s travel section (readership 1.3 million) will include a full page promoting Argyll as part of VisitScotland’s new My Scotland campaign.

This campaign targets the Scottish domestic market -  a strategy with very real value this season. There are significant numbers of people aware of the possibility of more ash cloud action from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano and who want to copper-fasten their main annual holiday by going somewhere they can be virtually certain they will get to – and even more importantly, get back home from.

The current strength of the Euro is another pointer to the worth of making forays around Scotland, This country doesn’t in any serious sense have an ugly inch in it. It doesn’t matter where you go, it is breathtaking, varied and full of all sorts of historical resonances, hidden secrets and outdoor activities to calm the most hyperactive and to challenge the most skilled.

The My Scotland campaign launched on 5th June 2010, aimed at stimulating day and overnight visits for residents in Scotland throughout the year. It is building on the Homecoming Scotland 2009 initiative which had 92% awareness among Scots if, because of unfocused marketing, considerably less impact elsewhere.

Just as we now regard the oceans as ‘inner space’ – vast, largely unknown, unvisited, alien to us – our own country, our own area even, is often foreign territory, less known and less explored than we imagine.

We can move inwards to find worlds at least as fascinating and arguably less stressful than those we move outwards to reach.

This Saturday’s feature in the Daily Record is the second in a series that will run until at least the early part of 2011. VisitScoitland’s partnership with the paper will appear under their strapline ‘So close to home’ and there will also be a dedicated microsite supporting the coverage.

The Daily Record is one of the My Scotland partners. The campaign’s development over the summer of 2010 will see a range of other partners involved.

The specific editorial being developed by the Daily Record is in process just now and we do not know its specific focus – but we do understand that Inveraray in Mid Argyll features in it. And we gather that there’s a competition on Page 3. (Now there’s a conundrum.)

The campaign

The My Scotland campaign, which will reach almost 3 million Scots during its run, aims to grow the number of day and overnight trips taken within Scotland by the home market. It is expected to generate £7.5 million for the national economy.

Scotland itself is an important market for Scottish tourism and its potential is growing. Over  40% of trips were taken by Scottish residents last year, with overnight stays from January to June increasing by 6.8% (173,000 trips) compared to the same period in 2008.

My Scotland is the second phase of a major marketing drive which will see VisitScotland invest £5 million across four major campaigns during 2010. Together these are expected to generate at least £100 million for tourism businesses across the country.

Based around feedback from accommodation providers and others whose success depends on strong visitor numbers, the ‘ash rescue’ package included free advertising opportunities on the Perfect Day website and an immediate cash injection of more than £100,000 to help promote Scottish tourism businesses. Almost 1,000 Scottish businesses took advantage of the offer.

This strategy has a lot to commend it. Learning about your own country is the best benchmark for understanding others. It can often open completely new worlds and cultures, relatively close at hand.

A few years ago, in looking at the plans for student placements being put forwards by the emerging University of the Highlands and Islands, our own first response was to query why the target hosts were out of Scotland.

Shetland is as alien to Dunoon as is the Faroes, Iceland or Canada. Thurso, the north coast and the Flow Country is a world apart from anywhere. Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic College on Skye with fabulous student accommodation (which can be rented by visitors – try the penthouse suite in the tower) offers a cultural experience as distant as any imaginable. The lush pleasures of wealthy Perth are a very long way from the Atlantic outpost of Stornoway. And, as the song says, there’s ‘Always Argyll’.

And there is always Argyll

Argyll’s topography and its histories make it a myriad of worlds, cultures and opportunities. How many of them have each of us personally visited?

How many mainland Argyllachs have been to their own county’s islands:

• to see the the seat of the Lords of the Isles at Finlaggan, drink the single malts of the eight distilleries and watch the beach rugby contest at Port Ellen (this Saturday – 12th June 2010?
• to experience the great Victorian neo-gothic extravaganza of Mount Stuart house, to experiencethe current Trilogy of Sounds installation art there for hte summer, or to Eat Bute?
• to watch the sea eagles on Mull or the dolphins off it, to see Tobermory and to thrill at the car rally hoards come to see in October;
• to take a sea trip to the Stevenson’s Skerryvore Lighthouse eleven miles out in the Atlantic off Tiree and said to be the most perfect of all lighthouses, or to hear the corncrakes in Tiree’s Flag Iris beds, or to gasp at the world class Tiree Wave Classic windsurfing contest in October?
• to wander to the castles on Lismore and wind down at its award winning St Moluag’s Heritage centre and bistro?
• or go to a music gig in the amazing hall on Easdale Island and take up residence in the Puffer Bar?

How many Oban folk have crossed the bay to Kerrera, the island that shelters them and that they see, minutes away, every day?

How many Argyll islanders know much about each other’s islands – start with the questions above – or about the Argyll mainland?

Who’s been around the Kilberry peninsula? Who’s done the Cowal Open Studios trail of artists and crafts people’s studios? Who knows the inside road up Kilbrannan Sound from Campbeltown to Claonaig in Kintyre or has been to Knapdale to see the beavers? How many have come to see Scotland’s only preserved traditional and unimproved rural township at Auchindrain in Mid Argyll?

How many came to the Connect Music Festival in Inveraray? Who’s been to the Cowal Games in Dunoon? How many have walked the Arrochar Alps or seen Argyll’s great post’war reservoirs from the first, Glen Sloy on Loch Lomond, to the technologically fabulous hollow mountain at Cruachan on Loch Awe.

How many from Inveraray know Glen Duror, where the Appin Murder of Colin Campbell took place and led to a trial and a false and managed verdict in Inveraray Jail with a gory execution at Ballachulish?

How many people from Cowal know the Argyll west coast – the Loch Melfort Hotel, the Slate Islands and the little road down Glen Lonan to Taynuilt with the awe-inspiring Ironworks at Bonawe?

Who from north Argyll has been to the Rosneath peninsula and to Helensburgh, with its Charles Rennie Mackintosh Hill House?

And there are the experiences and the challenges

• How many Argyllachs have taken any of the plane trips out of Oban airports to the islands?
• Who’s taken the new passenger ferry from Tayvallich on Loch Sween over to Jura?
• Who’s been on a boat trip out to the Corryvreckan whirlpool, one of the most powerful in the world?
• And what about the Loch Lomond Seaplane experience – one of Scotland’s top three visitor attractions? Been there?

How many golfers have set themselves the challenge of golfing Argyll?

How many athletes have done all of Argylls Half marathons?

How many sailors have done the Scottish Series out of Tarbert, the Round Mull Race and West Highland Yachting Week out of Oban? (This may well record the biggest number of positive answers.)

How many of us have walked up the 300 feet of Dunadd Fort in Kilmartin Glen, where modern Scotland began  – and realised from being there why it was such an important and powerful place – and still is?

And we talk reverently about Iona. How many of us have actually been there, seen the Abbey, John Smith’s inspirational headstone and the Bay at the Back of the Island?

These places and experiences are just the start of Argyll’s resources, the most naturally rich place in the UK and the most complex. It’s a full blooded country in its own right. You could spend a manic lifetime and never grasp a fraction of it.

This is just the foreword. There’s so much more – and these are not just for visitors. They’re for us first. And how can we tell others about them if we don’t know what we’re talking about?

This is our own place and most of us know very little of it. The My Scotland campaign should remind us that there are foreign parts not very far away. Let’s go. There is no better place.