A wasted passage to India

Published on Saturday 26 January 2008 15:48

IT'S snowing outside and blowing a gale. I'm writing this while wrapped in a furry blanket drinking hot soup, wishing I was sipping a cold beer somewhere warm and sunny. Like the Caribbean. Or India, like those lucky sods from VisitScotland.

India is, we are told, a significant emerging business tourism market for Scotland so those clever chaps and chappettes at VisitScotland have decided to promote the best small country in the world as the destination for conferences and meetings.

Their plan is to wow the Indian businessman with Scotland's "superlative corporate facilities" and dramatic landscapes, but we're not bringing him here in the depths of winter to visit these facilities and convince him he must do business with us. Hell no, to kick-start the initiative a team from VisitScotland's Business Tourism Unit (BTU) is off on a jolly to sunny Hyderabad and Bangalore. Networking is apparently the main item on their itinerary, but it sounds to me like a cunning plan to escape our wet, cold and miserable country.

I wish I'd thought of it first, at this rate the closest I will ever get to that hot, exotic, bustling country is my local tandoori. So instead of getting jealous, I decided to get informed. I looked at the figures on the VisitScotland website. And then I got green-eyed all over again. You see, to my mind they don't really stack up. Russia is actually a bigger emerging business tourism market than India. And Japan's not far behind. But where would you rather be on a bitterly cold January day? I thought so.

There were a paltry 13,000 visitors from India in 2004. We had 28,000 visitors from Japan in the same year, but VisitScotland's statistics don't anticipate phenomenal growth from this market. Indeed, the report describes the Scottish experience of Japanese visitors as "not encouraging". Now, you don't have to be Carol Vorderman to work out that more than twice as many Japanese visited as Indians. Yet that's not considered to be encouraging, while we're throwing vast sums of money to generate growth from the Indian market? Go figure.

I'd also like to ask what exactly have we got to offer the business market, whether they're from India, Japan or Russia? Well, we've got nice scenery. And golf. VisitScotland says we have fabulous convention centres. And golf. There are apparently centres of excellence across the country. And did we mention that Scotland is the home of golf?

We also have, we are told, warm welcoming people. Sure we have, if you bump into us in Argyll Street, lost, and looking for directions to the links at Carnoustie we're friendly and helpful. But not if you're paying rupees, dollars or yen for a service, oh no, customer service in shops, restaurants and hotels is far from welcoming.

So, let's be generous and assume all our shop assistants, waiters and waitresses get up on the right side of their bed and smile beatifically while delivering exemplary world-class service. And let's also assume that VisitScotland does a great job. All those long hours, drinking, eating and chatting in glorious sunshine, those days and nights apart from their children staying in luxurious hotels have been incredibly worthwhile and thousands upon thousands of Indian businessmen and women decide to descend on Scotland to stage big corporate events in our "excellent conference facilities". How do they actually get here? There are no direct flights from India to Scotland. Not one. Hardly professional is it? Welcoming? I think not.

"Oh, we'd love to have you, please come, we're lovely people, but could you extend your already lengthy journey and go via London or Dubai? You'll shake off your jet lag in no time on our excellent golf courses."

Now while a Dubai stop-off would obviously be my preference (Dubai is a shopping experience I can't wait to repeat) it's hardly making the overall trip to Scotland attractive to the Indian business market.

However hard the BTU team tries to bring home the business tourism bacon, its efforts will, no doubt, pale into insignificance in comparison with those of Gordon Brown who, by fluke or by design was also in India last week. Not for him the networking and glad-handing. Not even the Princess Di pose in front of the Taj Mahal for the press. No, he was straight down to business. A couple of days in talks and a visit to a women's empowerment project later and he announced a potential 10bn in trade deals over the next few years. Beat that VisitScotland!

So, if good ole Gordy Brown can secure a multi-billion-pound trade deal between our two countries in a couple of meetings, why on earth are VisitScotland sending a team of representatives out there to meet a few corporate executives who might bring an exhibition to Scotland? Surely all the real decision-makers would have been at the meeting with Brown? I reckon he could have briefly discussed Scottish business tourism under the AOCB section of his original agenda, ensuring millions of rupees in business tourism, and saved the VisitScotland team a trip.

I have to say, though, that all this talk about money – and its waste – did sit rather uncomfortably with me, knowing that 400 million people in India live on less than $1 a day. Only a tiny proportion of the vast population could actually afford to feed their families, let alone visit Scotland.

But then another India-related article caught my attention and cheered me up no end. It even tamed the green-eyed monster that raged at VisitScotland. Red Button, a team of three students from Glasgow University, is also in India this week, promoting an incredibly clever invention that recycles contaminated water and makes it safe to drink. This innovation, known as Ross (Reverse Osmosis Sanitation System), is simply a wheeled water tank with a filter powered by the movement of the wheels and needs no chemicals.

Simple, effective and far-reaching. Approximately one-sixth of the world's population does not have access to clean, safe drinking water. Now there's Ross. That's far more productive, don't you think, than clinking wine glasses and toasting "potential" business tourism? It's entrepreneurial, it's a sound business with an ethical focus and a huge potential market. It's a business that benefits both Indian and Scottish economies.

Incidentally, a final thought before I finish. The VisitScotland website (www.visitscotland.com) pictures a number of national flags on its homepage, you'll see the usual suspects – the United States, France, Germany – and you'll also see the flags of Russia and China, who we are apparently working hard to entice over here. But, here's the rub; if we are so keen on squeezing tourism rupees out of the Indian market, why isn't the Indian flag given a place beside the others?