Lederer attacks tourism targets and says VisitScotland needs slimming down

Published on Thursday 31 March 2011 16:29

PETER Lederer, the former chairman of tourism body VisitScotland, has attacked "unrealistic" government targets that he claims plagued his tenure at the helm of the quango and said the organisation should be slimmed down further.

Lederer, who is also the chairman of luxury golf resort Gleneagles, admitted the tourism development body's government-imposed target of doubling the size of the industry to achieve a 6.3 billion income by 2015 was merely "aspirational" as it "doesn't control the product".

Revenue growth among Scottish hotels and B&Bs had already stalled in recent years. "VisitScotland is trying to inject some aspiration into all of this but VisitScotland can't grow anything," said Lederer.

"If you really measure what VisitScotland does within the constraints of what it can do, it measures up against the competition and actually the competition look at it as a benchmark."

He added that the organisation was "more streamlined" since he ran it but said "it could be much more streamlined."

Lederer retired as the head of Scotland's tourism quango after nine years ahead of a shake-up under its new chairman, Dr Mike Cantlay, which saw its chief executive Philip Riddle ousted.

A spokeswoman for VisitScotland said that the quango aimed to encourage quality and attract visitors to Scotland through its marketing budget.

She said: "Those are the two areas we influence the growth agenda."

Last week Lederer became chairman of the International Leadership School in Scotland, a post-graduate programme based at Strathclyde Business School aimed at providing top level business skills to managers in the hospitality industry. He also envisages the programme could be applicable across the services industries such as banking.

Lederer said the programme, which will launch with an initial intake of 25 in January, was the "missing bit" of efforts to rejuvenate Scotland's tourism industry.

"This is borne out of how do we make a step change in Scottish tourism, to raise everybody's game. If you want to grow that industry, and having spent a lot of time doing it at VisitScotland, this is the missing bit. Government support is quite good but they can't do anything about it."