Skye: Up to one million people destined for island amid calls for 'radical thinking' on tourism

Record breaking numbers are predicted to arrive in Skye year just as public money spent on balancing the influx of visitors with the protection of the island’s environment and people has run out.

Over the Skye Bridge they come more rapidly, the tourists who make the island the second most popular destination in Scotland, after Edinburgh. This year, for the first time, it is predicted that up to one million people could visit.

Its popularity, driven in part by its otherworldly landscapes and the ease of access for visitors wanting a quick island fix, continues to boom over the realities of Skye life, where workers can’t find affordable homes and some schools don’t have enough pupils to stay open.

Locals, now used to road congestion and slower commutes that begin around the time the clocks change, are preparing for the annual switch from everyday island life to life on a tourist island.

Up to one million visitors are expected to arrive in Skye this tourist season with the "astounding" volume of tourists due as key funding to protect communities and the environment against mass tourism on an island with a population of around 13,000 people comes to an end. PIC: (Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Some feel tourism is now year-round business, with little respite on offer. There are just 13,000 people who permanently live on Skye and during August last year, the same number of vehicle movements were recorded on the bridge on a single day as the number of those passing through ballooned.

At Croft 4 holiday cottages near Broadford, Josephine Beavitt is preparing to welcome a solid run of visitors in the early part of the season to her two properties, which also host wellness, meditation and yoga retreats. She described the predicted one million figure as “astounding”.

While there is optimism and a readiness to welcome, there is also deep concern for the sustainability of Skye as a visitor destination as two key funding streams to support tourist destinations such as Skye in the wake of Covid come to an end.

Skye Bridge at Isle of Skye - Scotland

There is now a “vital need” for some long-term planning to sustain the island as a tourist destination while protecting the fragile natural environment and the needs of the local community, Ms Beavitt said.

She said: "We are potentially due to reach close to a million visitors on Skye this season. The figure is astounding and without support on addressing the issues SME’s face day-to-day, I believe this could have an effect on some tourists holiday experience.”

Skye Connect, which made the visitor number prediction, is one of 10 destination management groups who shared £3.05m of funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise to help the tourism sector recover from the impact of the pandemic. As well as gathering data to create tourist strategies, it launched an app to give visitors real-time information on congestion and re-route trips away from busy areas. It also argued that income from a proposed government visitor levy generated on Skye should stay on Skye.

Another fund set up to deal with the surge of staycations prompted by the health pandemic has also come to an end. Sixty access rangers were across Scotland hired to deal with high levels of people heading to the countryside and the associated issues surrounding campervans, campfires and outdoor toilets. In Skye, the rangers helped at key pulse points such as the Fairy Pools and the Quiraing, which are among the most crowded sites on the island.

Matthew Jackson, of Sonas hotel group, which runs three hotels on Skye and recently opened a fourth in Oban, said more "radical thinking" was needed on tourism in Skye and across Scotland at large. PIC: Contributed.

Meanwhile, the Rural Tourism Infrastructure Fund has yet to announce its awards for 2024/2025.. On Skye, this helped pay for a car park and toilets at Blà Bheinn, one of the most spectacular and accessible mountains in the Cuillins. Essential footpath improvements at the Old Man of Storr on the Trotternish Ridge, where nearly a quarter of million visitors tread last year, were also funded.

While the funding streams have ended, there are now serious questions being asked about the long-term plan for rural tourist destinations. On Skye, a key figure in tourism management said there was a feeling of “abandonment” as money disappears - but tourists keep coming.

Meanwhile, Alistair Danter, of Edinbane in the north of the island, juggles his time between running his self catering accommodation in Skye and serving as a project manager at Skye Connect. He said there were now “plenty” of visitors on Skye and that bookings were “as strong as ever”.

Josephine Beavitt, of Croft 4 self catering cottages near Broadford, said the predicted visitor numbers were "astounding" at a time of many challenges for the island. PIC: Contributed

Speaking on behalf of Skye Connect, he added: “While that is good for business in certain terms, the destination itself is under pressure and the fact that there are so many public sector cuts, well there is not a barrel to scrape anymore. It is that bad

“Those public sector cuts will come at a price for the asset – which is Skye – the environment, and local communities. On Skye, the ranger service has been cut with the exception with the Old Man of Storr."

The ranger service, in place since 2020, was last year funded by £900,000 of Scottish Government money put through Nature Scot. No funding is available this year due to “difficult decisions” surrounding budgets. Skye Connect earlier said the loss of funding could lead to an “environmental disaster”on the island with with no-one responsible for the day to day management of Scotland’s second most popular visitor destination.

Mr Danter added: "The very fact that you had badged-up people in vehicles marked with ‘Highland Council ranger service’ made a big difference. It is like having a big event, say a festival, and both the organisers and the people present have a certain degree of security because they see someone in a hi-vis vest. That is gone and that is stressful.”

He added there was a constant “playing catch-up” with the impact of visitors as new beauty spots and areas of interest are discovered.

"Suddenly, dinosaur footprints are discovered and then an area that nobody went to suddenly becomes very popular,” he added.

Funding to assist visitors and improve infrastructure on Skye has come to an end with calls for a long-term plan for tourism. PIC: Peter Summers/Getty Images)

More funding to deal with visitor management could have been available if Skye and Raasay gone for National Park status, but the associated high tourist numbers was the reason that most people said they didn’t want to proceed, Mr Danter said.

Matthew Jackson is the group operations manager at the Sonas Group, a family-run company which owns three hotels on Skye and just opened a fourth in Oban.

He said it was now time for a national strategy for tourism which would help Skye balance the increase in visitor numbers with the people who live in Skye, those who service the tourism industry and “more importantly, those who don’t service the industry”.

He said a visit to Iceland had shown a more radical approach to building capacity in infrastructure that benefited tourists while protecting the roads and environment.

Mr Jackson said: “Skye has a main route that runs through, it has a ring route but everything off that is a single track road and that is looked after by Highland Council. The road network was meant for a population of 10,000 to 12,000 and it has been budgeted accordingly for that.

"But the last statistic was 900,000 vehicles crossing the bridge last year. I wouldn’t say we are being overwhelmed but you have the silent majority of residents on Skye, who work on the islands but who are not connected to tourism, having these challenges, such as getting to work and then getting home at night. Then, there is just the sheer fatigue of our road system. It is tarmac over peat bogs. It was never designed for this sort of volume. Car repair is very high.

“There is a lot of huffing and puffing about campervans and there are a lot of different views about them. But it is true that most of them are European sized and our roads aren’t wide enough. You see them all come onto the island with their mirrors on and then all going off the island without a mirror on.

“Skye functioned really rather well before all this. You had a traditional mentality where people would do a bit of crofting or have a second job,

"There was that kind of community spirit where everybody helped everyone out

"You now have the entrepreneurs and the opportunists within our community who is maximising on the influx of tourists.

"Now the question is how do we preserve Skye, how do we look after this natural resource?”

Mr Jackson said that “radically different” thinking on Skye was now needed.

"One of my thoughts is you just put massive car parks, you ban any vehicle over a certain size and you create a shuttle service for folk. They do this in Iceland . There are bus services to all the beauty spots to reduce congestion. Why couldn't we make that work on Skye? You increase public transport on Skye and that might benefit local people that aren’t involved in the tourist industry. There could be multiple benefits.

“If you build a car park, there is a food van that turns up and then there are toilets. So businesses build up about these hubs, so that is future proofing for other folk.”

A summit was held in Portree on Wednesday to discuss the economic resilience of the West Coast, with addresses from speakers including Derek Brown the leader of Highland Council and Alistair Dodds, chair of Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

Mr Jackson said people were “fed up” of the view there was no public money for investment, but that funding was available elsewehere.

“People are really getting fed up of this sort of rhetoric. Why is it always left to a community council or a community organisation that have volunteers trying to make their part of the world that little bit better?”

Frazer Coupland, chair of Lochaber Chamber of Commerce, who organised the summit, has written to the Westminster government outlining “strong calls” for a UK minister for Highlands and Islands made by delegates.

Mr Jackson supported such a figure in order to support and focus economic development.

Mr Jackson added: “Within these organisations it is very very difficult to get through the muddy water to speak to the right people.

"We are very ambitious people, we are innovators, we are very, very good at what we do but what we need support.”

“ With the help of a Highland Minister surely, given the scale of the landscape and the size of it, we could be world leaders. And we could be world leaders in renewables, in eco-friendly, sustainable tourism...but we just need a little help.”

A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said: ““The Scottish Government increased funding across a number of initiatives during the pandemic in response to immediate, acute pressures created by more people visiting local hotspots and tourism destinations across the country.

“We have been clear that the 2024/25 Budget recently approved by Parliament was done so in the context of one of the most difficult financial settlements since devolution, with real terms cuts to the block grant and an anticipated real-terms cut to our UK capital funding of almost 10 per cent over five years. Nevertheless, we will continue to work closely with Local Authorities, our National Parks, Visit Scotland and the tourism sector to continue a transition to a sustainable, strategic and measured approach to continuing infrastructure development in support of our tourism sector and local communities.

“The national tourism strategy - Scotland Outlook 2030 has responsible tourism at its heart and sets the strategic direction for a more sustainable future for the tourism sector. The Tourism & Hospitality Industry Leadership Group, co-chaired by Marc Crothall of the Scottish Tourism Alliance and Richard Lochhead, Minister for Small Business, Innovation, Tourism & Trade, is driving forward the strategy, looking at cross-cutting missions that will make tourism more responsible and sustainable.”