Tourism's maverick is getting back to basics

Whatever role he’s been playing, Reid freely admits to being a maverick, saying things officialdom doesn’t always want to hear. This week he’s been in the news again, calling for determined action by the next Scottish Parliament to salvage the country’s "appalling and unacceptable" economic record. If tourism - Scotland’s biggest industry - is to reverse its slide, the Executive and Parliament have to swallow their pride and take outside advice, he said.

Reid - who away from tourism has had a successful career in big business and remains a director of several companies - says his comments were something of a cry of frustration, and he admits that he sees little chance the First Minister, Jack McConnell, will take any heed of his call.

Reid says: "It seems very obvious to me that the Scottish economy is in very poor shape. We have a very, very poor growth rate, we have seen our traditional industries going - agriculture, fishing, traditional manufacturing and engineering, textiles - and we have seen nothing to take their place other than short-term measures from inward investment, such as call centre jobs. I think, at my age, I’ve had my successes and I’ve had my failures and I don’t want to sound arrogant about this, but what the Scottish Executive should be doing is using people like myself and others and bringing them into the decision-making role.

"But, of course, they are scared to do that because we are mavericks, we are controversial and what they want are people who tell them that what they are doing is right - and I’m not going to tell them that. What I’m going to do is tell them that we are not approaching the problem in the correct way."

Reid’s recipe for an upturn in Scotland’s economy is to follow the lead of another small country, New Zealand. He says that country in the past 20 years has taken a cold, hard look at its situation, called in outside experts - particularly the Harvard Business School - to identify its strengths and then rigorously applied the economic restructuring needed to improve its position. He says the result has been a revolution in the New Zealand economy, a tourism industry that is growing at 10 per cent a year and occupies sixth place in the world’s entrepreneurial league, compared to Scotland’s 29th rank.

"We should have the courage to do what New Zealand did and hire the expertise to look at Scotland’s strengths, which are considerable: the very word Scotland conjures up brand values of inventiveness, integrity and honesty - those are three God-given assets to have."

He also says a weakness in Scotland’s economy is a lack of "joined-up thinking". Universities, business and the communities all need to be part of economic decision making. "The lead has to come from the parliament. I agree it is not totally in its hands, but the First Minister has got to stand up and deliver a clear direction and a clear vision and to recognise that he cannot do that himself, so he’s got to get expertise in to do that. Now, do you think for a minute that he will take advice from the Harvard Business School or the Royal Society of Edinburgh? Not a chance."

He says one problem for Scottish tourism has been that it has not been treated like a business - something he is working to address in his position at the University of Abertay. "Tourism is part of mainstream business and I think in many ways tourism really has to be taught like any other business skill. The skills for managers of hotels are the same as for managers of a factory or managers going out and running some enterprise."

Another key problem he sees is the lack of international air links to Scotland, particularly across the Atlantic. US tourists, with very limited vacation time, simply will not add hours or days on to their trips by having to change planes at London.

Reid’s involvement in Scottish tourism came after a successful career with the food and beverage giant Cadbury Schweppes. After graduating from Aberdeen University he joined Cadbury Schweppes as a trainee and worked his way through the ranks to became a director of its tea and food business.

When the company decided to move out of those areas in the 1980s, Reid and a group of fellow executives led a 97 million management buy-out - pledging everything they owned to the banks and taking on an interest burden of 1,000 an hour.

He points to that experience as demonstrating the kind of confidence Scottish business needs to acquire if it is to succeed. "We took the risk not because of a craving to make a lot of money but because the ambition and desire was there to be a success."

Eventually Reid and his colleagues sold the company to a new owner. "Then I decided that having worked in a big company and then being an owner of my own I didn’t want to work for anybody else," he says.

"I came back to Scotland, got involved in a number of businesses up here and got involved in tourism because I owned a hotel in Perth. I started seeing that the way the Scottish Tourism Board was marketing Scotland was not the way that I would market Scotland and I starting writing to it to express my views."

When the position of chief executive became vacant, he decided to apply, on the basis that it was one thing to stand on the sidelines and criticise and quite another to put your hat in the ring and see how you perform.

"I never thought they would employ anyone like myself and I made it very clear that I would only do it for three years," he says.

"Without wishing to appear to be arrogant, that was the only time that Scottish tourism has shown any growth, from 1994 to 1997. Since then it has just gone down, and I don’t claim that it wouldn’t have gone down had I still been there, but I would have had a bloody good go of turning it around and finding out why."

Reid says he is winding down his business involvements, although an ongoing passion is a New Zealand wine company he owns called Rongopai, in which he has invested considerable amounts in recent years. He is also chairman of the Harris Tweed manufacturer Donald Macleod Ltd.

"I think I’m someone with a few different business interests who’s trying to give something back to Scotland. I’ve been through the phase of being an entrepreneur, of making money and growing businesses. What I’m now concentrating on is giving a little back to the community."

30-second CV

Who is in the family? Married with two children.

Have you any hobbies or interests? "I’m a very keen golfer and I like fishing, although I’m pretty awful at it.

I love reading and I love music. A recent book I’ve read, and I commend it to you, is Carol Craig’s The Scots Crisis of Confidence, which is a wonderful book."

How much would you spend on a bottle of wine? "At home I would spend up to twenty quid, but no more than that because you can get very good quality for that. I love sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs."