John Lennon: Corporate market feeling the pinch

I DON'T think the Scottish Tourism Forum is being too pessimistic with its view of the year ahead.

There is no question that business tourism and the corporate sector has been very badly affected by the economic downturn and we have not really seen many signs of a recovery.

In the same way that the leisure market has traded down in the past couple of years to use budget airlines, the corporate market is now going for budget hotels such as Premier Inn rather than major operators such as Holiday Inn.

It is the four- and five-star hotels, particularly the larger resort-type hotels, that have been most affected by this drop-off. That type of business is just not there any more and there is a lot of paranoia about even being associated with it.

Other sectors of the industry benefited from the economic downturn last year as people scaled back from having two or three overseas breaks a year, but it was very much the middle-market that benefited: places such as B&Bs, self-catering establishments and campsites. By comparison, the big hotels in our city centres had to discount their rates pretty hard last year to bring in business and that is likely to continue this year.

The Year of Homecoming had a big impact last year, and it was very valuable in building databases, but there are also grounds for optimism as there is still a good exchange rate for coming to Scotland from Europe.

• Professor John Lennon is director of the Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development at Glasgow Caledonian University