Richard Hall: Edinburgh buses driving a thriving tourist sector

Edinburgh Bus Tours launch with Tattoo drummers in the Grassmarket. Picture: Steven Scott Taylor

Edinburgh Castle and the range of festivals are probably the best known from a wide selection of world-class locations and events. Interestingly, Edinburgh Bus Tours, operated by Lothian Buses, is now the second-most popular paid-for attraction in Scotland, overtaking Edinburgh Zoo.

We welcomed more than 600,000 passengers on board our four different tours in 2016, up 9 per cent on 2015. This year we are seeing even stronger visitor numbers with a 24 per cent increase in people hopping on our open top buses to see the sights.

The new Queensferry Crossing will inject a further tourism boost to the city region’s economy. In April we launched one of our services as the ‘3 Bridges’ bus and boat experience.

The success of our tour operation also led us to invest more than £6.5 million in 30 new custom-built vehicles. Designed to some of the highest standards in accessibility and environmental performance, we believe they send a hugely positive message to visitors about the modern, inclusive, innovative city and country we all know and love.

In previous articles I’ve talked about how we’re trying to reduce our carbon footprint. These new buses are an excellent example of that and reinforce our long term commitment to the environment.

Critically they reduce CO2 emissions by more than 40 per cent compared to the previous vehicles and cut nitrous oxides and particulates by up to 99 per cent. Along with dedicated wheelchair and buggy spaces, coloured LED destination information display, wi-fi, CCTV and panoramic views, these vehicles are a world-first.

This isn’t the only investment we’ve made to benefit the tourism sector. This year we added another dedicated route to the airport called Skylink, which provides improved connections with the north of the city. It complements our existing Airlink service from the centre of the capital which drives tourism and growth and supports one of the fastest growing airports in the UK.

In addition, our transport offering now extends east of the capital with our EastCoastBuses operation opening up a new audience to the natural beauty of the amazing coastline on the city’s doorstep.

Naturally enough, the tourism sector of today looks unimaginably different to that of 200 years ago, when the Scotsman first launched. It is now critical to our country and contributes significantly to both the local and wider Scottish economy, supporting jobs, investment and economic growth.

As a proud Scottish business, Lothian’s role is to continue to work hard to deliver excellent routine connections through our city bus and airport services and unique and amazing experiences through our bus tours, to ensure residents and visitors have the best possible time in and around our capital.

Richard Hall is managing director of Lothian Buses.