Scotland’s global reputation at highest level for ten years

Scotland has achieved its highest score for ten years in an international comparison study despite falling one place in a list of 50 nations.

Loch na Cuilce and Loch Coruisk on Skye. Natural beauty continues to be perceived as Scotland's strongest characteristic. Photograph: Getty Images

The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands IndexSM is used by the Scottish Government to monitor how Scotland is perceived around the world.

The latest report puts Scotland in 16th position after looking at its reputation based on exports, governance, culture, people, tourism, immigration investment.

The result represents a fall of one place on the previous year, despite the overall score of 62.7 being the highest achieved since 2008.

According to the study, Germany is the top nation, while Japan is second and the UK is third. The rest of the top ten was made up of France, Canada, Italy, United States, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia.

Scotland’s strong “dimensions”, according to the study, were tourism and governance, which ranked Scotland 12th and 14th in the world, respectively.

Scotland’s weakest dimension was exports, where it was ranked 23rd out of 50.

Natural beauty continues to be perceived as Scotland’s strongest characteristic, ranking seventh out of the 50 nations and it ranked 11th in relation to how welcoming the people are.

Overall, people in the 45 years and over and 30 to 44 years age group had a more positive image of Scotland than those in the 18 to 29 years age group, with those aged 45 years and over having the most positive image of Scotland across five out of the six dimensions.

The more exposure people have had to Scotland (through visits or contact with websites) the more likely they were to be favourable towards Scotland, and to score Scotland higher on all the dimensions.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “Scotland continues to be viewed positively by people from all over the world, with our warm welcome to tourists, our strong governance and our people all scoring well.

“Scotland’s score in the 2018 Nation Brand Index is the highest score it has received since the baseline study of 2008, improving from 62.2 in 2016 to 62.7 in 2018.”