Scottish seafood tourism pilot launched
17th January 2022
Seafood Scotland is launching an innovation programme to stimulate new seafood tourism initiatives. The pilot will see the trade body work with organisations to explore and support business diversification and establish new tourism opportunities for the Scottish seafood industry.
The ambition is to inspire seafood organisations to exploit the huge growth in food tourism in Scotland, and encourage Scottish seafood businesses to diversify into new and emerging sectors. This will help businesses to ‘spread risk’, says the organisation.
Seafood Scotland is looking for seafood businesses with an idea that will:
- Provide an authentic or innovative experience
- Tell their story as an engaging and immersive experience
- Answer a question that customers regularly ask
- Ultimately increase their revenue.
Selected projects will be championed by a dedicated Seafood Scotland mentor and a hand-picked cohort of leading Scottish business and tourism experts, bespoke to each initiative, to impart specialist advice and guidance to help fast-track their idea to fruition.
Donna Fordyce, chief executive at Seafood Scotland, said: “We want to seek out seafood entrepreneurs who have been harbouring a nugget of an idea for business growth within the tourism sector, something that they haven’t had time or resource to explore before now. We will help them make that idea a reality.
“This programme is design to help inspire and ignite seafood tourism in Scotland – a market we know has huge potential and can be an area for growth for the Scottish seafood industry.”
Expected to run for six months, the initiative will provide all business mentoring free of charge to the pilot projects.
It is hoped that this initiative will provide real-life examples of businesses expanding into seafood tourism that can be shared with the wider seafood industry in Scotland to stimulate diversification and growth.
To find out more and sign up for the programme, click here or email: karen.galloway@seafoodscotland.org with a few sentences about your seafood tourism idea, and a phone number so Seafood Scotland can call to find out more. All enquiries should be submitted by 11 February.
The successful pilots are expected to be announced late February.
This story was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.30 here.
