VisitScotland

This time last year we were looking at the year ahead in real trepidation. With the banking system in crisis, and fuel and food prices rising, how would things turn out in 2009?

The answer was: much as expected. It's been the toughest year for nearly two decades, and in the 1991/92 recession at least the banks were working with us. Then also there was no Internet, so we didn't know quite so quickly how bad things were elsewhere.

But tourism is astonishingly resilient. The year I became Chairman of VisitScotland, 2001, we had BSE, foot-and-mouth and 9/11, all in ten months. Yet we recovered very swiftly. Only a few months ago Mexican tourism was devastated by swine flu, yet it's already bouncing back. The more complex the world becomes, the more stressful people's lives, the more they want to travel to unwind ? and Scotland has so much to offer them.

This year there were two factors working in our favour. The weak pound not only made us attractive to overseas visitors, especially from the eurozone, but it also encouraged visitors from our largest market, the UK, to holiday at home. And Homecoming, with the support of the Scottish Government and the First Minister in person, has proved hugely successful. It has shown us the power of leadership, collaboration and a well-organised programme to attract visitors in large numbers

But we certainly can't sit back. There are 190 other countries all currently thinking about how they're going to emerge from this recession. Here in Scotland we need to scale up our ambition, sharpen the ?let's do it' mentality, and learn to become quicker off the mark.

We also need to dramatically improve our sales skills. People go on holiday to spend money, but in Scotland I sometimes think we don't want to take it from them. Put simply it's the difference between ?D'you want the dessert menu?' and ?Chef has some fantastic freshly picked raspberries.' I'm sure that for every tourism pound we make, we lose another through poor selling. That clearly has to change.

In the coming years we're going to have less money to spend, as an industry and as a country. This is going to mean working together to make it go further. The silo approach is very wasteful and often indicative of a lack of trust, which results in overlap and duplication.

Strong, imaginative relationships will become more and more important as government, in all its guises, and industries as diverse as tourism, the arts, food and drink, find new ways to collaborate and sell Scotland together. Homecoming has already shown us just how effective collaboration and a tightly focused marketing effort can be. We should start by trying to replicate this partnership approach from year to year.

This is my last year as Chairman. I have huge respect for the people here at VisitScotland. They work extraordinarily hard and very often get little thanks, yet they do it for Scotland. I'm proud too that the industry has come such a long way since 2001, when it was disparate and dysfunctional. The opportunities today are huge, recession notwithstanding. We just need the energy and conviction to exploit them.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow Board members, particularly those who have retired from the Board this year - Pat Buchanan, Brian Houston and Alex Pagett.  I am also delighted to welcome aboard our new members - Paddy Crerar, Russel Griggs, Dorothy Fenwick, Stephen Carter and Manus Fullerton.  And finally my thanks go to the Senior Management Team at VisitScotland, ably led by Chief Executive, Philip Riddle.

Peter Lederer

Chairman