Tourism jobs are real jobs that offer a fantastic career – Donald Anderson

Today is my birthday. I’m really old, but I’ve not yet hit the big milestone that’s coming next year.

Mercat Tours resumed its business in April following a lengthy break during lockdown (Picture: Andrew O'Brien)

One of my big treats today is getting spoiled by the family as usual. Another is that I’m getting a tour of the new Gleneagles development at St Andrew Square.

It’s a stunning conversion that restores and saves a former Bank of Scotland building. Gleneagles is a fantastic brand and one that is bringing jobs and investment into the heart of the city.

One of the criticisms that always disappoints me is the view that is popular in some circles that tourism jobs are somehow not real jobs, or that tourism and hospitality jobs are inevitably low-value jobs.

I was struck to read a few weeks ago that Hawksmoor restaurants are paying waiters salaries of £35,000, and that due to recruitment challenges staff are being offered bonuses of £2,000 to ‘recruit a friend’.

One small hotel operator in the Borders complained to me in discussion that they’d had three chefs in as many months and that they’re in a bidding war for such skilled staff.

One independent visitor attraction manager advised me that, at the very minimum, all his staff are paid the ‘Real Living Wage’ and that they all have a non-contributory pension scheme. That’s consistent with what I regularly hear in tourism.

Edinburgh and Scotland’s success as a year-round tourism destination has delivered year-round jobs that simply didn’t previously exist. It’s created more and better jobs too. Local tourism exemplars like Mercat Tours and the local James Thompson empire are great examples of high-quality local businesses growing real jobs and incomes for local residents and families, and there are many more.

Looking back, it is important to remember that this wasn’t the case in the past. I mentioned Gleneagles at the start of this article. It was not that many years ago that Gleneagles Hotel, one of the world’s finest luxury brands, used to shut down for six months of the year. Tourism jobs were seasonal and insecure in a way that’s inconceivable now.

These days tourism jobs are real jobs and year-round jobs. Tourism is increasingly creating fantastic careers in what is the world’s biggest industry.

Donald Anderson is director of Playfair Scotland

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