As we form a plan for going forward, many of you have told us what your concerns are if the TBID continues. Here, we try to address these and what we’ll promise to do differently.

Better communication

Many of you told us you’d had little or no communication from Visit Moray Speyside. While they did have a regular newsletter, this was generalised and didn’t allow one-to-one communications. We want to assure you that we’ll do our utmost to address every concern that an individual member has whether it’s specific to them, such as help with a grant application, or a wider issue, such as fighting the visitor levy, and finding help for the difficulties these cause.

Clearer transparency

According to VMS TBID’s first 4 years of accounts, £397,015 (44.42% of expenditure) was on staff and a further £233,724 (26.15 %) on office overheads (£630,739 combined). Their second-term business plan forecasts a massive expenditure on combined staff/overheads at £808,000 (51.84% of all expenditure)!

More traceability on ROI

If VMS is voted out and there’s no alternative service, we will then put into practice a tiered opt-in platform, focussed mainly around promotion, that businesses can buy into. We’ll be clear about how much this will cost, whether it’s a short-term investment or a long-term one. We’ll give clear expectations of results.

Advocacy for industry threats

We’ll provide active support against proposals that harm tourism and tourism businesses such as STL, NI, Vistor levy, etc. Where we can’t change the outcomes, we’ll work with groups and individuals to offer support to create efficient and collaborative working practices that could help reduce the impact of these.