New tourism strategy visitors to experience ‘the real Fife’ and ‘live life like a local’

Welcome to Fife’s vision comes after discussions with the sector and takes into account the changing visitor trends since lockdown with more emphasis now placed on sustainability, wellness and authentic experiences. Until now, tourism has been governed by the Fife Tourism Partnership, with Welcome to Fife - the tourism brand for Fife Council - being the consumer facing brand. As part of the new strategy this is changing, with all tourism activity coming under the Welcome to Fife banner, and the partnership is being renamed the Welcome to Fife Industry Leadership Group.

There are four priorities at the heart of the strategy – place, people, business and sustainability.

Welcome To Fife will also increase market awareness of the region as a visitor destination, focus on target markets, encourage greater collaboration across the sector, facilitate digital transformation, sustainability ambitions and product development, and support businesses to recruit new people into the industry.

The overall aim is to ensure that there is a quality year-round tourism offering across Fife, with opportunities for visitors to experience the ‘real’ Kingdom and to ‘live life like a local’ through authentic and unique experiences.

Councillor Altany Craik, spokesperson for finance, economy and strategic planning said: “Tourism plays a vital role in Fife’s economy - 9.3% of our businesses are tourism-related enterprises, and 7.5% of people working in Fife are employed in tourism-related businesses. Recent developments such as Dunfermline receiving city status, and the forthcoming opening of the rail link to Leven have boosted opportunities to showcase Fife as a vibrant and diverse destination. The new strategy aims to increase the value of tourism in Fife by 2% per year, whilst helping the industry become more sustainable, develop new products and markets, and encouraging more people to work in this exciting sector.”

Hilary Roberts, lead officer for tourism at Fife Council explained: “Bringing everything under the Welcome to Fife banner will help to strengthen our brand and create a new single entity for everything tourism related. We look forward to working with the leadership group to not only promote Fife as a first class visitor destination, but also to support businesses to help them meet the changing needs of our visitors.”