SURVIVING THE DOWNTURN-3
Background This post follows on from earlier ones of April 25th and April 16th which were titled 'Surviving the Downturn' with emphasis on prognosis for the Scottish tourism industry. Today, I am focusing on two aspects of the industry, namely climate change/emissions and quality of the visitor experience Cruise Ships Over the years I have arranged-and personally delivered-various day trips from cruise ships, mainly from Greenock but also Edinburgh.In the course of my tours I have had numerous encounters with cruise ship coach groups at Loch Ness (ex-Invergordon) and on Orkney. Until very recently, I was oblivious to the fact that a single cruise ship can emit as much pollution as 700 trucks and as much particulate matter as a million cars. This pollution is exacerbated when visiting ships disgorge hundreds, sometimes thousands of their guests into fleets of tour buses for day trips at various ports as the vessels circumnavigate the country. Ranked by 'wow fa...