After the oil…

The oil industry has been good to Aberdeen hoteliers. Europe's oil capital attracts a constant stream of business travellers from around the world, ensuring healthy year-round occupancy levels.

But complacency in any business is dangerous. What happens if the wells run dry? "We don't want to find that if there is no oil, there is no business," says Dorothy Cryle, co-ordinator of the Tartan Collection, a group of independent hotels located in and around the city and throughout north-east Scotland.

It is the concern to find new markets for the hotels that has prompted the consortium, which has been going since 1992, to team up with a local activity provider and launch a comprehensive programme of special-interest breaks.

Called Tartan Collection Activities, the programme, launched last April, is a marriage between Tartan Collection and Howie Irvine, which has been organising hunting, shooting and fishing breaks in Aberdeenshire for many years.

The key figure behind Tartan Collection Activities is Howie Irvine owner Ken Howie, who also owns the Ferndale Hotel in Aberdeen, which is, however, not involved in the initiative.

Like Cryle, Howie is conscious that hoteliers should not rely on one industry and acknowledges that the initiative by hoteliers to open new markets was probably long overdue. "It's amazing how lazy you can get if the business is coming through the door anyway," he says. "Whereas every other part of the country has been chasing the tourism market, Aberdeen hasn't done it. We didn't have to, so we didn't bother."

But Howie says it is already evident that, while business is still very good, there is less around than there was 20 years ago, simply because fewer people are needed when oil is in production than for construction and drilling.

According to Howie, the launch of Tartan Collection Activities formalises a long-standing informal arrangement whereby activities and accommodation were packaged for visitors. "If hoteliers had guests who wanted to do an activity, they would get in touch with us," he says. "If we had an enquiry where guests wanted us to organise accommodation, we would happily do it. It was part of the service."

Over the years, Howie has extended his own company's range of activities to include options such as clay-pigeon shooting, quad biking, hovercrafting, dolphin watching and even tank driving with former British Army tanks. He was keen to market such alternative activities to a wider audience than the corporate groups that generated most of his business.

"More often now," he says, "people are looking to do something on holiday, and if you can encourage them to spend that extra night by encouraging them to see what it is like to drive a tank, or learn to fish, then we have done a good job and the hotels will benefit."

But Howie says he had always been reluctant to link with any of the major hotel chains. "Like any big organisation, they tend to dictate to you rather than work with you," he says. "We are in the farming business, where you get the supermarkets talking about partnership, and what they mean is that we do what they tell us. The big hotel groups are very much the same.

"I liked the idea of being able to work with a group of independents where you can see the whites of the eyes of the people you are dealing with."

In the initial stages, Tartan Collection and Howie Irvine were working closely with a company called Activities Holidays Scotland, which had ambitious plans to promote the north-east of Scotland as a destination for activities. But that company folded, and Tartan Collection Activities decided to go it alone.

The backing of Grampian Enterprise for the initiative has been crucial, especially in giving marketing and public relations support. The biggest start-up cost was the £16,000 cost of the Tartan Collection Activities brochure, which folds out to show a detailed map of the region and the locations for the hotels and the activities. Around 20,000 copies of the leaflet-style publication were printed. Several were sent directly to names on the Howie Irvine database, and in response to enquiries generated by public relations activity. The Aberdeen & Grampian Tourist Board Tourist Information Centre network throughout the region has also been a useful distribution channel.

The other main cost is the salary for the full-time staff member who mans the Tartan Collection Activities dedicated telephone line. He is based at the Howie Irvine offices, where there was space available.

Nine months and one summer season down the line, and Tartan Collection Activities professes to be pleased with its progress so far. According to Howie, the programme to date has attracted 261 guests to book an activities and accommodation package. The average spend was about £84 per person and the average length of stay was three nights. In total, it equates to about £60,000-worth of revenue for the Grampian region.

"I think it went very well, but my expectations were modest," says Howie. "I have been in this business for a long time and I had no illusions that it was going to be a fantastic flyer from the start."

A major frustration this past summer was the fact that, at certain busy periods, Tartan Collection Activities had to turn away business because the hotels were fully booked. Where possible, guests were booked into other hotels which were not members of the Tartan Collection. Howie recalls: "It was particularly difficult during the Tall Ships race, which came to Aberdeen in July; and also in late August and September, when there were a lot of Highland Games going on."

Most of the bookings were from the south-east of England. "It was very much the typical family - mum, dad, 2.2 kids and the dog. Very much ABC1, slightly higher than average spend - the small Mercedes/Discovery Land Rover-type person. We had a few Bentleys parked here, but by the same token we had a few for whom this was obviously a special trip for them and it represented a sizeable chunk out of whatever budget they might have," says Howie.

Now that the programme is up and running, Howie has high hopes that the bookings will be significantly increased this year. "We would like to hit the 1,000 mark," he says, "and I am reasonably confident that it might be possible."

More cautious is Tartan Collection member hotelier Nigel Franks, of the 18-bedroom Darroch Learg Hotel in Ballater, 40 miles from Aberdeen in the heart of Royal Deeside. "We certainly had bookings from the programme, but it wasn't lots of them," he says. "But it is a new market of great potential. We are pleased to be part of it, although I am realistic about what we will get from it."

According to Cryle, Tartan Collection is not impatient for fast results from the initiative. "We see this as a long-term project," she says, "and it is probably only in five years' time that we will reap the benefits."