Brave hearts
The impact of foot-and-mouth disease on the Plumed Horse restaurant has been particularly cruel. Just a few weeks prior to the outbreak, the 30-seat restaurant in Crossmichael, in the heart of the Dumfries and Galloway region, Scotland's worst infected area, had been awarded a Michelin star for the first time.
Not only did the star bring recognition to the two-and-a-half-year-old restaurant, it also provided a welcome boost to business. "It did great wonders to both our morale and the business," says Tony Borthwick, the head chef, who is joint-owner of the business with front of house manager Charles Kirkbride. "For the first time, we were full almost every night."
But with the onset of foot-and-mouth, many bookings have been cancelled and only a trickle of reservations are now being made. Weekly turnover has dropped from February's £9,500 to £4,500 now. "It's been heartbreaking," says Kirkbride. "Most of our business is local, but that's virtually gone overnight. No one wants to go out and celebrate when there are bonfires all around and there is the smell of burning flesh in the air."
All over Scotland, restaurateurs and hoteliers are telling similar stories. It is estimated that £10m per week is currently being lost to all of Scottish tourism, a figure that is expected to climb to some £335m in total. Fewer than two million tourists are now expected to visit Scotland this year, a drop of about 525,000 (21%) compared with the last available figure of 2.5 million in 1999.
More ominous than the cancellations is the dramatic drop in forward bookings. At this time of year Linda Scott would normally be taking two bookings a day for Cuilcheanna House, the seven-bedroom hotel she runs with her husband, Russell, in Onich, by Fort William. "At the moment," she says, "we're only taking two a week - and that's if we're lucky." Despite the fact that the hotel is in the heart of the Highlands, hundreds of miles from the nearest outbreak, it seems that potential visitors are being put off by the fact that they might not have total freedom of where they can go.
While skiers were happy to travel to the Highlands to make use of the exceptionally good skiing conditions in the region's mountains this year up until Easter, other pursuers of outdoor activities are staying away. In the Firth of Clyde, two hotels on the Isle of Arran - the 44-bedroom Kinloch hotel and the 27-bedroom Kingsley hotel - each lost about £60,000-worth of business during March and April as the result of trips cancelled by university geology parties.
At the 14-bedroom Muckrach Lodge, in Dulnain Bridge on Speyside, an increase of 62% on business achieved during the first couple of months of the year, compared with the same period in 2000, has been wiped out by the figures of recent weeks. Lack of future bookings is compounded by the fact that an increasing number of guests who do make enquiries try to haggle over rates. "It's a dilemma," says Dawn MacFarlane, who owns Muckrach Lodge with her husband, James. "People know that we're quiet, so do we take the bookings at the reduced rate just to fill the gaps?"
One hotelier not prepared to reduce rates further is Michael Bricker, owner of the Michelin-starred and three-AA-rosetted Knockinaam Lodge. Although the 10-bedroom hotel is in Portpatrick in Wigtownshire, part of the Dumfries and Galloway region, it is situated on the coast, 60 miles from the nearest outbreak.
"We pride ourselves on providing the very best food, wine and accommodation," says Bricker. "While we've always offered a discount of 12% on stays of three and four nights, and 25% on bookings of five nights or longer, we couldn't provide the same service if we started cutting rates any more." The hotel is currently filling only about three bedrooms a night during the week and maybe four at the weekend, compared with the eight to 10 that are usually booked on Friday and Saturday nights at this time of year.
Some hotels, however, are still doing a reasonable level of business. Those least affected by the crisis appear to be city centre hotels and those establishments that offer plenty of activities on site, such as the 216-bedroom Gleneagles hotel in Auchterarder and the Auchrannie Country House hotel on the Isle of Arran.
And there are some hotels, such as the 15-bedroom Dryfesdale in Lockerbie, which are actually benefiting from the foot-and-mouth crisis - in the short term, at least. Situated in the heart of Dumfries and Galloway, overlooking the fields belonging to the farm that became the first in Scotland to confirm a case of the disease, the 15-bedroom hotel has now become home to seven vets and seven Army personnel. And it looks as though they are going to be ensconced there for some time to come.
"Our occupancy has been running at 80% since the start of the crisis, which is much higher than we would normally expect for this time of the year," says the hotel's owner, Clive Sturman, who is in no way gloating about the business currently coming in to the hotel. With cancellations for bookings later in the year and the lack of new reservations, he is, in fact, greatly fearful for the future - not to mention angry about the lack of practical help being offered to the tourism industry by central Government and the Scottish Executive.
A rescue package of nearly £15m has been announced by the Scottish Parliament to help alleviate the difficulties experienced by the tourism industry and rural businesses as a result of the outbreak. The money is to be split three ways - £6.3m for the Scottish Tourist Board and Visitscotland to implement a marketing recovery plan, £5m to the enterprise networks to set up a programme of advice and support to help businesses deal with cash-flow problems, and £3.5m of rates relief for businesses affected in certain rural areas.
However, when compared with the widespread and devastating effect foot-and-mouth is having on the tourism industry across the whole of Scotland, this sum appears to be a drop in the ocean.
"The Scottish Executive's package does not reflect the seriousness of the problem," says Sturman. "Instead, it should be doing something positive to kick-start the economy in the region, such as writing to all the public bodies in Scotland and suggesting that they book all their training and conference requirements through hotels in Dumfries and Galloway. Such activities are not dependent on what is going on in the countryside."
Kirkbride and Borthwick at the Plumed Horse are also critical of the money being spent on setting up helplines while no funds are going directly to help ailing businesses. They do, however, believe that the negative view currently being portrayed of Dumfries and Galloway in both the national and international media could, in the long term, be turned into something positive. "We hope people will see that this is an immensely beautiful part of the country which, in effect, encompasses the rest of Scotland in miniature, with its own lochs and mountains," says Borthwick. "It's not somewhere that should be passed through on the way to the Highlands, but a place to be visited in its own right."
