Beyond the boat

Seafood Scotland has launched an innovation programme to stimulate new seafood tourism initiatives.

The pilot will see the trade body work with organisations to explore and support business diversification and to establish new tourism opportunities for the Scottish seafood industry.

The ambition is to inspire seafood organisations to exploit the huge growth in food tourism in Scotland. The programme will encourage Scottish seafood businesses to spread risk by diversifying into new and emerging sectors.

The organisation is ideally looking for seafood businesses with an idea that will:

• Provide an authentic or innovative experience
• Tell their story as an engaging and immersive experience
• Answer a question that customers regularly ask
• Ultimately increase their revenue

Selected projects will be championed by a dedicated Seafood Scotland mentor and a hand-picked cohort of leading Scottish business and tourism experts, bespoke to each initiative, to impart specialist advice and guidance to help fast track their idea to fruition.

Donna Fordyce, Chief Executive at Seafood Scotland said: “We want to seek out seafood entrepreneurs that have been harbouring a nugget of an idea for business growth within the tourism sector, something that they haven’t had time or resource to explore before now.  We will help them make that idea a reality.

This program is designed to help inspire and ignite seafood tourism in Scotland; a market we know has huge potential and should be an area for growth for the Scottish seafood industry.”

To help inspire, Seafood Scotland have created a Tourism Toolkit showcasing examples of best practices from Scotland and across the world.

Expected to run for 6 months the mentoring initiative will provide all business mentoring free of charge to the pilot projects reducing the financial pressure for the business ideas, ensuring the projects maximum success in diversifying and developing seafood tourism opportunities in Scotland.

Seafood Scotland is reaching out to the seafood industry, local food groups and regional inshore fishery groups across Scotland to hear all ideas for potential seafood tourism projects, no matter how big or small.

To find out more and sign up for the programme, email karen.galloway@seafoodscotland.org with a few simple sentences about your seafood tourism idea and a contact number.  All enquiries should be submitted by 11 February 2022. The successful pilots are expected to be announced late February.