Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 24th meeting in 2023 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent and that all notifications are turned off during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

There are lots of nodding heads—great.

No, I do not think so.

I will move on, in the interests of time.

Thank you for that. I will bring Stephen Young in if he has something to add that David Weston has not said.

Thanks very much.

I am going to move on because of time. We have quite a few more questions to get into. You have touched on some of them, but I want to give colleagues the opportunity to ask them.

Okay.

For our second panel this morning, we are joined in the room by Sarah Allanson, the policy and membership director for Scotland and Northern Ireland at the British Holiday and Home Parks Association; Neil Ellis, chair of the Edinburgh Hotels Association; Margo Paterson, chief executive of Hostelling Scotland; and Frank Whittaker, chair of Aberdeen City and Shire Hotels Association. We are joined online by Simon McGrath, head of communications and external relations at the Camping and Caravanning Club. I warmly welcome all our witnesses to the meeting.

I will start the questions. As in our previous session, we will try to direct our questions to a specific witness where possible, but, if you would like to come in, please indicate to me or the clerk. Simon McGrath, as you are appearing virtually, please indicate that you want to come in by typing R in the chat function. There is no need for anyone to operate their own microphone; we will do that for you.

I am interested in a little bit of context, but this may be a question that you do not necessarily have a response to. There are similar visitor levies and tourist taxes across Europe, and they do not seem to deter tourists from visiting popular destinations. Have you any thoughts on or experiences with that?

Okay. Thanks. Neil, did you indicate that you want to come in?

You used the example of a camper van that is hired in Glasgow that then travels through the Highlands. The problem is that Highland Council would not then benefit from the income, to tackle the issues from the impacts of camper vans there. That needs to be worked through, and I think that the Government is taking that on board. Maybe that is not quite the solution, but there are other ideas such as licence capturing through technology. It certainly needs to be thought through; we are trying to get the income into local authority areas.