Local Destination Development Meetings - The Solway Firth

The SSDA is committed to a locally-led, bottom-up approach to developing the South of Scotland as a world class visitor destination.

We want to harness the power, impact and scale of a ‘pan-South’ approach as we market the South of Scotland to the world, but we also want to work at a local level within the South of Scotland, to really listen to, engage, support and represent businesses and communities in locally relevant ways.

To achieve this, every six months we host meetings bringing together local businesses and communities in 14 areas right across the South of Scotland.

Upcoming 2025 meetings: We have set dates for Locally Led Destination Development meetings in all 14 areas of the South of Scotland for February and November. To be as inclusive as possible, each area will have one in-person and one digital meeting.

Standing agenda items:

Each of our LLDD meetings start with time to:

• Really listen to all the local business representatives attending: hearing how trade is, what challenges they are facing, what opportunities and what specific actions they would like the SSDA to take forwards on their behalf.
• Update local businesses on what actions the SSDA has delivered against local priorities since the last meeting.
• Brief businesses on upcoming destination marketing campaigns and how they can get involved.
• Review how that local area is promoted on Scotland Starts Here and invite feedback and input to this, to ensure we continue to have a genuinely locally-led approach.

Additional agenda items for D&G meetings:

In addition to the above standing items, the November LLDD meetings in Dumfries and Galloway will include time to discuss:

• Visitor levy. This will be a particular focus in the D&G area meetings, as DGC has begun early engagement. These 7 D&G LLDD meetings will form part of this early engagement, with the Council’s tourism lead attending to brief businesses, answer their questions on a possible visitor levy, and listen to the views of SSDA members.
• Post National Park. What businesses would like to see supported by Scottish Government in light of the decision not to create a Galloway and Ayrshire National Park.
• Workforce development. Update on what the SSDA has done advocating for a major investment in workforce development, based on what businesses said at the last LLDD meeting.
• Attracting high-spending North American visitors. Before the November meetings we will have a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT which relates to this work. We can then speak in the meeting about how we will spread the benefits to as many members as possible, as we capitalise on a huge opportunity to raise our destination’s visibility to key north American markets.
• Paths and Trails. Local input into destination work to improve visitor information about paths and trails in the local area.
• Brown signs. Local input to the full review of all c3,000 brown signs in the South of Scotland.