Tourism administration in Scotland

The Scottish Office consultation paper, issued in October 1992, "The Structure of Local Government in Scotland: Shaping the New Councils", invites opinions on the
consequences of a move from a two-tier to a single-tier system of local government. Chapter 28 of the document deals with the present organisation of support by local authorities for the tourism industry. This might be taken to be a minor administrative concern. However, a separate document issued simultaneously by the Scottish Office Industry Department goes rather further. It sets out the roles of various public bodies in relation to both marketing support for and infrastructural improvement of tourism, although there are in fact more of these bodies than the paper mentions. This paper examines the impact of such an approach to administering the apparatus of Scottish tourism and assesses its overall desirability in light of the importance of tourism to Scotland's economy.