Scottish Household Survey: Tourism Sentiment, 2025

Introduction

The Scottish Household Survey (SHS) is an annual survey of the general population in Scotland, carried out since 1999. It aims to collect reliable and up-to-date information on a range of topics, through a random sample of people in private residences. It is a voluntary and interviewer-led survey, usually carried out face-to-face in people’s homes. The 2025 methodology and fieldwork outcomes report provides details of the methods used.

This publication presents findings from the 2025 Scottish Household Survey on attitudes towards tourism. For the purposes of the survey, tourism is defined as people visiting the respondent’s local area for either a day trip or overnight stay. A total of 9,720 respondents answered the tourism sentiment questions in 2025. Respondents were asked the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with five statements about tourism, using a seven-point response scale: strongly agree; tend to agree; neither agree nor disagree; tend to disagree; strongly disagree; not applicable; and don't know. The questions asked can be found in the Annex to this report. These questions were added to the survey for the first time in 2025 therefore comparisons with previous years are not possible. Results for other topics are available on the Scottish Household Survey results webpage.

For reporting purposes, responses are grouped into agree (strongly agree and tend to agree) and disagree (strongly disagree and tend to disagree). Results are available for different geographic areas of Scotland (local authority areas; urban and rural areas; and island and mainland areas). It should be noted that there is substantial overlap between island and rural areas, as many island areas are also classified as rural.

Throughout this publication, tables are referenced. These are published in Excel format as supporting documents to the report, and include results for the different areas noted above. Some of the differences between areas may be due to random sampling variation i.e. chance. Similarly, some apparent differences between results over time may occur by chance. We use standard statistical tests of significance to determine the likelihood of differences being due to chance. When this publication refers to differences between areas, these differences are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level unless explicitly stated otherwise. Some differences between areas in the Excel tables that appear large may not be mentioned in this publication, because they are not statistically significant.

These statistics are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

An official Statistics in Development Publication for Scotland

The questions on attitudes towards tourism were added to the Scottish Household Survey for the first time in 2025. We welcome feedback on the usefulness of the findings and the way in which they are presented.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.