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Abstract
This paper examines how a National Tourism Organisation, VisitScotland is making use of scenario planning to identify key factors influencing tourism performance. The future of Scottish tourism to 2015 will be affected by macro-trends and drivers in UK society. These trends include demography, globalization, sustainability, technology/communication, politics, transport, fuel supply and pricing, and levels of inflation and affluence. These complex phenomena will impact on tourism in a range of interrelated ways which remain difficult to quantify. This paper will illustrate the utilization of the scenario planning approach to capture expert opinion and reflective discussion in order to build and inform potential futures for the Scottish tourism industry. ‘What if’ thinking is utilized to anticipate the future and conclusions are drawn from two potential future scenarios for Scottish tourism in 2015.