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Scotland to target tourists from India, China
Indo-Asian News Service

London, Oct 15 (IANS) Scotland's tourism promoters are looking to tap the potential of tourist traffic from India and China to double its visitor numbers by 2015.

There is a realisation that the target set by the Scottish Executive will not be achieved without capturing a healthy chunk of the emerging markets of India, Eastern Europe, Russia, and China.

VisitScotland, the Leith-based tourism agency, is initiating a revolution in how Scotland sells itself abroad. The agency has started a major market research to determine where the new Asian markets are and what Scotland could and should offer them.

VisitScotland recently employed Po Ling Lee from Hong Kong, a fluent Mandarin and Cantonese speaker with wide experience in marketing in Asian markets, including responsibility for Hong Kong's famous Peak Tramway.

Although Japan is seen as a long-established "nice piece of business for us", its growth potential is seen to be negligible.

The idea now is to examine other potential growth markets like India, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan and to determine how best to deploy VisitScotland's finite resources.