Responsible Tourism at Best of Scotland Holidays

Visit Scotland cites Responsible Tourism as “[Responsible Tourism is] all about a collaborative approach for re-building and growing the value of tourism. It does so in a way that makes better places for people to live and visit in every corner of Scotland. It maximises the positive benefits of tourism for everyone. This includes host communities and the environment.”

This approach to tourism can, of course, be taken in any destination.

As a Destination Management Company providing holidays throughout Britain and Ireland, how can we help our clients who wish to take this approach to their holiday; to become a temporary local? Firstly, we believe that the vast majority of our visitors are already taking a Responsible Tourist approach to their holiday by seeking experiences in destinations which provide a real sense of the local culture, history, people, food and drink. With the rise in interest in these experiences comes the rise in small local businesses providing these. Local people sharing stories, their knowledge and their environment, but overall their hospitality.

At Best of Scotland Holidays we are on our own journey both to become a responsible operator but to continue to help visitors to be responsible tourists, although there are aspects that have been part of our business ethos since we started. For many years we have included small local operators and suppliers in the itineraries we were creating for our visitors. Now with the increased number of options in almost every location we can include more. We have a selection of sample itineraries on our website using public transport including trains, however as all our itineraries are tailormade holidays we can, and do, include these in many programmes. 

Please review our Responsible Visitor Charter for tips and ideas on how you can make positive impacts during your holiday here.


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Since 2022, Best of Scotland, as members of the Scottish Inbound Golf Tour Operators Association, have been informal donors to the Woodland Trust’s Woodland Carbon Scheme. This scheme creates sustainable woodlands, planting UK native trees with a unique focus on nature as the ultimate beneficiary. Tree planting gradually captures carbon over time, while also benefitting wildlife and wider society.

Looking ahead to future actions to support Responsible and Sustainable Tourism we are now members of Green Tourism and are currently going through our accreditation, with the view to attaining Bronze status, initially.

We have developed our Sustainability Policy which will continue to evolve as we progress with our responsible tourism course.


We plan to support a new Hospitality and Tourism course starting at a local Secondary school. Our support will include sharing our industry knowledge, mentoring and sponsoring an annual prize. We will use our LinkedIn and Instagram accounts to share this work. Helping to train the next generation welcoming visitors.

This is our starting point, but we will continue to build on these responsible and sustainable tourism foundations to support our visitors, suppliers and our team at Best of Scotland to contribute to positive impacts of tourism on the environment and host communities.