Having a room full of engaged people from our sector led to a series of important debates around key challenges we believed destinations including Edinburgh were and are facing.

Neil Ellis

Our Edinburgh





From Group Project to Destination Training Tool

“To belong to this network, with DLP colleagues as members of various different tourism strategy, industry and hospitality groups, to have a sounding board of experts there for myself and Karen and Ali to bounce ideas off and get input from them, before we actually finalised and rounded off the Our Edinburgh programme – was so valuable.”

This case study focuses on the transition of what started out as a group project assignment for three participants on the first Destination Leaders Programme (2013-2014) - Neil Ellis of Place Hotels, Karen Robertson of JacTravel, and Ali Bowden, of Edinburgh City of Literature Trust - and its transformation to tangible product development, now available as an online training tool for Edinburgh’s tourism & hospitality sector. ‘Our Edinburgh’ is available to tourism organisations and businesses via ETAG (Edinburgh Tourism Action Group).

For their Destination Leaders Programme group project assignment, this trio of industry professionals chose to focus on the quality of the welcome for visitors to Edinburgh, in line with the Tourism 2020 strategy: ‘Making Scotland a destination of first choice for a high quality, value for money and memorable customer experience, delivered by skilled and passionate people.’  

Read/download the full case study below.

Read the case study