Travelling Around Scotland, an operator that snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and built a flourishing tour company
Despite being told the idea of a tour company providing solely multi-lingual tours wouldn’t be successful, one operator has proven it to be a viable and fruitful venture.
Based in the centre of Edinburgh, just off the Royal Mile, you will find Travelling Around Scotland (Viajar por Escocia), an independent tour company with a difference: Tours are not provided in English, but rather Spanish and Italian.
“Everywhere we went with our idea, people told us that it has no future at all. That there won't be any need for guiding in Spanish or Italian,” says Director, Vicente Figueroa.
“We had to fight for the company to be included in different places. People said, ‘tourists coming here want the tours in English, and they prefer to have drivers who are Scottish'.
“Most of the people in Spain, Italy, or in South America – they don't speak English, or they won't have enough English to understand a 12-hour tour to Loch Ness for example.
“After the first two years, people were starting to look at us and how we were increasing in numbers and growing our fleet.”
One of a kind
We were curious to find out if there are any other operators who provided a multi-lingual service similar to Traveling Around Scotland’s.
“Not like us,” says Vicente. “A couple of operators do tours in English with audio guides, but people prefer to have someone from their own country explaining all of the history and sites.
“One of the biggest companies here, Rabbie’s, said they were thinking of the business plan a long time ago, but we were here, did it so well and grew so fast, that they decided not to go down the Spanish and Italian language route because it would be quite hard to compete with us.
“That made me feel very proud and quite relaxed, that other companies aren't coming for this market,” he says.
Where did it begin?
Before starting the company in 2010, Vicente says he had no connection with the industry.
“I was living in Spain, where I studied art history there. I was working in a museum in the north of Spain, in Santiago de Compostela,” he says
Vicente explains that the industry related to his work. “I was interested in history and the guiding services. The coaches came after.
“I was working with a Spanish company, as a tour leader, and there were a lot of people who came in for these organised tours in Edinburgh and other places, such as different castles around Scotland.
“After a while of doing private tours, me and my business partner decided to start a company.”
It all started with one tour of Loch Ness, at the time, Travelling Around Scotland was renting buses from other companies.
Vicente tells us that he was doing the guiding, and his business partner was supervising the website.
It was in 2012 when he applied for an O-Licence for the first four vehicles, and then bought their first coach – a 16-seater.
Vicente thought that would be something small, and that not a lot of the Spanish were coming over here, but that changed in the following year.
He had to buy two more vehicles, another 16-seater and a 33-seater. In 2013, it started to grow exponentially and had three minicoaches which it was renting every day from April till October.
“In 2015, we went for another full-size, and two 29-seaters. This year we're going to have 16 coaches of different sizes,” he says
The tours
There is a strong need for the multi-lingual service in Scotland he tells us.
As of October 2017, Scotland had 89,000 visits from Spaniards, with Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness being the top cities visited, and £40 million being spent.
However, in 2012-13, the company saw the opportunity to provide tours in Italian as there are more Italians who visit the country (123,000 in 2017 according to VisitScotalnd), and Vicente puts this down to the Italian tourists being “more concentrated in summer; Spaniards come all year round.”
Tours are available throughout the year.
Vicente says that in 2011 it planned to close for Christmas, as he thought Spaniards and Italians would want to spend Christmas at home. But soon discovered they were wrong, and in fact, Christmas is high season for them.
“We now have to open Christmas day, and provide a tour on 24 and 26 December; Spanish people, they don't have ‘Boxing day’.”
The main tour Travelling Around Scotland provides is to Loch Ness, and it has four ways to see the area. As well as tours to Inverness and Fort Augustus; Stirling Castle from Edinburgh; and a couple of distilleries in the central belt; St Andrews, Skye, Oban and Isle of Mull.
The operator provides around 15-16 wide-ranging services which cover single- and multiple-day tours for all ages – 365 days a year.
There are two excursions that venture across the border into England which are a one-day tour to Alnwick Castle, and another one to Hadrian's Wall.
“We ask customers to see if they'd like to go to, for example, the Lake District or York, but it looks like when people are coming to Scotland they focus purely on Scotland,” says Vicente.
“We have more people asking for Orkney, and other islands and further north in Scotland rather than into England. I think tourists see them as separate destinations.”
Who leads the tours?
There are 25 drivers, who are also the tour leaders – all employed from countries where the desired language is spoken.
“We advertise this job in Spain for people who want to come over here, most of our staff we recruit from Spain,” Vicente tells us. “Italy as well, one from Venezuela, some from South America too.
“No one is English,” he says. However, the door isn’t closed for those with English as their first language wishing to become a tour leader.
“We would take someone on if they were fluent in Spanish or Italian. We had an Irish man fluent in Italian for a while, but he decided to go back to Italy.”
Driver training
All of Travelling Around Scotland’s drivers are in-house and must go through local preparation to study and know the places.
“We spend a lot of time and money on the drivers, to ensure they do a good job. We never use agency drivers,” Vicente says.
“The drivers have a script and they have exams on how they guide. Before they start to tour they do some driving and guiding at the same time without passengers – just to get used to it and to the microphone.”
The future
The company is looking at expanding, and is applying for more authorisation on the licence before summer 2018 – with the aim of having more buses.
Where does Vicente see the company in five-10 years? He wants it to carry on doing what is already doing and maybe do a hybrid between the touring side of business, and providing a private hire service.
“We thought the tours would be something small, Loch Ness, Stirling, Loch Lomond and St Andrews. In a few years – working from our living room in our shared flat – we went from nothing to all this. So we're very happy.”
