Infrastructure Failures

Lack of Broadband
Chef owner Pete Gottgens explained: “We have found ourselves severely hampered by the failure to date of broadband infrastructure reaching us. We know that plans are progressing to give everyone broadband access throughout Scotland but we know we are not the only rural tourism business that still does not have broadband access, and timing of delivery of broadband is still not certain.

“Tourism businesses rely increasingly on the Internet for promotion and sales. Equally, customers from overseas and within the UK use it to compare destinations and facilities to visit and stay. The Internet and broadband access are the lifeblood of rural and remote tourism businesses and without it businesses are inhibited from keeping clients adequately up to date, being seen as a prospective destination or facility to visit and closing the sale.

“Failure to present the Scottish rural tourism product – or products of quality – will impede Scotland’s ability to compete and meet whatever growth targets are set.”

His dilemma is shared by the local farming community who - for the same reasons of broadband inadequacy - are faced with the impossibility of making obligatory online data lodgements to fulfill British nad European regulations regarding cattle movement, tagging, sales etc and their strictly time-limited returns about land usage.

He continued: “The second issue is the cost of bringing higher capacity electricity on to our site. We are desperately trying to eliminate the use of fossil fuels such as gas and oil in order to reduce our carbon footprint.

“Ardeonaig Hotel is already a user of electricity and we have undertaken an audit to assess power use and energy and recycling opportunities. We still need 3 phase electricity brought on to the site for our expanded facilities. We have been advised by SSE that the costs of bringing upgraded load capacity/3 phase electricity on to the site will be an additional £30,000.”

Pete Gottgens concluded: “We don’t believe we are the only rural tourism business that is being asked to make what appears to be very high extra costs for extending power usage (for which we pay of course). This extra cost also appears to us to discriminate against rural businesses and will impede investment and decisions to reinvest in rural and remote areas.

“This means that rural business owners are less likely to invest in keeping the product up-to-date to meet visitors’ needs.