January 2022

January 2022

Our quarterly business monitor is designed to gather industry feedback on recent business performance and provide a look ahead to the short, medium and long term.

In early January, we launched the latest wave of our business monitor, looking at the period from October to end December 2021, and we share some of the key highlights below.

When asked about visitor numbers for the past quarter, the picture was not so positive for October to December 2021, with many responding businesses highlighting that they had “fewer than normal” visitors across all 4 categories in question: the local area/elsewhere in Scotland/rest of UK/overseas. Clearly the emergence of the VOC Omicron strain, and resulting guidance, in the latter part of the quarter directly contributed to this. This also had an impact on the number of enquiries and bookings being received by businesses.

When compared to the previous quarter, significantly fewer businesses (a quarter of the sample) were intending to invest significantly in their business in the near future.

Looking ahead, 6 in 10 responding businesses stated they were quite/extremely optimistic about business performance over the next 24 months. As would be expected, this was markedly lower when considering the next 3 and 12 months.

You can access a full summary of the results from our January business monitor below. Do look out for the next monitor, which will be coming out early April. Please fill it in, and share with your networks.

To discuss any of these findings, the monitor in general or any other aspect of Insights at VisitAberdeenshire, contact insights@visitabdn.com.