Fife Tourism Partnership

The CruiseForth Project was established by the local tourism association in West Fife in 2012, to encourage visitor businesses to work better together, and to promote the visibility of Dunfermline and West Fife to cruise passengers arriving at Rosyth. Over the 10 years since then, the project has grown to cover all ports for Edinburgh (adding Leith, Newhaven and South Queensferry, with some support in Dundee too), involves around 50 volunteers, and has become an established contributor to the cruise industry engaging with businesses across East Central Scotland and beyond.  

In 2022 the cruise season recovered better than many had expected, with over 100 cruise calls to the Forth, and increasing passenger occupancy as concerns over the Covid Virus lessened.  

At Rosyth, the local welcome and assistance with local information, maps and onward travel, provided by the volunteers was much appreciated by the ships, the port authority, and the passengers and crew. This benefited local businesses including the regular local taxi drivers who attend the port. In addition to local runs to Inverkeithing Station and Dunfermline, many longer journeys were facilitated via the volunteers' interaction and advice. The calls of Viking Mars and Fred Olsen Balmoral in September, each over two days, provided unprecedented demand for the Dunfermline Courtesy Bus service. 250 passengers and crew from the Mars, and around 450 from the Balmoral, tested the resources of the volunteer team to the extent that an additional 61 seat bus had to be borrowed from the Shore Excursion company to cope with the demand.  

Similar assistance has been provided at other ports, and information shared with visitor businesses across Fife, the Lothians and Tayside.  

Looking forward, CruiseForth is already preparing for 2023, identifying new cruise friendly businesses across East Central Scotland ready to receive cruise passengers 

Cruise Forth | Information and attractions for cruise ship passengers arriving at South Queensferry or Rosyth on the Forth

We hope you are enjoying the new look of the Fife For Industrywebsite. The Tourism Team at Fife Council, who look after the Fife For Industryand Welcome to Fife, have been working hard over the past few months to make sure that we are supporting the industry through these turbulent times as much as possible. There have been a few changes to the team recently, so we thought this was an ideal opportunity to let you know who we are and what our focus is.

Karen Christie and Gillian McCracken focus on marketing in the team. Earlier this year Karen led on a project to refresh the Welcome to Fife website, and it is now looking great and easy to navigate. There is new content being added all the time so keep looking, and sharing with visitors. Gillian is currently working on the roll out of our QR code, which directs people to the website. This QR code can be used by businesses across Fife, and also look for it popping up at key locations including bus stations and public toilets!

Rosalyn Watson focusses on policy and projects, as well as looking after the Fife For IndustryBoard. Rosalyn has been the driving force behind the refresh of this website. She is also about to launch a business enewsletter. She has developed a tourism sustainability action plan, so look out for more on that soon. As the youngest member of the team we have let her loose on Tik Tok and she has been enjoying building up a following for Welcome to Fife there.

Linn Williamson joined the team earlier this year to support the Local Tourist Associations. She has been out and about, meeting businesses, encouraging them to get involved in Fife For Industryactivity and join their Local Tourist Association. She has also organised workshops and networking events. This work has been invaluable in bringing us closer to the industry, finding out what the key issues are, and how we can help, as well as strengthening the tourism offering in the six LTA areas.

Holly Clark is our events specialist, working with events organisers to provide a diverse and vibrant programme across Fife. She administers the Fife Strategic Events Fund, and has just launched the Fife Events Development Fund – a great opportunity for all sorts of new and existing events to secure some desperately needed funding after a very difficult few years for the sector.

I’m Hilary Roberts and I am the Tourism Partnerships Manager. This is just a snapshot of what my team has been working on recently, and I’m very proud of everything they have achieved since I came into post last July. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to promote an area as beautiful and welcoming as Fife, and look forward to building on this over the coming months, ensuring that our tourism strategy and the work we do is relevant to tourism in a post-Covid world, and building our visitor numbers back up to pre-2020 levels. Keep an eye out for our newsletter that will let you know more about the work of the team, and opportunities for you to get involved, or contact us if you would like to have a chat.

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