Case study: National Trust for Scotland North East Regional Strategy
Background
The National Trust for Scotland is Scotland’s largest membership organisation and works to protect, care for, share and speak up for Scotland’s heritage – both historic places and natural landscapes. The north east of Scotland is an area with a high concentration of properties (as shown on the map with their overlapping catchment areas) and the Trust was keen to develop a portfolio approach to managing these in order to capitalise on opportunities and avoid cannibalisation of markets.
Purpose
The purpose of Scotinform’s work was to provide the Trust with a framework to allow them to clarify the role and potential of each property in the region, taking into account local and regional market conditions, competitors, and commercial potential.
Methodology
Scotinform provided a detailed area profile for each property to better understand its relationship to key demand drivers. This included:
- The size of the population within a specified drive time, and the extent to which this will grow in the future
- The Mosaic UK profile of the catchment area and the extent to which this matched core National Trust for Scotland markets for visits and membership (informed by previous Scotinform work to profile databases)
- Traffic counts on the closest road, taken as a proxy for both regional and tourist visitor traffic in the local area
We then worked with the Trust’s commercial team to develop a series of metrics to understand the commercial performance and potential of each property. This involved considerable discussion with the project team to decide on the most appropriate measures.
Scotinform also reviewed the competitor sets for key commercial areas: visitor attractions, destination catering and retail; visitor accommodation; weddings and events. Competitors were plotted on a map to enable us to understand where the gaps and opportunities might lie.
The strategy was developed during an all-day workshop at one of the properties with twenty members of staff from national and regional teams. A dashboard was created by Scotinform for each property, setting out each metric and ranking it to show how it compared against others in the region. In order to try to overcome internal bias or preconceived thoughts, the property dashboards were presented anonymously and the names were not revealed until later in the session.
The properties were mapped on a matrix to assess their market potential and current performance, providing a clear framework for evaluating each one and identifying opportunities for development or repositioning.
Impacts
The process was a new one for the Trust and we are very grateful to everyone who shared their time and expertise with us in its development and at the workshop.
The workshop discussions were developed into a series of recommendations for each property and these are now being incorporated into a Regional Strategy.
Consideration is underway as to how this approach might be best utilised to support decision making across the whole Trust portfolio.
“We have worked with Scotinform on a range of projects over the last eighteen months. Working with different teams across the organisation, they have helped the Trust continue to build its understanding of audiences and develop insights and toolkits that can support our decision making process”
Paula Whitelaw, Head of Heritage Planning, National Trust for Scotland
Why Scotinform?
We combine our backgrounds in the commercial world with an understanding of heritage properties and audiences – and loved being able to consider both in this project.
Our Mosaic work meant that we had a good understanding of current and potential NTS audiences and where they were located within the region.
We are flexible and imaginative in our methodology. We worked closely with the project team to develop an approach and workshop format that could deliver on the day. What we delivered was not what was first envisaged, but was a much better fit for the project.
We understand that for organisations like NTS the commercial opportunities should work to support the charitable purpose, and can provide a structure and framework that strikes a balance between the two.