After trying to ignore the Loch Ness Monster for years and diverting potential tourists to other attractions around the area, the tourist agency, VisitBritain, has decided to recruit the monster into their services with a promotion drive in France, Holland and the USA. The ad campaign cleverly uses some themes of monster hunting as a route into promoting other aspects of Highland tourism.
Back in 2008, a bid to make the Loch Ness area a UNESCO world heritage site carefully ensured no mention of the monster was made. One would have also thought the repeated attempts of sceptics to reduce the mysterious creature to logs, waves, birds and liars would have had its effect. Evidently not, people still like monsters while bow waves and cormorants don't cut the mustard.
From my own point of view, I am ambivalent about increased tourism around the loch. The increased traffic noise on the loch is, in my opinion, a deterrent to the creatures surfacing. That doesn't mean they never surface near boats, it just means that as the noise coverage over the loch increases, open water sightings proportionally decrease.
For me, it also makes it more difficult to find secluded spots for trap cameras as tourists like to clamber along the shore lines. On the other hand, more tourists means more potential videos and photographs - assuming this is not cancelled by the increased noise. Oh well, maybe I should only come up in the winter.
It's a hard one to call, more visitors more chances of pic/video. More visitors, financial benefit to the community of the Loch length.
ReplyDeleteI don't know, good or bad. Having said that, it's no big issue as to Nessie hunters. Although the extra traffic noise maybe a concern as to GB post.
I couldn't believe how busy it was around the loch when i visited in october last year.Car park full in Ft Augustus & where steve feltham is at the Dores inn was stuffed full of people on the beach...If i were the monster i'd keep a very low profile, of course its still very peaceful & quiet in parts but but the overall increase in visitors was a real surprise..good to see the Loch ness exhibition in Drum is doing its best on the 'no such thing as nessie' front...great for tourism that !!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is very much a sceptical exhibition with the sturgeon awaiting you at the end, but to be fair they did add a new extension which includes first hand eyewitness reports you can listen to with headphones. Thankfully, there is no attempt to "interpret" these sightings for visitors. One may say the other exhibition balances thngs out by going to the opposite extreme - they accept almost anything as evidence (well,last time I looked).
DeleteAgreeed about tourist bustle, when I was there last August it was a distraction. How many can the loch take? Mind you, its only for a few months a year before normality returns.
"Oh well, maybe I should only come up in the winter."
ReplyDeleteNessie's probably thinking the same thing.:)
'Mind you, its only for a few months a year before normality returns'
ReplyDeleteThats how it used to be in cornwall but the tourist season seems to start at the beginning of march until the end of october now...fingers crossed it doesn't go mad like that on the loch...having said that i shall be up again in october this year...
I'm planning to come up in May, with some side trips probably to the West coast. Does anyone know what climate change is doing to the midge season?
ReplyDeleteLast year was bad, extra rain just brought them out in clouds!
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