Three years ago, a survey of eleven Highland and island communities found that 78% of residents regarded visitor growth as positive for their area. The same survey, repeated this summer, records 31%.
Nothing dramatic has happened in between. There have been no confrontations of note, no campaigns, no organised opposition. What has changed is quieter and, several of those interviewed suggested, harder to reverse.
The language of the signs
The most visible marker is signage. Researchers photographed roadside and noticeboard signage across the same eleven communities in 2023 and again this year, and catalogued the wording.
In 2023, the most common opening word was “Welcome”. This year it is “Please”.
The signs are not rude. Most are polite to the point of apology. They ask people not to park in passing places, not to light fires on peat, to take waste home, to close gates. They are, in aggregate, a set of instructions where there used to be a greeting.
“Europe’s too hot. The climate has changed. That is not their fault and it is not ours, but it is landing here, and there are eleven of us and four thousand of them, and we are the ones putting up the signs.”
A crofter in Wester Ross
What people actually object to
The survey asked respondents to rank concerns. Visitor numbers came fourth.
Ahead of it were housing costs, the loss of long-term rental stock to short lets, and the absence of the services that would make the numbers manageable — toilets, waste collection, passing places kept clear.
The survey, 2023 to 2026
- Regard visitor growth as positive: 78% → 31%
- Top-ranked concern: housing costs, in all three years
- Visitor numbers as top concern: ranked fourth
- Would support a visitor levy: 44% → 81%
- Signs beginning with “Welcome”: 34 → 9
The distinction people keep drawing
Almost every resident interviewed made the same separation, unprompted, and often within the same sentence. They do not resent visitors. They resent arriving at a situation where they are expected to absorb the consequences of a national economic strategy with a parish-sized budget.
“I have never once been annoyed at a person,” one shopkeeper said. “I have been annoyed at a council, a minister and a booking platform, and none of them have ever been in my shop.”
