Council aims to make Dundee ‘Europe’s best emerging city break destination’.

Dundee City Council has launched a new five-year strategy to make the city one of Europe’s top tourism destinations.

The tourism action plan 2025-30 is a cooperation between the local council, VisitScotland, and representatives from the city’s visitor attractions, hotels, and tour operators.

It hopes to see Dundee regarded as ‘Europe’s greatest emerging city break destination’ by the end of the decade. The new strategy is announced in the same week as figures show tourism produced £333 million for the Dundee economy last year.

The results showed that visitor counts climbed by 4.6% in 2024 over the previous year. A total of 1.4 million individuals visited the city, a 78% increase from 2014.

The number of full-time equivalent tourism jobs also increased by 2.7%, reaching 3,593. But how can the new plan increase these figures?

Strategic priorities for Dundee tourism

According to the report on the new plan, Dundee’s tourist sector has four strategic targets. They are:

1. Help Dundee’s people to prosper from a thriving visitor economy
2. Create and develop a thriving city together (Our Thriving Places’)
3. Engage visitors with high-quality experiences that play to our strengths as a city (‘Our Memorable Experiences’)
4. Build business resilience, sustainability and profitability in Dundee’s visitor economy. (‘Our Diverse Business’)

The first objective is to include locals in the tourism ‘experience’ by creating more jobs.

The second priority is to increase the “appeal” of the city centre and Dundee’s attractiveness as a destination.

It also aims to enhance the benefits of cruise tourism to the city while also promoting event development.

The third objective will be “enhancing the visitor journey” by creating more bookable activities and increasing the effect of business events in the city. The fourth objective focusses on strengthening ties with the surrounding region.

Year one action plan

The second element of the tourism strategy consists of a one-year action plan.

This document summarises the steps that have been selected as “necessary and achievable” in order to accelerate early success and generate momentum for the next years.

Measures that city tourism leaders hope to implement include:

• Updated/refreshed city branding
• Pride of place campaign for local residents
• Stimulating demand among residents of the Dundee city region

• Gearing up for an increase in cruise ship calls in 2026
• Optimising the shared events calendar to boost visitation from UK/international visitors and add bed-nights in the city
• Continually strengthen the relationship with VisitScotland, taking advantage of Dundee’s strategic positioning as a cool, emerging city destination

Year two to five action plan

The strategy’s third and final component presents a road map for the plan’s “continued implementation and development” through 2030. One of the primary areas of work in this part is increasing the value of cruise ship calls.

To accomplish this, one proposed solution is to look at partnership prospects with Cruise Forth and Cruise Scotland.

This could lead to the establishment of a specific sales strategy and promotion at significant UK and worldwide cruise events.

Another planned step is to enhance the number of “specific neighbourhoods” for visitors, ensuring that the impact of tourism is distributed more equally around Dundee.

This, as detailed in the plan report, can be accomplished by keeping the VisitDundee website and social media channels up to date with new content.

There are also plans to upgrade city navigation points, such as information boards and signage, to reflect the “diversified offer available beyond the city centre”.

One of the longer-term tasks mentioned in the five-year plan is doing research to assist city tourism executives in understanding the markets that add the greatest value to Dundee.

Representatives might benefit from attending UK and international marketing events to expand their network and discover best practices for city promotion and branding.

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