Managing revenue in Scottish visitor attractions

Revenue management is often identified as a potentially valuable tool for addressing some of the challenges currently facing visitor attractions. This article sets out to investigate the adoption of revenue-management practices by Scottish paid-entry attractions and examines how this usage has changed over the period 1999–2009. It begins with a review of the literature published over that decade and then outlines the research methods used to gather the data used in the study. Key findings indicate that while there is significant potential for Scottish visitor attractions to employ revenue-management practices, their current use is limited both in terms of scope and sophistication. Greater adoption of revenue-management practices, such as price differentiation and the management of revenue information, is evident across the sector. However, attractions charging higher admission prices and with greater levels of turnover tend to be those adopting the more advanced revenue-management practices. The range of revenue-generation streams employed by Scottish attractions has widened over the decade, as has the range of pricing mechanisms employed. The findings indicate the value of longitudinal research and indicate the need for further work in this area.