IT is one of the most spectacular sights in Scottish culture – the full panoply of the troops at the Edinburgh Tattoo, marching in step to stirring music and cinematic light.
Now the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has the globe in its sights.
Under ambitious new expansion plans, the event is to be staged in a series of spectacular shows in Australia in 2019, China in 2020 and Canada in 2021, with more countries to be announced at a later date.
Brigadier David Allfrey, the chief executive and producer of the Tattoo, said he wanted to double the turnover of the event to £20 million by 2025.
READ MORE: Sheila Hancock film 'will inspire walkers to take to Scotland's hills'
He is also hoping to see its audience increase tenfold, to one billion people.
The Tattoo has been abroad before – staging shows in Australia and New Zealand in the last 15 years.
Now the organisation is considering several venues and variations of performance ideas for the shows in Australia, China and Canada.
Mr Allfrey said that the move was a “step change” for the festival, which remains popular but is bound by the physical size of its annual venue, the esplanade at Edinburgh Castle, which has room for 8,800 seats per show.
The new strategy will be a challenge for the team of 22 people who run the annual festival as they will be producing six shows a year. The usual working method is to plan the Tattoo of that year, plus the two following years.
READ MORE: Edinburgh Film Festival's 2018 programme revealed
The producer said that the board of the Tattoo had decided that this was the right time for the expansion, adding it would bring “huge collateral benefits” to the festival and the city.
The Tattoo sells 220,000 tickets for its Edinburgh show each August, generating £77m annually for the UK economy.
The 2016 performances in Australia and New Zealand generated more than 240,000 tickets sales, generating an economic boost worth £50m in the cities of Melbourne and Wellington.
Mr Allfrey declined to reveal which cities would receive the show, but said that the benefits of working with highly experienced large demonstration show experts in China were clear.
“The Tattoo is one of the greatest shows on earth, attracting audiences across the globe to Edinburgh and selling out year on year,” he said.
“We are a small company but we have big ambitions and are focused on delivering a show that is bigger and better, more technically advanced and visually thrilling every year.
“Edinburgh is an amazing stage and will always be our home, but for us to continue to thrive as an organisation, we need to look beyond the esplanade and the walls of the city.”
He said the “Tattoo is like any other company, it has to grow and it has to get better”.
Work is already under way to expand the annual event’s international reach.
Most recently, the Tattoo’s own house band, The Pipers Trail, has been sent to support cultural exchanges in Germany, the Czech Republic, Norway and China.
Mr Allfrey said that the latest expansion plans had been considered carefully and were being implemented in an “extremely prudent” way.
“This announcement sets out our ambition to continue [our] success, building a strategy for growth that will take us to new territories with new partners, but always with the intent to deliver not just great entertainment but employment, investment and commercial returns as well,” he said.
“Our aim is to continue to grow revenue streams overseas, so we can continue to successfully deliver commercial benefits and reinvest in Scotland, something we already do to the tune of £77m a year and we have the ambition to do so much more.”
READ MORE: Edinburgh Film Festival's 2018 programme revealed
Mr Alfrey said that previous oversees shows highlighted how “there is a huge appetite for The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo internationally”.
He added: “The Tattoo is proud to carry banners for Scotland, Great Britain and a host of international partners to benefit relations between nations, promote trade and investment, encourage tourism – inbound and outbound – and to showcase diverse cultures and heritage.
“We are in the unique position to be able to bring together military and civil societies, link Scotland with the international community and strengthen ties with current and future British allies.
“So we are excited to reveal these plans and invite our key partners, sponsors, supporters and audiences to join us on this journey to new destinations and long-term success.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here