JOHN Black and George Herraghty (Letters, July 30) deserve applause for bringing to our attention the problems of the Scottish infrastructure in respect of the tourism industry, and especially the lack of public toilet accommodation available throughout the country.
You published a letter of mine on May 1, 2017 regarding the closure of the public toilets at Lochranza, Arran, and a year on we are getting into a much worse situation with local authorities closing facilities, VisitScotland centres under closure, and bank branches closing or ATM facilities being withdrawn. Yet this week you report an increase of 11.4 per cent of visitors to distilleries ("Record year for whisky tourism", The Herald, August 1) and the huge increase in media tourism through Outlander, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter fans should be delighting us all were it not for the woeful facilities that they are presented with.
I have the wonderful job of taking tourists round Scotland to see many of the historic sites and iconic sights of our land, but it is getting to the stage where tours are having to be constrained by distance between toilet facilities. We also have to consult mobile bank schedules to find out if we can access these as many American tourists do not seem to use ATMs.
It is long past time that we were expanding the facilities for tourists, not closing them. How about combining toilets, tourism and banking services into supercentres? I'm sure the tourists would approve.
Allan Halliday,
197 Renfrew Road, Paisley.
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