Can our roads sustain increase in tourist traffic?

The new deep water facility at Arnish will significantly increase the number and size of cruise ships visiting the islands.

Island communities should be thinking about how they can benefit from an anticipated influx of cruise ship tourists when the Stornoway deep water terminal becomes operational.

This was the advice from Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, deputy chief executive Calum Iain Maciver, following a presentation to councillors last week from the chief executive of Stornoway Pier and Harbour Authority, Alex Macleod.

Mr Maciver said the Comhairle’s economic development team would “support and help communities with ideas that come forward”.

They recognised the importance of spreading the economic benefits around the islands.

In his presentation, Mr Macleod said that they expect there to be 70,000 cruise ship passengers coming into Stornoway this year from 103 vessels, up from 20,000 in 2022 from 65 vessels. Three of this year’s visiting cruise ships will each carry more than 1000 passengers.

“Going forward,” he added, “it will be more days with bigger numbers – therefore bigger opportunities”.

However, he said they would “not allow” the kind of influx seen at Kirkwall in Orkney which has had up to 7000 cruise ship tourists in a single day. “It would over-run our community”, said Mr Macleod.

He said that there are a number of “very good excursions” for cruise ship visitors “but we need to create a lot more” through, for example, Gaelic culture and the Uig Chessmen.

However, some councillors expressed real concern about whether the islands’ roads to destinations like Luskentyre, Callanish and Carloway are capable of sustaining the traffic which the cruise ships are expected to generate.

In response, Mr Maciver said the failure of the £18 million bid for Levelling-Up funds had been “hugely disappointing” as their own resources were nowhere near enough to meet the demands.

This funding was “absolutely critical if we are going to achieve what we want to achieve”.

Mr MacIver said the feed-back they had received so far suggested to them that “the bids were good but required some technical tweaks, but there is certainly enough encouragement for us to re-submit”.