Tourism representatives have been swamped with calls from anxious operators after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's announcement over potential holiday restrictions.
The First Minister said the Scottish Government is currently preparing a revised strategic framework to be published next week for gradually emerging from lockdown.
It will advise against booking Easter holidays either overseas or within Scotland, she said, while summer staycations may be possible.
Marc Crothall, chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Alliance said: "Since the First Minister’s announcement this afternoon, we have had an influx of correspondence from tourism businesses extremely anxious at the First Minister’s indication that an Easter reopening is highly unlikely and that a question mark has been placed over domestic travel this summer.
"The STA board will meet with the First Minister in the coming weeks and take the opportunity to update Ms Sturgeon on the desperate state that the industry is in.
"I know of numerous businesses who are wholly reliant on being able to trade again at Easter in order to stay solvent; today’s indication that this is highly unlikely will I know serve as a crushing blow to many."
READ MORE: Overseas summer holidays 'highly unlikely' warns Sturgeon
He added: "On a positive note, I know that our industry is breathing a huge sigh of relief as a result of the Finance Secretary’s announcement that she will extend 100% business rates relief to the sector for another year.
"There is however no doubt that upweighted targeted support must be allocated to the tourism sector if businesses are not going to be able to trade viably for months to come and the STA will continue to press both the Westminster and Scottish Governments for this."
David Lonsdale, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, said it gave the news a cautious welcome.
He said: "Its encouraging that so-called non-essential shops are being considered as a priority when it comes to re-opening the economy after lockdown.
"We also look forward to the publication of the refreshed Strategic Framework, which will hopefully deliver a more consistent and visible approach to Covid restrictions after two months of chopping and changing to the rules affecting retail."
Russell Borthwick: Is anyone listening? This is an economic emergency too
THE Centre for Economic Performance recently suggested that up to 900,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, accounting for 2.5 million jobs, are at risk of imminent closure in the first few months of this year.
Did that get your attention?
READ MORE: If we fail to take the right decisions now and implement them with urgency, the outcome will be years of different physical and mental health, social and economic challenges that will dwarf those seen so far.
Whisky veteran to head biotech company
Former Bacardi UK operations director Iain Lochhead has been appointed chief executive of Horizon Proteins, which turns under-utilised “co-products” from whisky distillation into nutrients for the aqua and animal feed industries.
Sign up
You can now have the bulletin and the top business news stories sent direct to your email inbox twice-daily, and Business Week for the weekly round-up on Sunday:
https://www.heraldscotland.com/my/account/register/
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel