The Scottish Accommodation Occupancy Survey (SAOS) gathers and analyses data on occupancy levels in hotels, guest houses, B&Bs, self-catering, hostels and caravan & camping parks.
The Scottish Accommodation Occupancy Survey measures the occupancy of the serviced and non-serviced tourist accommodation sector in Scotland.
The survey is optional and therefore is a sample of the tourism accommodation sector in Scotland. Each accommodation provider fills out occupancy information on a monthly basis and results are collated annually.
This data contains no sensitive, personal information.
Accommodation providers self-select the location, tariff and size of establishment as they feel appropriate. The information contained in this report has been published in good faith on the basis of information supplied to VisitScotland. VisitScotland cannot guarantee the accuracy of information in this report and accept no responsibility for any error or misrepresentation. All liability for loss, disappointment, negligence or other damage caused by reliance on the information contained in this report or for any other reason is hereby excluded.
The accuracy and reliability of the data depend on the number of survey participants and the correct interpretation of the Scottish Government's 2013-2014 Urban Rural Classification. This divides geographic locations across Scotland in six categories:
Large Urban Areas (settlements of over 125,000 people); Other Urban Areas (settlements of 10,000 to 124,999 people); Accessible Small Towns (settlements of 3,000 to 9,999 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more); Remote Small Towns (settlements of 3,000 to 9,999 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more); Accessible Rural (settlements of less than 3,000 people and within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more); Remote Rural (settlements of less than 3,000 people and with a drive time of over 30 minutes to a settlement of 10,000 or more).
Any discrepancies between weekday/weekend and total occupancy rates are due to not all accommodation providers submitting weekday/weekend data.
An asterisk (*) denotes low sample size which makes figures much less reliable.
SAOS is a voluntary monthly survey and participation of accommodation providers varies across type and time. For this reason, the survey provides only occupancy rate data (expressed in percentages) which can be more reliably compared across years.
This data and summary report are also available from VisitScotland.
Accommodation statistics are a key part of the system of tourism statistics in the EU. Data is collected by national authorities of the Member States and are compiled according to a harmonised methodology established by EU regulations before transmission to Eurostat.
This data is updated annually.
This data is not routinely revised.
This slice of multidimensional data is not a Linked Data resource in the database: it's a virtual resource (i.e. you can't query it by SPARQL). But does have a permanent unique URL which can be bookmarked.