Businesses will collapse and jobs will be lost due to the First Minister breaking his promise to the Western Isles over the ferry compensation fund, according to one island hotel boss who is calling for the pledged money to be released now.

Stuart Beaufoy, Managing Director of Cala Hotels, has issued a direct plea to John Swinney in welovestornoway.com and the Scotsman newspaper, for the Scottish Government to make good on their pre-election promise of a £10million Island Resilience Fund.

Mr Beaufoy, also a director of Visit Outer Hebrides, said the goalposts had shifted in terms of the distribution of the fund, both in the initial distribution period and then with the news that only £3million would come this year, with the remainder over the parliamentary term.

The other big problem with the fund, he pointed out, is that Lewis businesses such as theirs cannot apply for the compensation. Instead, it is for businesses in Harris and further south, which are deemed to have been more directly impacted by cancelled services.

That shows “a lack of understanding of how tourism works here”, according to Mr Beaufoy, as “what happens on one island will affect all of us to some degree”.

Mr Beaufoy was part of the management team buyout of the Cala Hotels group a year ago and before that he had been the group’s business development manager for seven years. Prior to that, he was also manager of the Cala and the Cabarfeidh Hotel from 2005 to 2007, totalling around 14 years in hospitality in Lewis.

Cala Hotels group own the Cala Hotel, the Cabarfeidh and the Royal, as well as Hebridean Hopscotch Holidays.

Tourism is the number one industry in the Western Isles yet April was a “disaster” for the island economies, said Mr Beaufoy. 

“At a time when we should have been capitalising on the Easter holidays, many of us were instead dealing with an unprecedented number of cancelled bookings – the likes of which I had never seen before.”

The problem had an immediate effect on tourism but potential visitors “also abandoned longer-term plans because of a lack of confidence that they could even get here in the first place”, he said.

Of course, the disruption was bad news for the Scottish Government too, coming a month before the Holyrood election.

“First Minister John Swinney was one of those who did manage to get to Lewis around that time, and we were told that, should the SNP be re-elected, £10million would be made available within the first 20 days of government to help compensate island businesses.

“As well as being a director of Cala Hotels, I’m also a director of Visit Outer Hebrides, and we personally spoke to Mr Swinney during his visit. We informed him we had spoken to businesses that had struggled to access a share of the £4.4million in funding already made available in 202 and 26, and called for the process to be made much simpler.

“He asked us to put our concerns in an email to his office, which we did.

“It was, however, reassuring to hear that, given the unprecedented disruption we were facing at that time, a £10million Island Resilience Fund would be made available.

“That was until the goalposts shifted.

“Firstly, the 20 days became 100 days. Then, on the First Minister’s return to the Outer Hebrides earlier this month, it was announced that only £3million of the funding would be committed this year, with the remainder to be distributed over the course of this parliamentary term.

“This news was particularly disappointing because, quite simply, it isn’t what we were promised. There had been no previous mention of the £10million being phased, and we have businesses on the islands that need financial support now. The parliamentary term is another five years, so potentially we could be waiting a long time yet for more than two-thirds of the funding.”

To compound the disappointment on Lewis, they learned businesses on the island “were not eligible to apply, despite three-quarters of the Western Isles population living here.”

Mr Beaufoy said: “What this shows, unfortunately, is a lack of understanding of how tourism works here. We are all interlinked. Visitors who come to Lewis will often want to visit other islands too. What happens on one island will affect all of us to some degree. It really is a case of when one part is not working, none of it is working as it should.

“If there is ferry disruption affecting Harris, of course that is going to affect the tourism industry on Lewis too.

“So, to have a situation where businesses on Harris can apply for compensation but businesses on Lewis cannot is bizarre – and is not something that has been explained to us.

“I readily acknowledge that the islands to the south of us have been most affected by the ferry disruption this year and, to be clear, I am certainly not saying that they should receive less financial support.

“But what I, and so many others, are calling for is the full £10million to be made available now – and for it to be available to all of us.

“While we on Lewis may not have suffered as much as the Uists, for example, we still saw reduced capacity due to damage to the Loch Seaforth as well as five full weeks when all new bookings were suspended between Lewis and the mainland.”

And although the ferry situation has “no doubt” improved on Lewis since May, problems continue. These include the loss of the car ferry on the Leverburgh to Berneray route which is “a key service to and from Harris and Uist” and “has a direct impact on us here in Lewis”.

To illustrate his point further, Hebridean Hopscotch Holidays, which is also run by the Cala Hotels Group, simply cannot work without it. These are fly-drive holidays for people travelling end to end between Barra and Lewis.

Mr Beaufoy said “frustrating is an understatement” in terms of the group being unable to claim compensation because it is Lewis based.

“This has been a really hard year for tourism businesses across the islands and, the smaller the business, the harder the impact is likely to have been.

“Many cannot potentially wait another four or five years for the full resilience funding to be released – they need help now. The sad truth is that some businesses will not survive as a result and, while we wait, jobs will be lost.”