How competitive is Scotland in today's travel market?

After being away for quite a while and experiencing a bit more of the Pacific area, and reading some excellent books and articles on many such Business and Travel related items, it has really highlighted as I have said before that the future belongs to the Pacific Rim.

In his book Adventure Capitalist, US investor Jim Rogers slates Ireland and Iceland for learning Gaelic and Danish respectively. He says that he would have his children learn Spanish or one of the Chinese languages.

He backed this up when he moved from New York to Singapore and indeed has brought up his kids to be bilingual.

The infrastucture is growing rapidly in Asia. Rome built its empire with roads, Britain relied on her navy for seapower, and the USA liknked her nation through rail then air travel.

Asia seems to be heading towards High Speed Rail. China have ambitious plans to link up the major cities and beyond.

When returning home to Glasgow I checked in for my flights at KL Sentral Railway Station. I got my boarding pass and waved bye to my heavy luggage until some 20-odd hours later I picked them up off the carousel in Glasgow. Then I hopped on to the KLIA Express which took me 28 pain free minutes later to KLIA Airport.

Impressive or what?

And our authorities in Scotland cancelled the GARL (Glasgow Airport Rail Link). Plus they cancelled the 10 lane superhighway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, our two major cities. For an industrialised nation, and one that has given the world so many incredible engineers, I feel we are so far behind the rest of the world that it is embarrassing.

We have to invest in communication and transport or else we are doomed. The M74 extention is 30 years overdue.

The Kingston Bridge is nearly done and do we have another high capacity bridge being built? Or a wider tunnel under the Clyde? No.

In San Francisco, the Oakland Bay Bridge (more impressive in my opinion than the Golden Gate) is being replaced by a new bridge being built side by side. The relief bridge will take traffic going one way and the old bridge the other.

So if Scotland is serious about being a true world class travel destination then we need to improve our infrastructure. It is simple.

And remember what we pay out now will be worth more in the long run, as a pound today will be worth less in 10 years time.

Perhaps the 2014 Commonwealth Games will see the GARL being built and even the 10 lane superhighway. If not then these 'savings' are false economies, in my opinion.

We are light years behind Asia.