A place cannot be two things at once
Tourism in Shetland is not based on shopping streets or theme parks. It is based on the quality of the place: landscape, wildlife, quietness, remoteness, and culture.
Industrialisation can change those qualities — sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly — and often in ways that are hard to reverse. This page explains the tension calmly, without assuming an answer.
The basic point
A community can host many types of activity. But some combinations create a real conflict. Tourism sells a place as calm, distinctive, and “worth travelling for”. Heavy industrial development often requires the opposite: construction traffic, large infrastructure, and permanent changes to land and sea use.
The question is not whether industry is “good” or “bad”. The question is whether Shetland is being asked to sacrifice one long-term economy in order to enable another — and whether that trade-off has ever been made explicit and democratically agreed.
1) The tourism product is the place
For many visitors, Shetland’s value is not a single attraction. It is the experience of space, weather, coastline, wildlife, and the sense that the place has its own tempo. Change the place-quality, and the product changes.
2) Visible footprint
Industrialisation is not just “out of sight” offshore. It can include substations, converter stations, widened roads, heavy vehicle movements, new high-capacity cables, overhead lines, and even pylons — features that were never previously normal requirements for Shetland.
3) Cumulative impact
One project can be argued as manageable. The risk is cumulative impact: multiple developments, multiple consents, multiple “upgrades” — each justified in isolation, but together changing the character of a place.
4) The “brand contradiction”
Tourism promotion often relies on images of clean horizons, nature, and tranquillity. If the lived experience becomes dominated by construction, industrial views, and infrastructure corridors, then the tourism proposition becomes internally inconsistent.
5) Displacement and uncompensated loss
Views, heritage settings, and wild places are economic assets. If they are degraded, the loss is not merely aesthetic — it can reduce tourism value without any compensation mechanism. A community can be left carrying the long-term cost while benefits are extracted elsewhere.
6) A fair question about consent
If a development changes Shetland’s landscape and planning culture for decades, what level of consent should be required? And who should have the power to grant that consent — locally, nationally, or corporately?
Questions worth answering clearly
- Which landscapes and seascapes are effectively “non-negotiable” if tourism is to remain viable?
- What is the carrying capacity of Shetland’s roads, services, and communities during major construction phases?
- How are cumulative impacts measured — across multiple consents and multiple sectors?
- If tourism value is reduced, who is accountable, and what remedy exists?
- Is the trade-off explicit, or is it occurring by default?
These are not rhetorical questions. They are the kinds of questions an island community has to ask before irreversible change.