VisitScotland, the national tourism agency for Scotland, used a scenario-planning process to untangle the complexity of the forthcoming war in Iraq. The scenarios explored the impact of such a war on tourism against a backdrop of an economic environment of failing equity markets and GDP. In 2003, Scotland was on the verge of a recession, and VisitScotland wanted to know how war would affect this economic environment and, simultaneously, how this would affect different tourism markets. VisitScotland constructed four scenarios: how the West was won, global Northern Ireland, new dawn, and into the valley of death. The scenarios helped the organization develop policies and actions to deal with contingencies in each scenario. More importantly, the article shows how VisitScotland managed the process, what it did, and policy implications for the future.
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