Twitter tourism and travel chat #scotlandhour is trying something different this year.

The Scottish travel chat celebrated its 5^th birthday in September 2016, and was the first Twitter tourism ‘hour’ chat exclusively dedicated to promoting Scotland and travel, devised by our founder, Dougie Baird.  The takeover is our ‘makeover’, and we hope the #scotlandhour community will get behind it and continue to offer your amazing support.

Starting in February 2017, and for the subsequent months of April, June, August, October and December, we’ll be collaborating with tourism and travel tweeters and bloggers to allow them to take over a themed chat for the entire month, from their own Twitter channels (with some support from the core #scotlandhour team, of course!)

Why are we doing this? We are keen to reach new audiences and more Scotland fans and travellers across the globe, so we’d love to work with tweeters, digital influencers and bloggers with an international reach and/ or significant audiences relevant to our calendar themes.

We’re also counting on our established #scotlandhour community to keep the spirit of the monthly chats going by answering Scotland travel questions and offering Scotland travel tips using our tag.

For our takeover months, we already have some social influencers and tweeters in our sights, and we are looking forward to creating some great partnerships for #scotlandhour themed chats in 2017.

How will the takeover work and what will it involve? Much like co-hosting, takeover hosts will:

• Prepare 5 #scotlandhour questions relevant to the themed calendar month and agree these with the #scotlandhour team before making them live on their own channels – the questions will also continue to be available on the scotlandhour.com blog
• Promote the chat, share #scotlandhour content and engage with the #scotlandhour community regarding the #scotlandhour chat from the start of the chosen month up until and including the month-end Wednesday evening chat
• Communicate news of the #scotlandhour chat to new audiences and networks, for example, via blogs, Instagram and other channels
• Manage the #scotlandhour chat on the night, including posting the questions on Twitter channels and responding to questions and comments
• Where possible, measure engagement statistics for the #scotlandhour chat and share them with the core SH team

It may be that one or more takeover volunteers want to get involved and work together. We are open to ideas. If you are interested, please contact Lesley Judge or Aileen Lamb. DM us on Twitter: @lesleyjudge @aileenlamb

You’ll find our 2017 calendar themes on the tabs on our home page and in the list below.

The next #scotlandhour chat celebrates the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology and will take place on Wednesday 22 February at 9pm and guess what – it’s a takeover month!

Scotlandhour Twitter Chat Calendar 2017 (9-10pm)       *takeover months

Wednesday 25 January: Smiles

Wednesday 22 February: Year of Architecture, History, Heritage*

Wednesday 22 March: Unique Places to Stay

Wednesday 26 April: Festivals and Events*

Wednesday 31 May: Artisan Food and Drink Producers

Wednesday 28 June: Routes and Trails*

Wednesday 26 July:  Sea Scotland (Rivers, Canals, Boats, Cruises, Watersports)

Wednesday 30 August: Social Scotland– blogger takeover*

Wednesday 27 September: Green Tourism

Wednesday 25 October: Halloween & Winter Festivals*

Wednesday 29 November: Digi Tourism: Best Apps, best sources of online travel inspiration

Wednesday 13 December: Christmas & New Year (earlier date for convenience)*

We’ll be looking for co-hosts for the regular months of March, May, July, September and November.