COLIN CAMPBELL: Inverness enjoys huge tourist influx without any of the problems

Did we actually go through that? Did it actually happen? That's what I still hear people say when for some passing reason the dark, dismal days of Covid come to mind.

It was an almost surreal experience from start to finish. And it was never stranger than at this time of year when there wasn't a tourist within 100 miles of the Highland capital, and every hotel, restaurant and pub was locked and bolted. The desolate summer riverside was an especially hard sight to take.

The Covid days now seem like a distant nightmare. Coach parties and carloads of visitors have arrived here from all over the world. And as you stroll along Ness Walk you can come across some interesting people.

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I met a couple in their 30s who were coming in my direction with an unusual looking little dog, and as I also had canine company in the way of things we found ourselves engaged in some chat.

They were Americans, and it immediately struck me it must have been an expensive, time-consuming and complicated businesses taking their dog over with them. "We're from New York city and we're here for a week," the young woman said. I thought she meant they were in Inverness for a week as part of a countrywide tour. But no. "We're in Inverness for a week, we flew from the States two days ago," she said. "And we fly back to New York at the weekend."

And they'd brought the dog? I couldn't quite believe it. "He goes everywhere we go, as in everywhere," she said. That's taking puppy love to a whole new level.

When I worked for a couple of nights a week in a riverside hotel several years ago the place was busily but cheerily packed with global visitors, particularly from the USA, and also from Australia, many of them elderly folk on coach tours.

The Americans, paying up to £200-a-night, were the most courteous people you could ever meet. With them, it was all: "May I, please, and thank you". Big-mouthed and arrogant? I never came across one who fitted that jaded stereotype.

The Australians were interesting and friendly too. They'd sit in the lounge talking on their phones at midnight to relatives back home having their lunch in the middle of the day. They'd crossed the world for a holiday in Inverness and Scotland and would then return to their lives in Sydney and Melbourne and Bendigo and Ballarat. If I didn't have work to do, I could have explored life in the Antipodes with them all night.

We are fortunate indeed with the kind of visitors who flood into the city every summer. They add colour and vibrancy to our streets and from New York dog lovers to camera-festooned Japanese and families from across the UK, they are excited to be here but are respectful of their surroundings and respectable in their behaviour.

From Venice to Majorca protests have erupted over the swarm of tourists virtually overwhelming these places. And don't even mention the drunken invasion - mainly by Brits - that afflicts Benidorm.

We experience none of these problems, in Inverness at least. And during their vacations these folk spend, spend, spend. The best room overlooking the riverside in one long-established hotel at peak season is £900-a-night. Not many will splash out to that extent but all these folk who sustain jobs and bankroll the local economy are hugely welcome.

And amid all this, as Inverness and the Highlands becomes anchored as a leading go-to place on the world travel map, tourism bosses are intent on closing the information centre in the city centre. The other day I looked across at this bright and welcoming venue there to greet visitors as I threaded my way along a packed High Street and thought: are they completely insane?

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