How Ardardan Estate work with the travel trade

4 minute read • Last updated: 10 March 2025

Ardardan Estate is a family run agritourism business in Renfrewshire. The estate is a diversified farm where they run Ardardan's Farm Deli & Gift Shop, Tearoom and Farm Experience venue with Monty's Family Farm Park alongside.

The Aikman family have been farming for over 25 years with “farming, food and family at the core of everything” they do. The estate is set on the banks of the River Clyde, just 45 minutes from Glasgow on an iconic tourist route up the West coast of Scotland. 

We spoke with Sue Aikman who runs the business development and marketing side of the operation.

Working with the Travel Trade

Through trial runs with some special regular customers we have refined our tour to create an experience that we would love to do and we are extremely proud to host!

Sue and her family are proud Scots and love to show visitors the best their region offers. They want to showcase what food and drink Scotland produces. And they also want their visitors to experience the amazing  welcome that Scotland is known for.

It wasn’t long before they saw an opportunity to grow the business by working with the travel trade. “We are delighted to work with travel trade partners to reach the right visitors who will enjoy our experience and part of the world.”

Developing travel trade ready products

Ardardan Estate has been working informally with local businesses by running tours for years.

“We found that from feedback from visitors in our busy farm shop and tearoom that there was a demand and that creating a farm experience product would work.”

The next step was developing new products. They wanted to create experiences that showed visitors all they offer at the Estate.

They did various personal excursions to research different types of tours and talked to as many people as they could to get a real flavour to what would be the best way to run their experience.

One of the products they came up with is the ‘Highland Coo with a View’ experience. “This is a brilliant insight into our farm incorporating a tour on our tractor & trailer to meet our cows, other animals on the farm and get brilliant pictures with our amazing natural landscape backdrop.”

Sue emphasised the importance of local produce in their experiences. “Food is a huge part of everything we do at Ardardan so we are delighted to be able to treat all guests to breakfast on arrival and enjoy a browse around our farm and gift shop too.”

Networking and travel trade events

Products from Ardandan Estate
© Ardandan Estate

“Attending networking events with VisitScotland has been invaluable. This allowed us to gain insight into the industry as well as learn about what different travel trade partners were looking for and also to be able to meet representatives from the travel trade.  These events have been a great opportunity that we are very grateful for.”

Working with the travel trade has allowed Sue to reach visitors in the right demographic for our experiences. She said that without working with a travel partner they felt they wouldn’t be able to reach their target market and promote their products. 

“As yet we haven't got any contracts or visits in the pipeline but after attending lots of VisitScotland events last year and making lots of contacts from different travel trade partners we hope to be able to look to bookings for the next season.”

What's in the future

Homemade scone served at Ardandan Estate cafe
© Ardandan Estate

We hope to gain relationships with some key travel trade partners and hope that we can work not only on a one off basis but give partners the confidence to bring repeat visitors to our wee part of the world.  We will be proud to promote Scotland, our animals and our family.

From her experience of working with the travel trade so far Sue said: "our main advice would be to go for it! Don't think too much but get a product together and be open to adapt as you gain experience and information from experts in the travel trade industry.

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