Tourism group in attack on relationship with VisitScotland

Published on Saturday 17 March 2007 00:07

SCOTTISH tourism businesses are losing confidence in their local VisitScotland representatives, according to the public-private industry group the Scottish Tourism Forum (STF).

Claiming to summarise the messages of the second Scottish Tourism Week, the STF said businesses were reporting that the relationship with local VisitScotland representatives had "changed from a business to business level to that of being simply sold marketing deals".

Alan Rankin, chief executive of the STF, said: "The message we are getting from many parts of Scotland is a great concern to STF. I have written to VisitScotland and an urgent meeting is scheduled."

The STF also reported "concern" over the effectiveness of the public-private accommodation sales and information website VisitScotland.com, part-owned by the Austrian technology company Tiscover.

Rankin added: "Industry concerns over VisitScotland.com are well documented. We hope that new web products to be launched by the company in April address concerns over commission rates and advertising listings on the national e-portal.

"The STF, however, is concerned that as VisitScotland and VistiScotland.com are so closely linked, dissatisfaction with either party generates an overall negative feeling towards the national tourism agency and our national web portal, and that this is not contributing to better collaborative working."

The STF also highlighted the need to share market intelligence between businesses and between VisitScotland and the industry, as well as the need to share customer feedback information in order to measure customer satisfaction levels.

A spokeswoman for VisitScotland said: "STF's comments don't reflect our experience of the events we attended where everyone was talking up the marketing we've been doing. Sadly, this rather negative perspective does nothing to bring a single visitor to Scotland."