Why we must put needs of tourists ahead of shareholders

Published on Monday 23 July 2007 09:58

AS THE SNP Executive prepares to inject new energy into Scotland's underperforming tourism sector, the recent Scotsman article by Gavin Ellis of the British Hospitality Association helpfully illustrates some of the wrongheaded attitudes that must first be tackled.

The misconceptions highlighted in his piece earlier this month explain why so many are campaigning for a national tourism website that prioritises the needs of tourists, and of the businesses that make up the 4.1 billion Scottish tourism industry.

Ellis asserts that "we can't expect VS.com to be free", reflecting the oft-stated view of larger tourism operators that the industry's grass roots expect "something for nothing" and resent paying commission fees.

This is simply not true. Those of us who have campaigned against the abuses of the existing website have never suggested that it should provide free bookings.

While many accommodation and service providers rely on direct enquiries, others subscribe uncomplainingly to third-party agencies to boost trade.

No-one expects a free ride, and even the smallest business working with VisitScotland expects to pay Quality Assurance scheme charges, fees for inclusions in the brochure and promotion in the tourism information centres.

Our problem with visitscotland.com and its public-private parent company eTourism Ltd is simply this: prior to the 2002 establishment of eTourism, which trades as visitscotland.com, all providers who paid to be area tourist board members received, in return, website presence with prominently displayed contact details.

After 2002, these links were progressively curtailed, as a means of forcing trade through a call centre in Livingston, putting visitscotland.com's commercial priorities above those of tourists and destroying its credibility as a national tourism site.

This unfair market distortion, and the subsequent deterioration of the website's service to prospective tourists, is the source of our objections. The additional commission on hijacked advance bookings merely rubbed salt in the wound.

Ellis implies that B&Bs have a Luddite lack of appreciation of the benefits of internet technology. This is patronising, and more importantly, untrue.

Were he more in touch with the B&B sector (no less than 16 per cent of the serviced Scottish hospitality industry), he would know that many operators are not only up-to-date with e-commerce, but streets ahead in the use of websites, e-mail and on-line booking systems.

It is these operators who are most opposed to eTourism. Their experience enables them to see VisitScotland's disastrous mistake, unique in the history of global tourism, in turning an effective website into a lumbering, technically inferior, intermediary platform, outsourced in a way that puts consumer needs in direct conflict with the commercial needs of the provider.

At a stroke, the potential to develop a cutting-edge portal, encouraging grassroots tourism web development, was lost.

In spite of this official discouragement, a whole world of exciting new Scottish tourism websites has emerged, though innocent net browsers can access an astonishingly low percentage of them through the dead-end cash till of visitscotland.com.

Ellis compounds his error by stating that, in the world of modern tourism, "a large majority want to book online". Once again this is simply untrue. The European Travel Commission, in its 2006 report, stated that only 32 per cent of tourists booked any tourism product online. This figure includes air travel and package holidays, the most popular online products.

Currently, B&B customers are generally unconcerned with the facility to book online. This will change, of course, but it will lag well behind the hotel sector. The customer base that B&Bs attract is a niche market, quite different to the hotel market. The typical B&B customer prioritises a personal, friendly, relationship with the proprietor, a benefit that visitscotland.com's call centre and website entirely negates.

Ellis urges B&B proprietors to co-operate with eTourism by supplying information and utilising their new Web-in-a-box product (falsely presented as an individualised "website" for businesses) and pay the 10 per cent commission to VS.com with "good grace". This will not happen until the root problems are addressed.

VisitScotland's own figures show that, since 2000, 27 per cent of B&Bs, 14 per cent of guesthouses and 17 per cent of hotels have withdrawn their co-operation with the agency (see graph). If he truly wishes to help generate a healthier future for the Scottish industry, Ellis should join the vast majority of providers across Scotland who are working together for a better future for the industry, ignoring the complacent, PR-addicted and (as the Scottish Information Commissioner ruled last month) law-breaking, leadership of VisitScotland.

Unfunded and unstaffed, the www.reclaimvs.com campaign has won a large public following, with supporters expressing a clear commonality of purpose, to press for essential reform. The focus of that reform must be the modernising of the national tourism website.

Instead of taxpayer-funded spin devoted to disguising Scotland's poor tourism revenue growth, we need to build a dynamic Scottish web presence comparable to the best of our international competitors. In short, we need a website that promotes all tourism businesses, unfettered by the urgent need of its operator to extract commission income to satisfy foreign shareholders (see graph 2).

A future where the national tourist board is dedicated, above all else, to supporting the industry and listening to the needs of all of its operators, is the goal. Let us hope that our new government sees the merits of this argument and makes it happen sooner rather than later.

• Alan Keith is chairman of Association of Dumfries and Galloway Accommodation Providers.