Michelle Rodger: Closed mentality harms tourism – not VisitScotland

Published on Saturday 20 February 2010 14:04

MUCH has been said recently about the success, or otherwise, of VisitScotland. So can I suggest that not all the criticism is fair?

If you ignore the arguments about VisitScotland's performance – 2.65 million fewer trips to Scotland in 2008 than in 2005 – and the debate over chief executive Philip Riddle's bonuses – apparently not connected to the target of growing tourism revenue by 50 per cent by 2010 – and just consider independent statistics, it's clear Scotland is actually performing well.

Compared with Ireland (-14.3 per cent) and Spain (-9 per cent) Scotland enjoyed an increase (+2.4 per cent) in international visitors for the first half of 2009, according to Eurostat. Yet critics want VisitScotland to be scrapped and many businesses say the quango is not delivering tourists to their door.

My point is this; in much the same way that SMEs can't just rely on the government to make life easier for them with grants and funding support, the tourism industry itself is going to have to step up and take responsibility for innovation, customer service and the whole visitor experience.

VisitScotland's job should be to focus solely on attracting more visitors to Scotland (the clue is in the name) your job as a hotelier, restaurateur, leisure facility, visitor attraction or B&B is to attract them to your doorstep and then deliver such jaw-droppingly good customer service they can't wait to come back next year.

Innovation is key, and there are myriad clever marketing ploys. One such is the vMessage created by Mariusz Kozinski of 0141 Design for Macdonald Resorts.

The vMessage is an eco-friendly way of sending a video e-mail which, explains Simon Jackson, MD at Macdonald Resorts, allows the hotel to direct recipients to special offers on its website.

Social media, too, is opening Scotland's tourist businesses to a wider market.

James Kennedy of 2ourism Scotland reckons VisitScotland should use a chunk of its 40m budget to educate businesses on the benefits of Web 2.0 to promote themselves.

Victor Brierley of Dunning Design will be "Castle Bagging" with Historic Scotland next month; he's doing it to link into their members and grow appeal at launch stage, and they're doing it to introduce their members to a platform that will allow them to "collect" their memories of castle visits and share them with a worldwide audience.

Brierley says the fact that it's 100 per cent measurable, really cheap and 24-hour is a huge part of the appeal. "We'll be able to tweak things that didn't work, focus on things that did and constantly improve our offer. Historic Scotland will know, immediately, what visitors across a vast range of platforms will want."

Twitterers – @2ourismscotland, @scottishroutes, @2edinburgh and @walkhighlands – are all demonstrating how to make a big social media impact with not a lot of money. But they are also advocating genuine passion and exceeding customers' expectation from initial enquiry right through to departure.

As Polly Purvis, executive director of ScotlandIS says, the global shop front provided by the web is a sales channel few can afford to ignore.

There are challenges, however. When VisitScotland's site was launched a decade or so ago, most small hotels, restaurants and B&Bs didn't have the equipment to take advantage of online promotion and bookings. Now it's access to the internet that is the problem. Better access to high-speed broadband would allow niche providers to take advantage of these potentially lucrative portals.

But innovation isn't solely down to technology; you can innovate without widgets, apps or Tweets.

What about revisiting the way we treat our customers, for example?

The biggest complaint is that tourism is seasonal. But if you make enough money in the summer months – by remaining open for longer, every single day of the week – and you talk and listen to your customers, then you can spend the winter months studying the feedback and learning what it will take to boost sales next season.

Tom McCallum works with tourism providers worldwide and is disappointed that Scottish resorts appear to shut up shop at 5pm during the summer when they could open until dark and make more cash.

"Tourist businesses need to consider the customer, not their staff," insists McCallum, "Work hard, long hours for the summer and use the profit over the winter to consider how best to minimise the seasonal impact next year."

The bottom line is this; VisitScotland, other large tourism bodies, and major hotel and conference chains can market the hell out of Scotland. But if we can't deliver quality, repeat-business-forming customer service when tourists are here, then their efforts will be completely wasted.