I would have to agree with Alan's concerns. As a business man (unrelated to tourism) who travelled the world, time after time people would tell me "Scotland is that England" and would quiz me about this country of ours. and i am am not talking about just people in USA or Australia, but also countries as small as us. They would ask about finding out information about Scotland as perhaps they may like to visit. But there was no one web site i could direct them to.

I personally hate web sites with lots of adverts about unrelated items to the web site, if i wanted adverts i am sure there are better website for these.

As a goverment funded web site it should be like the BBC NO adverts, just clean and factual (and unbiast unlike the BBC but that is another story).

So lets hope Alan keeps pushing for a site to promote this nation of ours not products promoted by big multi national companies, no matter where the are.

VS have decided to close their London Information Centre, claiming it has lost money because it only took 600 bookings last year.

If my memory serves me right, VS agreed to funnel all enquiries away from their Information Centres and into the privatised VS.com call centre as from 2002.

Presumably, this means that the closure of the valuable London marketing resource is a direct result of the secretive deal that established VS.com.

It would be interesting to know what the bookings levels (and revenues) were before this transfer.

There are many more problems with the Visit Scotland site:
it's very slow,
navigation is awful,
information is badly structured,
emails are answered weeks later, if at all
advertising rates seem to be different, depending on to whom you speak
there's only 1 chance per year to update information (just as the tourist season is ending) - this isn't often enough and is the wrong time anyway

Many B & Bs around me objected to paying Visit Scotland £125 p.a. to list them, and 15% of their revenue from bookings, so did their own thing; with the impact that people like me who wish to holiday in Scotland find it very difficult to find accommodation.

I often feel like setting up a rival VisitScotland web site.
I wonder whether VisitScotland's lawyers or the Executive would permit this.

From my experience with Visit Scotland's website and 'information' service, I wish Mr Keith the best of luck.

Nice to see all comments supporting Mr Keith. In the past any article about his stance has attracted a few negative comments. Maybe VS and VS.com staff have not yet seen the article and been told to defend the indefensible.

As someone involved in Scottish tourism I will not be signing up for the VS.com website next year. It is very expensive, with little in return. The Quality Assurance scheme is a joke, totally subjective, and certainly no indication of quality. Many others who I speak to, at the sharp end of Scottish tourism, are also of a like mind. I predict the numbers with VS/VS.com will plummet, and then the Executive will make participation compulsory, at the urging of VS, anxious to protect their Empire, salaries, and perks.

£50,000,000+ p.a of public money for a quasi-national tourist agency...
Value for money?
NOT!

Alan Keith has the backing and respect of all the B&B owners that I come into daily contact with.
By all means charge to list details on a National Website, but let's keep it simple - let individuals contact the proprietors directly, no need for commission charges and foreign advertising.
With the aid of a map and B&B details the vast majority can make their own bookings.
The revenue raised can then be used to promote all things Scottish!

VisitScotland used to be a virtual monopolist for booking accomodation. Then came bookings by web, growing by 20% per annum, and it has been relegated to probably a 20% market share of bookings or less. There is no way it can win its profit requirement through taking commission on bookings, the competition is immense.
It should have its funds re-directed solely to getting visitors to Scotland - from England where the bulk of the market exists, not fom the continent which supplies less than 10% to tourism and is very hard and expensive to win to us.
We need a compulsory basic MOT for all accomodation providers, so as to get rid of the cowboys. But this should not be confused with a grading scheme, which needs to be re-thought and based upon customers views - this is the only measure which counts.
Well done Alan and his colleagues in Dumfires and Galloway. Bruce's spider lives again.
John Winkler

I have always been mystified by why quangos and government-directed organisations are so heavily involved in the marketing of tourism in the UK.

When a ‘free market’ ethos is being espoused by our politicians even in essential sectors such as education and helath care, it is difficult to understand why the dead hand of state control still has a strong grip on the marketing of short-stay accommodation.

The fact that this is still the case suggests it’s an area where ‘joined up’ government policy has failed.

Cartels are illegal, and in cases where their detriment to free markets and independent pricing has been proven, substantial fines have been handed down.

Why is tourism different to other commercial sectors? Is it that the operators of individual businesses feel pressured to maintain membership of their local or regional ‘tourism partnership’ because the public have become accustomed to evaluating what they offer at least in part by the star grading they have attained?

If so, a better solution would be to have a UK-wide grading scheme which is independent from the marketing of accommodation. Operators could choose their market level, get their grading, and then make an objective decision on how to generate bookings.

There are many ways for accommodation businesses to generate bookings at a reasonable price. For small operators, a freestanding website and membership of a local marketing group can be effective. For operators with larger inventory, consolidators have huge distribution networks, and provide automated systems to handle the bookings. Such firms also operate in the self catering market, and for some cottage owners, local agencies can be a viable option. There are also many independently run region- and niche-specific directories on the web.

What all these options have in common is that they are privately operated, completely free of any quango or government meddling, and require no funding from the taxpayer, e

I agree entirely with Alan Keith's description of the malaise that seems to run through the very heart of VisitScotland.com. I would add a couple of details though from my own experience.

First of all, why are B&B's in a given region invisible by DEFAULT unless they specifically contact VS to let them know that they have vacancies during a certain period? Americans booking now for September 2007 will be surprised to discover only 4 B&B's exist in the entire mid-Argyll region as far as the VS website will inform them. This is an idiotic approach, and despite frequent representations to people at VS on this matter, after two years no steps have been taken to correct this. As a result of my frustration, I have withdrawn our 10 bedroom 4-star B&B from VisitScotland entirely, and will have nothing further to do with the organization until it has undergone radical change. When it is organized in such a way that it actually serves both potential tourists, as well as the thousands of good-quality small accommodation providers that Scotland has, only then will it make sense to work with this organization which has done more than any other to damage the tourist industry in Scotland in recent years.

The other detail: our agreement with VS was that bookings and all payments had to be made with ourselves directly. Yet a customer booked and paid with the VS call centre. I only learnt of this because they sent an email confirming the matter not to our own email address, but to my father in America. How they obtained his email address is still a mystery. Perhaps they Googled my surname? Maybe someday Scotland will have a competent national tourism-promotion body, working in the national best interest, but at the moment it certainly does not, and the one it has is working to make profits for shareholders at the expense of accommodation providers throughout Scotland.

All power to Alan. The commercial face of VS is as ugly as Scotland is beautiful. The job of the National Tourist Office is to create awareness and promote the total destination; a service to which industry partners have historically willingly contributed. The job of the industry partners is to promote their services and sell the destination within the framework of the National Office, without having to pay again for a third party to duplicate what they can do better themselves.

We left VS 2 years ago when,amongst other things , we discovered that the call centre in Livingston had stopped sending us any enquiries
Why ? well believe it or not we were told (after we enquired some months later) that we were not near the city centre and as that was one of the first questions they asked their customers (not our visitors) that automatically precluded us.
Where is our Guest House ? in the locale of Newington in Edinburgh, 10 minutes from Princes Street , how much closer do you need to get ! suffice to say our yearly subscription and Quality Assurance fees were completely refunded when I requested their return from a very embarrased official
Another major bone of our contention is the Quality Assurance Scheme, if it wasn't for the fact that we whole heartedly support the concept I would fall of my chair laughing .We spent 2 years looking at Guest Houses before we bought our present one so we are well placed to pass judgement on the scheme, it is as most of us in the business know to be completely flawed
We are not gloating over the misfortunes of VS or the mess they seem to be getting themselves into we are justly concerned when we see other countries doing it a damned sight better
Good luck Alan there are more people in your corner than you or the establishment think