It’s more essential than ever that we have a cohesive tourism plan which will ensure visitors to our country are offered first class service and the best of experiences.
Colin Donald’s kept his most scathing comments for the controversial quango VisitScotland which was set up by the last Scottish executive in 2001. It received £43 million in 2007-8 of taxpayers money to promote Scotland and aside from the mass of glossy brochures sent out to their clients, there is little benefit to the small business. Guesthouses, along with bed and breakfasts and self catering establishments, are the bread and butter of the tourism industry and are treated with disdain by VisitScotland, whose main aim is ensuring these people pay up their excessive annual fees.
This article highlights the fact that small and large businesses in areas such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and St Andrews are working on their own DMOs (destination management organisations), complete with their own websites and marketing materials. VisitScotland, including its website, has been an expensive and badly managed quango and therefore it will be losing a large slice of their income.
Peter Lederer (managing director of Gleneagles) claims to be at a loss as to why so many disparate tourism areas are voting with their feet by establishing local identities, and ruefully reflects on his inability to persuade Shetlanders and others to stay under the VisitScotland umbrella.
He insists that marketing is best left to the professionals at VisitScotland's Leith HQ. "I'm all for DMOs if the M stands for management, rather than marketing," said Lederer. "If we got it right, they are very good ways for improving links between businesses, for example for promoting cross-selling. Anything that makes it easier for the consumer to buy is positive. "However, for marketing campaigns, it is better to pool the resource together, and not divide down to the smallest common denominator.”
Too late Mr Lederer, you’ve had 8 years to make changes and you've had to be hauled through hot coals to even start. This is the result of the incompetence of VisitScotland, nothing more nothing less. Accommodation providers will possibly stay with the Quality Assurance branch of VisitScotland as they provide the national grading of establishments but personally I would prefer if the Automobile Association was able to resurrect its grading system, which was more efficient and less costly to businesses.
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