As Americans who have visited Scotland eight times in the last decade, my wife and I can assure you that we received no help with regard to rural areas from the British Tourist Agency in New York. Their information on areas outside of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the golf venues is limited -- and Scotland as a whole is underplayed comapred to London. Instead, we've relied on guide books that we've purchased (e,g, Frommers) or otherwise we would have had no incentive to visit Inverness, Fort William, Stirling, Aberdeen, Orkney, Skye, Mull -- all of which have excellent publications on their respective local areas that are NOT available until one arrives there and visits the local tourist office -- or picks them up in Edinburgh.
In a recent visit to Dumfries & Galloway, and Ayrshire & Lanarkshire, each tourist office had an excellent booklet on Things to Do/See and another on Accomodations -- which should have been available to Americans looking into travelling to the British Isles. No wonder we meet so few Americans when travelling away from the cities and the coach tours.
For booking we occasionally find VisitScotland.com useful, but do most of our booking through travel websites (e.g. Active Hotels) -- once we know where we want to go. The tourist officials might try to offset some of the problems caused by the strong pound by making it easier for folks here to learn about the many things there are to see and do in ALL parts of Scotland. That should help occupancy rates.
James, New Jersey / 11:13pm 16 Sep 2006 Response to article in Scotsman on Rural Tourism
..... As an Edinburgh born expatriate, who has worked for years in the hotel and convention business in the US - I can attest to what City/State hotel taxes on tourism can do to business. Most business travellers can't avoid it, it's the cost of doing business, but for families, retirees or couples it's a real turnoff. After you factor in the cost of flights, meals, or in the case of international vacations, the foreign currency exchange rate, the addition of an additional and local hotel/B&B tax, sometimes in the region of 15-20% of the cost of each room, per night. is a total turnoff. My husband and I no longer visit or vacation in American cities where they charge onerous tourist hotel taxes....(San Francisco, New York, LA, Seattle, etc) for the simple reason: We believe we're spending our hard earned money and are creating jobs and employment by visiting these places, so why would they want to charge us "an additional tax" for the privilige. For what it's worth most of our friends, including my husband and I prefer "renting" apartments, condo's or other such housing when we travel. The reason? More luxurious accommodations and you can host large family gatherings and entertain friends at leisure and privacy at less cost and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner based on your timetable, diet and preference.
Whenever, we visit Edinburgh we always rent a large flat - it works out less per night, than if we'd booked an hotel or B&B. Re: Visit Scotland, I am on their email list, but haven't received anything from them in a while and will admit that trying to book something online through their website is tricky. The prices are always astronomical for hotels and B&B's listed, whereas if you go to the hotel or B&B's websites they always have specials.
Frankly, the UK is becoming too expensive for Americans. Service is substandard, food so-so and it's a pain and a hassle to eat out. The real downer for us, is that Edinburgh has turned into a booze/binge city, with violent juvenile delinquents in the streets, even during the day time; the shops are tawdry and overpriced and service is non-existent. It breaks my heart, I'm 62yrs old and when I come home I'm ashamed of my birthplace.
Eileen, Gold River, Sacrameno, California / 2:57am 18 Sep 2006; Response to article in Scotsman on Rural Tourism
Before retiring, we ran a successful Dinner B&B for 10 years in the Highlands. We were - and remain - appalled by the new independent website which has separate motivation from the industry and over which there is little or no control.
As a customer nowadays, we find VS.com cumbersome, unhelpful and inadequate.
We have two requirements: location and en-suite (the latter being righty pushed by the old Tourist Board for years). VS.com is very difficult for locating accommodation in rural areas. None of the standard entries gives an en-suite symbol; it is only by going into individuals' own websites that we find out whteher they are en-suite.
VS have NOT helped customers or providers with their privatised website.
rob, yorkshire / 8:00am 18 Sep 2006 ;Response to article in Scotsman on Rural Tourism
We fundamentally support the concept of VS , but found that inspite of being members, we could not get policy changed, in particular the sale of www.visitscotland.com to the private company now called e-Tourism. I shall never forget the VS.com boss at the Inverness Road Show who when faced with criticism of the increased charges (10% per day commission - previously per
booking) and poorer service ( banishing the accomodation provider's contact details to the 3rd page of the website and promoting the Call Centre contact details on the 1st page), merely replied "No we won't change the website. We have to make a profit.
We left VS in about 2002. Our business was unaffected. We have actively dissociated ourselves from VS apart from continuing to oppose the wrongs within it. We are particularly pleased to support the current protest on http://www.reclaimvs.com/
As you will see, this is a direct threat to the livelihood of every web designer in D&G (and Scotland too) About 75% of my business comes from hoteliers. However, if Visit Scotland dot com go ahead with this proposal, it will seriously undermine my job and the hard work I have done over the last 6 years.
I find this amazing, given that Visitscotland.com have been unable to locate Stranraer (let alone D&G) on their own (American-built website...they wouldn't even hire local talent!) in the past, have consistently ignored this area, have failed to capitalise on the success of "2000 Acres of Sky" - a free advert if ever there was one - and now want to put me, and many other local designers out of work.
Since when was Visitscotland's brief to design websites? There job is to promote Scotland, not put webdesigners THROUGHOUT Scotland out of work. I hope all self employed web designers, small businesses all, can count on your support to stop this plan in its tracks. After all, it is the local webdesigners - not Visitscotland- who really promote thier area and local trades.
As I said above, their job is to promote the region and country, not create unemployment. If all of my hotelier clients move over to this, I stand to loose just about all of my business. In fact, i would have to close down. I have not spent the last six years establishing myself and my business, my client base, and my familie's livelihood just to watch this organistation put me and my fellow designers on the unemployed register.
Visitscotland.com has had enough taxpayers support as it is, they have tried to monopolise the entire accommodation-booking segment, and now - to ensure the success of that monoploy, want to close down all web designers who buuild these kinds of websites. Is this how VS are supposed to be running? It is outrageous.
I fully support your campaign although I must confess that I have boycotted the booking scheme as my response to what seemed a very unsatisfactory setup. I only accept bookings made directly through me. The only booking passed on by the Tourist Board was a group of Polish young men who did not leave the place in a very good state and took some small items with them. Good Luck!
We are very disappointed with VisitScotland.com. We have only been in the industry 32 months and thought we were doing right joining VS. How wrong could we be. We are seriously considering opting out of the scheme after the next year as we are sure we could generate more business by doing our own advertising etc. We do not agree with a lot of VS policies i.e. 10% commission on each booking generated by VS etc. We think the fees are extortionate for the amount of work they actually do for the money. We think we, as guest house owners, are getting a very rough deal from VS and would support ReclaimsVS in their quest for a more efficient VS. We give permission for this email to be used by ReclaimsVS to aid their campaign.
Personally I think that the way in which accommodation providers advertisements are displayed on VS with the contact details hidden from view of the accommodation seeker is appalling given the amount of money paid to VS for the advertising in the first place. It is no wonder that the cost of accommodation in Scotland is so high when VS sit there & take 10% for simply making a few phone calls for which they are already paid a £3.00 booking fee. Furthermore I think if they are going to continue with this practice they should at least have the decency to call it COMMISSION instead of duping the accommodation seeker into thinking that they have paid the accommodation provider a deposit. As a personal for instance earlier this year, I took a booking for 3 double rooms for 2 nights from VS for which they collected the princely sum of £54.00 - £51.00 COMMISSION + £3.00 booking fee, not bad return for a phone call & a fax ?????? I wish I made my money so easily. Subsequently one of the rooms failed to show, because their baby @ 10 months old was taken into hospital. I was left with an empty room for 2 nights which I did not manage to re-let. VS was sitting with £17.00 as a so called deposit, did they refund me? NO NO NO. It didn't qualify as a no-show because the other two couples arrived! Of course how stupid of me! They could if I liked charge the missing people for the full amount of the first night's stay, bit insensitive do you not think, with their baby in hospital. I also reckoned it would leave a bad taste in the mouths of the other 2 couples who thoroughly enjoyed their stay with me & said that they would love to come back sometime with the missing two.......but then I'm a human being with real feelings. And so VS kept their £17.00 and I lost £153.00, they obviously need it more than they need to have happy customers.
I strongly disaprove of the way the VisitScotland.com site is managed. Everything is done with a view to enhancing any bookings going via their operators as opposed to coming directly to us. For a customer to get our details they have to click the very last button marked 'contact details' whilst VisitScotland.com's contact details are widely published all over the site - phone number and email contact buttons. I strongly believe that the customer should have a fair choice and understand what they are choosing. By all means have their details clearly marked but, by the same token, have our details clearly visible also and let the customer decide. I also strongly disagree with their cancellation policy. If a booking is cancelled they get to keep the 10% deposit and we get absolutely nothing, regardless of the length of stay of that booking. It should be shared 50:50 to keep it fair. I do resent paying them a 10% fee anyway. I pay VisitScotland over #1000 in affiliation and advertising fees and resent having to pay 10% on top of that for bookings via their affiliated site. If a fee is charged it should be a straightforward administration fee, like the fee charged to the customer.
Thank you for your e-mail about the campaign to try to encourage Visitbloodyscotland to listen at last to our concerns.
When the new company imposed its new contract on the industry, I was able to have several one to one meetings in 2003 with Mr Mike Cantley who was then the deputy chairman of the Tourist Board. I expressed my anger in very strong terms and he conveyed my feelings to the remainder of the board. I explained that my anger was replicated throughout the industry in Scotland with accommodation operators and that it may be wise to modify the aggressive, bullying, blackmailing behaviour of the new booking agency calling themselves visitscotland.com.
Sadly, the Tourist Board [ I think I will always call them that] chose to ignore our opinions.
I telephoned several of the executives of this new company and e-mailed the industry relations team in the Tourist Board.
There was no real acceptance that they should change anything and it was obvious that they had set up the terms of the contract by political dictat.
As a result we refused to take any bookings from them for both our B+B and self catering operations. We also ceased our adverts in all brochures except one.
I copy below the exchange of some of the e-mails with the Tourist Board in July 2003. I am happy for you to use them in any way you feel they may be useful and to leave my name on.
I am not hopeful that they will change anything because the situation was created politically when our Scottish Parliament directed the Tourist Board to initiate the private/public company [it was the flavour of the moment then] and the hardest thing to do is to get a politician to admit a mistake.
Good luck.
Hello,
We run a B & B on the Isle of Skye. I've signed your petition. I don't mind if the Q & A people do retaliate. They haven't visited for 2 yrs now so a more urgent concern is getting some money back from them!
We get most of our business, either from repeats and recommendations or
our website. We had the VS package, because we wanted to advertise in The
Freedom of the Highlands, but assumed that the VS website would be useful in directing people to our own website. When I checked, I became sceptical that it would be doing this, since they seem to be doing their best to hide the link. Accordingly I tried to book a place in our own B&B for our day off. (I didn't want the experiment to wind up costing me 10% of a night's
stay!) I tried to book online. It took them more than 24 hrs to contact me to find out whether or not we had a vacancy. In 25 hrs from first enquiry most potential guests and I would , via e-mail, have exchanged confirmations and asked and answered questions about things of concern to them such as special diets and things to do in the area. I don't want to lose this personal contact because VS is funnelling off guests to their inefficient online booking system. I often feel I know guests quite well by the time they arrive. On present evidence, however, they are not doing much funnelling, since the experiment confirmed what we suspected. We have not
had one booking from this source in 2 years. It may be that our potential
guests are just very determined to seek out our link on the VS website. I cannot say. However, it seems to me that we are almost certainly wasting our money.
By the way, if you navigate around the site in slightly the wrong way (by which I just mean in a way different from the one the web designer had in
mind) it comes up with the piece of news that there are no B & Bs in Uig (Which houses the Ferry terminal for the voyage to the Western Isles, so you'll know how likely that is!) You couldn't make it up could you?
Best Regards and Good Luck
Dear Alan
Whilst I support your action, bringing VS.com into public ownership is not an answer. VS.com is a poor quality, overstaffed, badly directed and managed monster which must be scrapped completely, with all the existing staff laid off so we can start again with brand new ideas. Trying to do anything other than this will result in an even bigger burden on the scant resources allocated to Scotland's most important industry.
I say this because, as an Accomodation Provider, I am heartily fed up of the attitudes of VS.com and VS to one branch of their their customer base - the people who work in the tourist industry - who not only pay their wages but support thousands of others in support services. They have ridden roughshod over our ideas and suggestions in favour of their own, as they think they know better. My fear is that with VS.com under public ownership VS.com will not change for the better and become even more inefficient and costly than it does at present.
This high cost is largely due to the one thing that VS.com and VS have been right about all along. They have shown us that there is a gaping hole in the way AP's run their business and the end customer is suffering because AP's don't have a booking system worth a candle. These customers have to troll around looking for beds, sometimes very difficult in busy times, and many use the TIC booking service or VS.com call centres in the first place so they can avoid spending hours looking for a place to stay. Whilst this may satisfy the AP in that there is no fees involved it is unprofessional, puts off the customer and projects a poor image..VS.com is therefore a necessary evil that is used to help our customers find us, and this is what is costing the most.
My solution to finding an alternative to VS.com is not via public sector, but private. If I were given the opportunity to come up with a short and medium term plan for VS.com I would do the following:
Short term.
Immediately freeze all ongoing VS.com system development and stop all expenditure on new features.
Use Smoothhound or another large, successful internet booking agency to design an immediate solution around their current platform, importing data from VS.com into their system. As soon as this is up and running shut down completely VS.com. (FOR INFO. I've used Smoothhound as an example here because they manage a European wide portfolio, indeed probably have more AP's in Scotland than VS.com, yet its searches are at least 10 times faster than VS.com. They don't offer call centres or a decent booking arrangement for customers but (I'm told) only employ 14 people. VS.com couldn't make the coffee with so few. An alternative would be to use the Visit England or Wales systems.
Establish a working group responsible for managing the requirements for a VS.com system to replace the existing one in the medium term. This group would be made up of people from VS, TIC's, AP's, and customers (actual visitors), and the main objective of this group would be to come up with a system that could be developed in the medium term for a fixed sum,; the team should also be made up of people at the sharp end of the business. Before any further action is taken the ideas are presented to all areas in Scotland and feedback used to further develop the solution.
The group would also include internet system design and operating companies that would be willing to take on the responsiblity of providing a solution and ongoing service for a fixed fee paid for by the AP. The system would contain all types of accomodation, (STB listed and others) and the fees paid will be sufficient to fully sustain a standalone operator. All VS fees would be reduced to reflect this charge.
Long Term
Retain the working group together to manage the future, looking for continuous improvement in the system.
Bring together a group of AP's to test any new system and relaese their views to others
Formally release the system to the public
Only at this point would I consider taking the whole system under public ownership.
By the way, I had the VS assessor along a couple of weeks ago and he was very interested in my views on VS and VS.com. He has, hopefully, taken them back to follow them up and he has a vested interest - if everyone dumped VS he'd be out of a job.
Regards