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VisitScotland.com to close shop

February 25, 2008 | Online Travel

Tiscover powered travel portal VisitScotland.com is to close its tourism website after chalking up millions of pounds in losses. Visitscotland.com, which was relaunched in 2003 with £7.4million of public and private cash, has never made a profit and last year lost £1.5m.

Up until a few years ago, a website was seen as an adjunct, a marginally useful sideline to the main selling and marketing operations of commercial organisations.
But websites have since moved rapidly centre stage. A vast army of consumers now looks to websites to provide a fast, efficient and reliable one-stop shop. Not only is all the up-to-the-minute price comparison information expected, but the means of making an immediate purchase or booking online.

For VisitScotland, making the transition from useful adjunct to centrepiece booking tool for millions of visitors to Scotland was always going to be challenging. Its ambition to encompass the widest array of tourist requirements across all of Scotland was highly dependent, not only on technological quality and expertise, but also on a consensus across a vastly differing range of catering and hospitality providers as to needs and requirements.

Many small hoteliers who subscribed in good faith to the VisitScotland service were to be disappointed at the results, particularly when it referred many potential visitors to the agency’s own call centre rather than the hotel or catering establishment directly. That the website helped to facilitate millions of bookings – VisitScotland.com had 11 million customer visits, including repeat visits, last year – was proof to its management that it was providing a vital service. Others measured its failures and judged accordingly.

Get the full story at The Scotsman

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