VisitScotland (Tourist Information)
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-847, in the name of Nora Radcliffe, on VisitScotland tourist information. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
I invite those members who are thinking of leaving the chamber to leave now and to do so as quickly and quietly as possible.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the criticisms from the tourism industry about the performance and operation of the visitscotland.com website; in particular, notes the concerns among some operators about the negative impact the website is having on their custom due to technical problems with the site, the high cost of subscription, the apparent lack of reliable information in some instances and the cost in lost tourism; recognises how important tourism is to the Scottish economy, and therefore considers that the Scottish Executive and VisitScotland must ensure that these problems are resolved ahead of the 2004 tourist season.
I thank all those colleagues whose support for my motion has enabled it to be debated this evening. I also thank the many people who have posted contributions on the interactive discussion board on the Parliament's website. An amazing number of people have contributed. That will all be taken into account in the final analysis.
I lodged the motion because tourism providers in my area made representations to me that they were unhappy about the quality of service that visitscotland.com was providing for them and, much more important, for their potential customers. At the outset, let me make it clear that I am wholly in favour of visitscotland.com. Providing a one-stop shop for people who are thinking about, or planning, a visit to Scotland is the right way to go. However, if we are to have a single point of entry, it is essential that the website work and that it work well. The website needs to offer comprehensive and accurate information and an efficient service.
The danger in falling short is that, if the website loses or fails to gain the confidence of the trade, it will not be able to provide what it was set up to deliver. The comprehensive and integrated service that was planned will be fragmented as people become so frustrated that they go off and do their own thing. Given the ambitious nature of the project, it was hardly surprising that there were teething troubles. A wide and complex range of information had to be put together and the work force had to be trained to become competent in finding their way round all the information and in communicating it appropriately to callers.
What worries me is that visitscotland.com still seems to have more problems, less accuracy and less efficiency than it should have. The consequences of that are of deep concern for an industry that is an extremely important part of our economy and which still has significant potential for growth. The obvious consequence is that if would-be visitors cannot readily find what they want, they will not come. Alternatively, they may still come without getting the information on all the options that are open to them. That will make their visit a poorer experience than it might have been, with loss of trade for all those providers that they did not get to know about.
I hope that tonight's debate will be seen as a positive move to try to air some of the problems so that they can be recognised and dealt with. For the debate, I am operating on the basis of the notices that are sometimes seen in shops and restaurants, which say, "If we've given good service, tell all your friends. If we haven't, tell us." Tonight, I hope that we will tell visitscotland.com about its service, so that it can sort out the problems.
I am grateful to Nora Radcliffe for initiating tonight's debate, but given the fact that members from the south and south-west of Scotland tried to bring the same concerns before the Parliament a year ago—I suspect that they would have said then what other members will say tonight—can Nora Radcliffe have any assurance that the justified concerns that she has highlighted will be paid any attention by visitscotland.com? That has certainly not happened over the past year.
I hope that everybody can live and learn. There are hopeful signs in the improvements that have taken place even in the past year. When I first started to deal with the issue some time ago, the problems were very much worse than they are now. I am concerned that the problems are not a lot better, but we are moving in the right direction. I am an eternal optimist.
That said, one of the most worrying problems that has been drawn to my attention is that America Online users get thrown off when they log on to the visitscotland.com site. AOL is the world's largest internet service provider, so there must be a degree of urgency in re-establishing access for AOL's 35 million users, especially given the fact that there are so many AOL users in North America, which is our biggest overseas market. Earlier today, I was told that the situation is well on the way to being resolved. That is very good news. However, the fact that it has taken six months to identify and rectify the problem is not so good.
On the site, there are several options for information in a foreign language, which are accessed by clicking on the flag of the country concerned. That takes visitors to one page in their native language, which is a nice gesture. However, as soon as they look for more detailed information they are moved back into English. A business acquaintance once said to me that the Germans sell in English but buy in German. I appreciate that a great deal of work would be involved in extending the language choice further, but it would pay dividends.
I have received heaps of messages, both positive and negative, in connection with this debate. Perhaps it is easiest to let people speak for themselves. My first quotation is quite positive. The message states:
"I can't comment on the accommodation booking service since I have not used it, nor am I a hotelier. But the VisitScotland site in general is fabulous in terms of tourist information and showcasing Scotland. I can't see why people are critical. It is ten times better than the old Visit Scotland site and, frankly, it's also much better than the Scottish Parliament's—in terms of visual appeal certainly."
What the member has just said shows that part of the problem is that people do not distinguish between the VisitScotland site and the visitscotland.com site. The visitscotland.com site is a commercial site, run on commercial lines. It is not a tourist information site, but a booking service. That has caused a lot of confusion among users in my part of the world.
Before you respond, I point out that the clock has gone a bit haywire. You have a minute left, but I will allow you a minute and a half.
I had better crack on. Perhaps I should miss out the message that said:
"most MSPs own web sites, if they have one at all, are an embarrassment."
I have received more messages along the lines of the next one, which states:
"We live in Falkirk and often like to travel around Scotland for skiing or walking. On one recent trip we attempted to book accommodation, and only when confirming directions did we discover the B&B was in Torridon, not near Elgin as the website showed. You can imagine that both the hotelier and myself were furious but relieved to have avoided a wasted 4 hour journey."
Other negative comments relate to restaurants. One message states:
"Restaurants are not comprehensively listed because the company requires payment for listings. This gives potential visitors the impression that there are few places to eat. Types of food that can be searched for are bizarre, including items like ‘general' & ‘serving' and are not defined. Searching for ‘Scottish food' returns few establishments, for instance."
On skiing, one message states:
"They have recently changed the whole site, with no warning to ski operators or the industry. This left the centres unable to update weather conditions and many of us unable to access the site at all. Worse still, the information was extremely inaccurate for a period. The site is still only half finished with links not working and the accommodation listings incomplete."
Another person said:
"visitscotland.com should design their website so that the CONSUMERS can choose how they want to contact accommodation providers, not try to drive them to use the call centre against their wishes."
Please start to wind up.
Certainly. I want to make only two more points.
The call centre operates from 8 am to 8 pm United Kingdom time, which is 3 am to 3 pm in Boston and midnight to noon in Los Angeles.
I am sure that the company will take note of what is said this evening. I will anonymise and forward all the e-mails that I have received to both the company and the minister. The minister is here to listen. I hope that the information that is flushed out this evening will be used to move matters forward to everyone's benefit and satisfaction.
I always try to indulge the member who has lodged the motion for members' business. The debate is heavily subscribed, so speeches will be limited to three minutes.
As is customary, I congratulate the member on securing the debate. It is particularly appropriate, because it is important to have tourism on the agenda. Tourism is an industry that has been beleaguered, often for reasons outwith its control, such as foot and mouth and 9/11. It is on record as being Scotland's biggest industry and spans a substantial part of our country geographically and of our people individually. The website, visitscotland.com, is one aspect of the industry. It is of significant interest to many big hoteliers and, it must be said, of significant concern to many small operators.
I agree absolutely with Nora Radcliffe that there should be an e-tourism portal for Scotland. We are in the 21st century. To some extent, the internet is the medium of the 21st century and we must use it. Should the e-tourism portal have been designed by the private sector? Absolutely: Project Ossian was not working and clearly the best people to design it were those with the expertise to do so. Should the e-tourism portal be owned and operated by the private sector? Absolutely not: I disagree with the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
I appreciate that the matter was not in the control of the current minister, but it is a matter of regret that it was driven ideologically by the Executive. No alternative was given to VisitScotland to consider the matter in another way. What we did was to sell out the e-tourism portal to the highest bidder. Having done so, we now find ourselves in the position that we are in today. There are those who suggest that we should sell off the e-tourism portal and start again, but that is blue-sky thinking. In the interim, we must try to resolve the problem in the interests of all.
We must give credit where credit is due, despite the difficulties that many small operators, in particular, are having with visitscotland.com. My experience is that, even if visitscotland.com staff are unable to explain all of the difficulties, they go out of their way to clarify visitscotland.com's position and where it is coming from. Although that might not satisfy people, at least the effort and endeavour are being made. I noticed that in dealings that I had on matters that included English as a foreign language.
We must ensure that matters are addressed. Nora Radcliffe raised the problems that relate to AOL, which must be dealt with. We must also address other matters to allay the worries and fears of small operators in particular. I am thinking not only of the small operators in rural Scotland—they, as opposed to the major hotel operators, are the backbone of the industry—but of the small guest-house owners in the city of Edinburgh, in my constituency, who feel most aggrieved.
I congratulate Nora Radcliffe on securing the debate. The SNP position is that we should not be in the situation that we are in today but now that we are, we must try to resolve matters. It is not sufficient simply to leave matters to visitscotland.com, which, we must remember, acts in the national interest. It must be brought to account and we must work collectively for the national interest.
Although the Scottish Executive currently spends £90 million per annum on tourism, there has been a decrease in Scottish tourism since 1977. Whatever the reason, the situation must be redressed.
Regrettably, I have had many complaints from tourism professionals all over Scotland about the workings of visitscotland.com. As people use the internet more and more, it is vital that we have decent Scottish agencies through which bookings can be made and information can be downloaded. However, visitscotland.com seems to achieve very little in undertaking those functions. It charges hotels and bed and breakfasts a 10 per cent commission for bookings and £3 per customer. As of 1 April this year, regardless of whether businesses choose to participate in the visitscotland.com booking arrangement, they will have to pay a £25 charge for a listing on the website.
This afternoon, I spoke to the owner of the Langass Lodge Hotel in North Uist, which is famous for its comfortable accommodation and excellent Scottish cuisine at modest prices. They have had an excellent season but, believe it or not, no bookings at the hotel this year have been made through visitscotland.com. The owner did a little research. She contacted the visitscotland.com call centre only to be told that there were no hotels in North Uist. There is an enormous problem with the website search engine. It is not possible to enter the word "Uist"; one has to enter the words "the isle of North Uist". The database is useless. It showed only one bed and breakfast and one community centre and yet the Uists and Benbecula are full of hotels and bed and breakfasts.
I decided to check out the situation this afternoon. First, my assistant, Jo, checked "Uists and Benbecula hotels" on the Google search engine. Immediately, she found both the Langass Lodge Hotel and the Lochmaddy Hotel, after which we did not bother to look any further. She tried the visitscotland.com website, selected the "Hotels" option and clicked on the Western Isles area of the map. The first hotel that she was offered was a hotel in Edinburgh, the second was a hotel in Callander and the third was a hotel in Thurso. There were many more besides that but no mention of any hotels on the islands, which is pathetic and inexcusable.
A lady who runs a bed and breakfast in Tarbert on the Isle of Harris received a booking through visitscotland.com. The guest rang her in the evening to say that he could not find the address, which was not surprising as he was some 300 miles away in Tarbet, Argyll. The list is endless. It is no longer funny. It is devastating for our tourism industry.
To put it mildly, visitscotland.com has taken a system that was simple, informed and easy to operate and made it into something that is complicated, uninformed and unhelpful. The Scottish Executive must accept some of the responsibility for that.
Another professional tourism operator of good hotels in Nairn tells me that most of the call centre operators are not trained in tourism, have no product knowledge and so do not contribute to raising business. He told me that, in the past, more than 70 per cent of the clients who contacted his hotel management stayed in his establishment, but visitscotland.com tends to put people off. For example, one operator asked a caller, "Where is Nairn?" Most people know that Nairn has been a famous holiday centre and spa since early Victorian times.
I do not think that I have to say any more—the evidence is obvious.
I, too, commend Nora Radcliffe for securing this debate and for the way she introduced it. Indeed, I also commend the wording of her motion. Although she drew attention to people's concerns, she also highlighted at least one example of someone who had written about the service in glowing terms. I welcome such a balanced approach.
I should first declare an interest as the minister responsible when visitscotland.com was launched in the middle of 2002. The launch was not without controversy. For example, some of the area tourist boards were less than warm towards it and a great deal of hard work was undertaken to advertise its benefits and to ensure that many of Scotland's tourism partners were on board as early as possible. The minister will no doubt say that that situation continues.
I was rather surprised by some of Kenny MacAskill's remarks, although it would be unfair to say that he has been anything other than critical of the scheme more or less right from the start. The overall approach to visitscotland.com was enshrined in the national strategy for tourism, which was published in 2000, and endorsed in the tourism framework for action that was brought out two years later. However, I must draw to Mr MacAskill's attention the more important point that the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee's inquiry into tourism in Scotland, which reported in January last year, endorsed the principle behind visitscotland.com. That committee was convened by Mr MacAskill's colleague, Alex Neil. In that light, it is not very helpful to say that the SNP would not have been in this position if it had had the opportunity.
We must accept that, as tourism bookings are increasingly carried out online, people need the facility. As a result, it is essential that visitscotland.com provides that service. I do not gainsay the comments that Jamie McGrigor and others have made. If those are accurate reflections of some aspects of the service that is being provided, we must address them. However, Nora Radcliffe's motion essentially calls for such concerns to be addressed and I am sure that visitscotland.com and its staff will do so. Indeed, I have visited the staff at Livingston and know that they are very much dedicated to making the service as successful and as comprehensive as it can be.
Jamie McGrigor raised the issue of registration fees. However, I do not think that an annual £25 charge is likely to put anyone off. Indeed, it is generally seen to be beneficial given the thousands of contacts and bookings that have been made since visitscotland.com got up and running.
Will the member give way?
I am sorry; I really do not have the time.
That is a testament to visitscotland.com's initial success. Although I accept that that success is somewhat qualified, it is still relatively early days. Scottish tourism is a healthy product and the more it is marketed internationally, the healthier it will become.
I also point out that people are still able to book establishments directly, which is not the case with every other tourism website. Many tourism providers who I know from personal experience were initially sceptical of the site acknowledged its benefits once they saw it up and running. Moreover, the charges that are made are modest by other standards; the 10 per cent rate compares very favourably with some other commercial services. For example, incoming tour operators and travel agents can charge two or three times that amount.
I am not saying for a minute that everything is rosy; however, visitscotland.com has got off to a good start. The service can and will be improved. Although such debates highlight issues that must be addressed, they also help to highlight the service's great benefits for tourism in Scotland in the years to come.
I thank Nora Radcliffe for securing the debate. It is with sadness and reluctance that I must concur with her earlier sentiments that many tourism providers are very unhappy about visitscotland.com's service. Many of my own constituents who let houses or chalets have told me that many providers have already left and that many more are seriously considering whether to stop using the service.
Much of the west coast relies on tourism as a primary and secondary source of income and people there suggest that they deserve a better service than they are getting. Like Nora Radcliffe, I have been contacted by constituents who claim that they cannot access the visitscotland.com website if they use AOL. I am not exactly computer literate, but I reiterate Nora Radcliffe's sentiments that if an organisation such as VisitScotland, which has 11,000 members, is trying to attract custom from an organisation that has 30 million members, it is the one that should change or adapt.
The unhappiness with the service can be seen by the number of websites set up by former visitscotland.com members. There is now a proliferation of them throughout the country: visitsouthofscotland.com; visitwestofscotland.com; and visitargyll.com—to name but a few. They are popping up everywhere.
I find it ironic that, in the week that we are debating the problems of our tourism industry, the Irish Tourist Board has a display in the Parliament's lobby. I wonder whether VisitScotland has ever had a display in the Dáil. If we are looking for a model for the Scottish tourism industry, why do we not try to emulate the Irish example—it seems to work for them.
After all that, I am pleased to say that in the Highlands we are fortunate to have an excellent organisation for tourism throughout the Highlands and Islands. The Highlands of Scotland Tourism Board officials and staff have gained the support and confidence of their members through their professionalism and dedication to the tourism industry in the area. Unfortunately—I say this with reluctance—their valiant efforts are being undermined by the inadequacy of their colleagues at visitscotland.com, which is obviously in need of a radical reappraisal so that Scotland can once again enjoy the economic benefits of a buoyant and successful tourism industry.
I thank Nora Radcliffe for introducing the topic, which is a very important one for us to debate.
I have to agree with Alex Fergusson that we are six or eight months late in debating the matter, because the establishment of visitscotland.com was a disaster. I am told by an industry insider that it has become a benchmark for how not to build and launch a website—as in, "We must be careful that we do not do a visitscotland.com."
The website was greeted with uproar by tourism providers—Galloway tourism providers, in particular, were outraged. That has soured its whole relationship with providers. It was launched months before it was ready to go public—it was not accurate, it was not effective and it did not work.
The other great problem was the contract under which visitscotland.com was formed. As a private finance initiative project, it is a commercial operation so its only source of revenue is a percentage of the booking charge; therefore, its interest was principally to get people to book accommodation through it and selling Scotland was a secondary goal. I outlined that problem to the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport at the meeting of the Enterprise and Culture Committee on 28 October and asked him to address it. I am delighted to hear that the contract has now been revised and that visitscotland.com now incorporates links to the websites of other tourism providers—something that it refused to do when I visited it in the summer. That is a real improvement, on which congratulations are due.
The site as a whole has developed and it is now working much better than it was, although it is still dogged by the reputation that was caused by its early failure.
I am concerned at the prospect of local tourist information centres handing over calls to visitscotland.com, because there is no substitute for local knowledge. The book knowledge that is obtained by visitscotland.com operators is not as good as local knowledge. Further to that, given the growing trend towards relocating call centres to countries with lower employment costs, I hope that we can rest assured that would-be visitors to Scotland do not have their calls routed to somewhere else in the world—that is entirely possible with a PFI project.
Finally, I will make a couple of green points. I was delighted to see that visitscotland.com features a section entitled "See Scotland without a car". However, I looked in vain for a link to traveline Scotland—the Executive's own travel information service. That must be addressed.
A perception of Scotland as a green and clean destination is one of Scottish tourism's most powerful assets. Research by VisitScotland and VisitBritain and by independent institutions has confirmed that environmental aspects are important considerations for some of our most important customers, such as the German and Dutch markets, and some of our highest-spending customers. We need to ensure that we do not take that cleanness and greenness for granted and that we promote Scotland as a high-quality destination.
Tourism is perhaps more important for my constituency than it is for any other constituency in Scotland. I echo the sentiments that most speakers have expressed and congratulate Nora Radcliffe on securing the debate and on her remarks on the television last night, which I thought were very good.
I have been inundated with complaints from small tourism operators from throughout my constituency, but I do not think that there would be any point in my adding to the examples that have been given. I want to move forward and make some rather different points.
I obtained—with some difficulty—the accounts of eTourism Ltd. I did so after meeting the chief executive of VisitScotland, who said that the information that the accounts contained was confidential. At the time, I did not know that the accounts, far from being commercially confidential, had been published in Companies House—I did not know that the company was called eTourism Ltd, or I would have found that out for myself. When I made the acquaintance of the accounts, I discovered that in the first period of operation of nearly 12 months to 31 December, the company made a whopping loss of £1.248 million. The accounts stated that the company's turnover was £879,000.
VistScotland's response was that those figures were very much in accordance with the business plan. However, the business plan requires, of course, the repayment of debts of £7.4 million. SchlumbergerSema has 60 per cent of that—or £4.5 million—but the taxpayer invested a whopping £1.875 million through VisitScotland and £1.125 million through Partnerships UK.
I seriously question whether the enterprise will become profitable. I do not say that because I want it to fail—we all want it to succeed. However, it is difficult to believe that the enterprise can achieve the success that we all want it to achieve, such is the discontent about its performance so far, in particular among small providers, and such is the needless provocation of remarks such as the one in the briefing that VisitScotland provided for this debate that in the website's first year of operation, it waived subscription fees—as if that were an act of extreme generosity on its part.
The difficulty for the minister, of course, is that visitscotland.com is essentially a private company. Some 60 per cent is owned by SchlumbergerSema. Frankly, we might as well be debating Marks and Spencers with a large minority shareholding interest. It is up to the minister to ensure that VisitScotland responds to the criticisms of it that have been made in the debate. Those criticisms have been varied and, largely, measured—I have not read from letters that I have received, which I can assure the minister use language that is slightly less measured. I hope that he will respond by indicating exactly what he will do to ensure a better deal, in particular for the small tourism provider in Scotland.
I hope that the minister will not give the response that he gave me when last I raised the issue with him in the chamber, when I was told bluntly that unless I had visited the call centre at visitscotland.com, I was not entitled to have an opinion on the matter. I took his advice, however, and Alex Fergusson and I visited the centre, where we had a lengthy meeting with officials.
Maureen Macmillan alluded to the issue that is at the heart of the problem before she left the chamber: the visitscotland.com site has been mis-sold. There has been a fundamental misunderstanding about what it is about, relative to a national integrated information provision—which is what is in VisitScotland's briefing. That is not what visitscotland.com, as previously constituted, is about; it is a booking agency that aims to sell bookings and maximise the amount of money that it gets from those bookings.
That is not necessarily a bad thing, and I certainly do not subscribe to Kenny MacAskill's public-private, good-bad argument. However, there is a fundamental flaw: having been sold to the tourism industry and the wider public in a certain way, visitscotland.com is not doing what people think it does. For example, if one looks up an establishment in Moffat and then checks what other attractions exist, one finds cinemas in Glasgow listed. That is because those cinemas pay visitscotland.com to be on the site. At the same time, attractions that are in Moffat itself, for example free council attractions, are not on the site. Unless the fundamental arrangements are changed, such attractions will not appear on the site. The Scottish Executive and visitscotland.com must consider whether such information should be included. If it is to be included, who will pay for that? SchlumbergerSema signed up on the basis of its making money, but has found itself landed with a pig in a poke. There are all sorts of expectations about it, but nobody is willing to pick up the tab.
I think that visitscotland.com is a good idea in principle but it has already fallen into disrepute—we have heard numerous examples of that. It will fall further into disrepute unless the fundamental issue is addressed of whether it will carry non-profit-making information and, if so, who will pay for that.
Mike Watson was rather disingenuous. As part of the initial deal, visitscotland.com was handed a whole lump of business. However, we have not had any proof of whether it has generated any additionality. I would like to hear whether visitscotland.com has added anything or whether it has simply processed what it was handed on a plate.
In some ways, I am disappointed that this topic has come up for debate again. A number of genuine concerns were expressed when visitscotland.com was set up. Particular concerns related to consultation of the tourism industry and to some of the information that was provided for businesses. I had hoped that some of those concerns would have been ironed out, so it is a bit disappointing to hear that the problems of some time ago persist in some parts of the country. Personally, I have not heard many complaints recently; it may be that, in the south of Scotland, things are a bit better than they were before. However, problems clearly persist throughout the rest of the country.
I was around with Mike Watson when visitscotland.com was brought into being. It was always intended that it would be a tool for business. It was not to drive business and it was not to be compulsory; it was to be a tool that would, we hoped, be so attractive to business that most people would want to sign up to it and use it.
Members have spoken about misleading information. Area tourist boards are responsible for some of the local information on the site, and businesses are responsible for some of the information about themselves. It may be that some of the area tourist boards should examine the information that they make available to ensure that it is correct and that the site is as good as it should be.
Like many others, I looked up my own locality on the site this afternoon. Obviously, I did not try to book anything, and I did not go in through AOL, so I cannot comment on those issues. I looked at hotels, bed and breakfasts and inns, and I got 293 results, most of which seemed to be in Dumfries and Galloway. Of those 293, 153 were in the lowest price range—between £10 and £22 a night. That rather suggests that the site is attractive to some of the smaller businesses.
Most of the businesses seem to be bookable either online or via the national phone line. However, by clicking on the link for further details, it is possible to get addresses and, in some cases, postcodes so that maps can be accessed. In many cases, phone numbers are given, so people do not have to book through the national phone line but can book directly with the business concerned. It was always the intention that people should not be forced to go through the national phone line.
I also had a look at some of the activities that are mentioned on the website. If I do have a criticism, it would be to say that the range of activities is possibly a little limited at the moment. For example, I found no mention of equestrian tourism, which is a growing opportunity in our area. In the wildlife section, I asked where we could see red squirrels and red kites in Dumfries and Galloway. I was told where I could see them in Nairn, but I did not think that that was terribly helpful. However, the website is improving.
I say to visitscotland.com that, if there are genuine concerns, they should be looked into. However, I regret that visitscotland.com so often gets negative publicity, because it is a very useful tool for marketing tourism in Scotland. I believe that it is a national portal that could be particularly useful for areas such as mine, which are not so well known for the cycling, climbing and walking that can be done there.
First, I congratulate Nora Radcliffe on securing today's debate on visitscotland.com. It is a particular pleasure for me to participate in the debate, given that I know about the front end of the business. Perhaps I should declare an interest, as my wife runs a small bed and breakfast in Edinburgh, which means that I am only too aware of the problems that the industry faces.
The debate comes at the end of six months during which I have been consulting all the B and B owners in my constituency of Edinburgh South who are on visitscotland.com, following my receipt of a number of letters last summer about the website and the telephone booking service.
Only last month, I arranged a number of meetings between B and B owners in my constituency and Philip Chalmers of visitscotland.com, at which owners were able to put their concerns directly to the organisation and hear what it had to say—visitscotland.com's representative was very engaging and answered almost all my constituents' concerns. If any member would like a copy of the minutes of that meeting, I will be happy to provide them. The meeting followed a visit that I made to the organisation's headquarters in Livingston, during which I was able to see at first hand the work that it does and to hear about its plans for the future. I know that other members have also made such visits.
I will make two brief comments on issues that arose from those meetings, the first of which relates to the role and function of visitscotland.com. In my view, there has been a misunderstanding within the tourism industry and among politicians that visitscotland.com is run by or connected to VisitScotland; indeed, that was my understanding until the meetings that I have mentioned. Fergus Ewing referred continually to VisitScotland when he meant visitscotland.com. The two organisations have no connection—as others have said, visitscotland.com is a private company. Although the area tourist boards are minority shareholders—they own 12.75 per cent of visitscotland.com—and visitscotland.com pays VisitScotland to use that name and to appear in its adverts, it must be recognised that there are others who have that opportunity. It is a public-private partnership that has a technology company as a major shareholder and which operates as a private company.
As has been said, it is a fact that B and B owners have not yet paid anything for being part of the website. Many B and B owners who are involved in other websites find that they are substantially more expensive. The charge to owners by visitscotland.com will be £25 per annum from this year—use of the service was free last year—which allows 1,000 words and 15 photographs on the website. Other providers do not offer that.
I want to comment on the problems that the website and telephone booking service have had. For example, visitscotland.com accepts that there have been problems in the first year of operation and that there has been a lack of engagement with the industry. As others have said, many of the problems stemmed from the rush to use the website when it went live; there was a huge demand for visitscotland.com's services, which it struggled to cope with last summer.
Following my meetings, I have no doubt that the people at visitscotland.com have a passion for the Scottish tourism industry and that they will do all that they can to improve users' experience of the website. I suggest that all members engage with visitscotland.com. Given that Philip Chalmers came to my constituency, I am sure that he would be most willing to go to other members' constituencies to talk to their B and B providers.
I thank the Presiding Officer for fitting me into what is a heavily subscribed debate; I will be brief.
I have always been told that any successful website is entirely dependent on the links that it possesses. The fact that visitscotland.com will not link to any other site that offers accommodation or online booking services means that it has no links; therefore, by definition, it cannot be a particularly good website. That goes to the root of the problem, because visitscotland.com should be an information provider—an umbrella site that has links to the thousands of high-quality individual websites that accurately reflect the depth, quality and diversity that Scottish tourism encompasses. Instead, visitscotland.com is a commercial competitor in the tourism market, which means that it acts to cut out information on other competitors altogether, even when it is meant to be promoting those competitors.
On overseas access, if one takes five minutes to trawl through the website—particularly the foreign language site—page after page of accommodation inquiries are returned with the message, "Error: this page cannot be displayed". If somebody in Germany, Sweden or France gets that message two or three times, they will soon go to another website, which probably means going to another country. There is a potential cost to tourism.
I will finish by quoting from a letter that was recently written to The Scottish Farmer by a constituent of mine, Joan Mitchell of Newton Stewart, on the subject of Quality Meat Scotland. She said:
"If QMS want to see an example of the problems which occur when a national promotional body loses touch with a fragmented industry, they need look no further than the tourist industry and visitscotland."
I point out that Joan Mitchell is the leader of the Liberal Democrats on Dumfries and Galloway Council and that she was the chair of Dumfries and Galloway Tourist Board when visitscotland.com was introduced.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I realise that I omitted to declare an interest: I have a small interest in a business that I think may be accessed—indirectly, through about three websites—through visitscotland.com. I apologise for not mentioning that.
I think that that gets you out of jail.
I hope that Chris Ballance will get some business through that promotion.
I thank Nora Radcliffe for providing the opportunity to discuss the concerns about visitscotland.com and the role of the Executive and VisitScotland in addressing those concerns. Members identified a number of detailed issues during the debate. I suggest that, as Mike Pringle said, they should take up the offer to utilise the experience of the new official who has been working in recent months to try to address many of the concerns that users and businesses have raised and to ensure that a more seamless approach is taken. I am sure that a host of points will be raised with visitscotland.com as a result of the debate, which I hope that the company will address.
The issues of the thinking behind visitscotland.com and of how to grow tourism in Scotland have been raised. The parliamentary committee that considered the tourism strategy made two main findings. One was that we should promote Scotland more throughout Europe and the world to ensure that people visit Scotland and that they can access different parts of Scotland. The second was that we should use the emergent information technology to ensure that we do those things effectively.
There will always be teething problems, but given that visitscotland.com is a commercially driven enterprise through a public-private partnership, I hope that the current situation will concentrate its mind. Ultimately, the company must respond to its customers' wishes. I am sure that it has a long-term business plan to address the issues, notwithstanding Fergus Ewing's perspective, which is the one that he often has when he considers financial planning for major projects and developments. I want to ensure the viability of visitscotland.com's product for the development of tourism in Scotland.
We must mention the importance of tourism to the Scottish economy—we have not heard about that often enough. More than £4.5 billion comes from tourism into the Scottish economy and the industry accounts for 215,000 jobs. The industry is important and we need to continue to get it right. Already, visitscotland.com has handled more than 66,000 bookings, which have generated more than £9 million-worth of business for the industry in Scotland.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will finish this point first; it is important to do so for the purposes of balance.
A customer survey showed that more than 99 per cent of customers rated the service as good or better and that more than 98 per cent of customers said that they would book again via visitscotland.com. There is discontinuity between that evidence and the anecdotal evidence and experiences that some members have mentioned. We need to find a way of resolving that issue so that the experiences that members hear about reflect those figures much more.
Will the minister expand on the figures and answer the question asked by my colleague David Mundell about how much of the business is new and how much has simply been directed through that route because it had to be?
I do not have that information to hand, but I guarantee that I will respond to David Mundell. I will endeavour to ensure that the information on any other point that has been raised and that we cannot address this evening through lack of time is made available.
Members raised a number of other issues. As of 1 April, there will be an annual charge of £25 for subscribers to the listings. I do not think that that figure—50p a week—is in any way unreasonable in a comparative sense. The fee for being listed on the website includes the option to display up to 15 photographs.
I agree that £25 a year is not an enormous amount of money to pay but, given that it is a new charge, one would expect people to be able to make slightly better use of visitscotland.com. However, the people to whom I have spoken appear already to be fed up with visitscotland.com.
An equivalent listing on yell.com would be five times that figure. People need to take that into account. With regard to issues of customer dissatisfaction, I point out that visitscotland.com has in place a structure that is designed to address those concerns—that structure was not in place at the start of the project.
People have made broad points about responsiveness. I am glad that David Mundell has visited the call centre and I hope that that relationship can be beneficial in terms of any concerns that he might have about visitscotland.com. I believe that the Official Report will show that I encouraged members to visit the centre, although I would not exclude any member from participating in a debate just because they had not endeavoured to go to a certain place beforehand.
Can the minister confirm that visitscotland.com is meeting its financial targets and that it is still intended that the loan repayments will begin on 1 May 2005?
The information that is available to us leads us to be confident that visitscotland.com is at the stage of its business plan at which it intended to be at this date. The initial years were not about generating substantial profits, which are intended to be delivered in the context of a longer-term business plan.
I assure members that the relationship between the Executive and visitscotland.com is not as submissive as Fergus Ewing suggested in his speech. We are happy to raise issues with visitscotland.com and VisitScotland to ensure that the public interest is looked after with regard to the development of the website.
A number of other issues have been raised by members and I will try to address them in the brief amount of time that I have. On training requirements, staff have a month-long training programme. We will take on board the comments that Jamie McGrigor made, but I assure him that we will endeavour to ensure that visitscotland.com is aware of the issues that it needs to be aware of in relation to customer relations. Elaine Murray raised the issue of the relationship between VisitScotland and the area tourist boards and other local providers. We need to find ways of improving that relationship; doing so will make a difference in the long term.
The fundamental issue that we need to address relates to the technical weaknesses of the system. In that regard, concerns have been raised about the problems with AOL. I give an assurance that the technical problems with AOL have been solved. The problems were not specific to visitscotland.com—in case anyone is paranoid about that—but also affected the Royal Bank of Scotland and Tesco. The main problem was at the AOL end rather than with visitscotland.com. Now that the problem has been solved, we have asked visitscotland.com to endeavour to ensure that it has in place ways in which it can address such issues much more expeditiously and effectively than it could before.
I hope that tonight's debate will make a contribution to ensuring that visitscotland.com meets the aspirations that were set for it and the aspirations of customers. We have an opportunity to ensure that Scotland is well placed in international tourism. One of our key agencies to ensure that we can take advantage of that opportunity will be VisitScotland and one of the key means by which we will do so will be visitscotland.com. I hope that, through tonight's debate, many of the issues that have been raised can be addressed, so that we do not have to return in a year or two to deal with the issues again.
Meeting closed at 17:59.