My hunch was correct and he was from Visit Scotland. Dam, I'd have charged him full price for the room instead of just a single supplement had I known.
Very pleasant man, said lots of nice things about us. Pointed out that the metal bathroom light fitting in his room has spots of rust on it, fair doos, it does.
Not problem with us keeping our 4 stars.
I really think Visit Scotland is living the past though and needs to wake up. I think they have an important role to play in marketing Scotland and getting people to come here and that has to be funded somehow. Quality assurance schemes and acting as agent for activities and accommodation providers seems the best way to do this, but...
1) My previous point that do we really need quality assurance schemes when we have guest review sites?
2) The Tourist Information Centres have a terrible reputation of the staff passing the majority of bookings to their mates. For us, 8 miles from Inverness, the only time the TICs would call us was when Inverness is full and then we'd be fully booked anyway. We'd be lucky to get 2-3 bookings a year from them.
3) With the growth of Destination Management Organisations marketing individual areas, even that role is going for VS. Destination Loch Ness has done more projects on the ground to improve the visitor experience in 2 years that VS has acheieved in the last 10 (probably more)..
We are putting together a DMO right now and quite franlkly think that will do a heck of a lot more for me than VB ever has plus at £35 a year is a much better price. We are kind of weird here as we all are competition but work together to make money kind of like a huge disfunctional family made of really wierd parts lol. Wouldn't trust VB to find their own arse unsupervised but at least they are doing this at the moment
This is a sum up from a friend who attended this consultation meeting where they are trying to be more consultative.
The QIT meeting I attended on wed was worth going to - but a disappointment in many ways.
Firstly there were only 4 of us there - we were promised 8 - it was at a hotel who hadn't yet renewed its star ratings and didn't attend the meeting - which I though was poor. It lasted 2 and half hours - needed 4 I would say.
The QIT man was nice and very open and no one felt they had any reason to hold back -also someone there from the organisation with the inspection contract.
This is a first time they have done this exercise and they were finding it very useful -well yes they are playing catch up for 100 years of none 2 way communication!
The other people there had 60 beds, 12 beds and 5 beds and us at 20. They were all from the Manchester area - with good support from Marketing Manchester - which made me envious.
I think our input supported the removal of overnight visits with maybe 2 or more spot check visits a year so it became more relevent and dynamic - not a static system so it can help combat the reliance on TA. The publishing of sections of the report - possibly on a VB widget with link from our site - like TA - so "great bedrooms -comfy beds - " etc.
They are also looking at a new site with Guest reviews - not fed from TA. They floated the idea of also adding a booking platform this wasn't felt to be a good idea -- especially if Evivo was involved.
The value of the Assessment was felt to be very limited and the Assessors should be a fountain of knowledge -eg cheapest insurance companies - latest occupancy figures - industry trends - benchmarking etc. Also to offer more consultancy and more common sense.
They said all assessors now viewed both our TA scores and our website functionality before a visit. A recent hotel visit went very well - an overnight - great standards etc yet there were very very low TA scores - one past guest had posted 121 bad reviews following his stay -hope that idea doesn't catch on!!!Apparently also they will now sometimes book using our sites, LR etc though also follow it up with a call to the hotel.
The question how relevent was the review system to our Guests was felt not as dynamic or informative as say TA - for example it might be 3 years old info - TA 3 min and doesn't even cover all important areas to a Guest - eg Noise - Functionality of Web Site etc.
They said that they are also considering moving to monthly payments for VB - something I am in favour of as it might follow a monthly or just more regular communication - as it moves from a static once or twice a year direct debit. They are already considering introducing a number of member benefits - such as discounts from suppliers etc.