VisitScotland is Scotland's national tourism agency. It is a public body, with offices in Edinburgh, Inverness, London as well as other parts of Scotland. It operates alongside VisitBritain, an organisation with a similar remit for Great Britain as a whole.[1]
VisitScotland brought VisitScotland.com, a public-private partnership back into public ownership in 2008.
One of the organisation's tasks is attracting visitors to Scotland, which it does through advertising, promotional campaigns, as well as encouraging press articles on Scotland and what it has to offer the business or consumer visitor.
VisitScotland has come in for criticism for not devoting sufficient resources to certain areas of the tourism industry and for spending money on areas that are not deemed suitable, for example Tartan Week, held each year in the United States of America. The high-profile of coverage afforded to VisitScotland shows the importance of tourism to Scotland's economy.
VisitScotland also aims to work with the tourism industry in Scotland to maintain standards in visitor attractions and accommodation provision, which it does through its quality grading schemes. VisitScotland works with its industry partners on area tourism partnership agreements.
One aspect of VisitScotland's work is it manages a network of websites featuring a variety of travel interest and holiday activity themes. These, include Golf, Walking, Cycling, City Breaks, Adventure, Ancestral, Ski Scotland and Wildlife and can be found via www.visitscotland.com. There are also a number of International language Scotland Gateway Web sites including the recent addition of the Come to Scotland website - the official Scottish Gateway for North America. Information from VisitScotland's Business Tourism Unit can be found on <http://www.conventionscotland.com>.
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