Good Use of Blog by Dornoch Hotelier

Grant Sword who's currently looking after the marketing and management of the recently re-opened Royal Golf Hotel in Dornoch has takane advantage of the press furore about Alex Salmond's remark about choosing to go to Dornoch so he could play golf!

His recent blogpost and Facebook plays on the benefits of combining business with pleasure in The Highlands.

Ian McCaig of The Edge who looks after the on-line marketing for Grant's three hotels in The Highlands praised the hotel's understanding of what was needed, "It is a positive opportunistic use of social media to promote the business. Tourism operators across Scotland should be using current affairs to shape their own website content. If people are searching Google for "Alex Salmond dornoch golf hotel" then you want to make sure that you've got a chance to be found for those terms.

The very timely Escape to The Highlands blog on the visits helps achieve this and linking to it from the Royal Golf Hotel's Facebook page ensures that his industry and business contacts get the message directly. Within thirty minutes of publishing the Blog article this is what Google search for the above term showed up"

For a Guide to Blogging for the hospitality and Tourism sector contact The Edge Online

Scottish Highlands Year of Food and Drink Support

New funding for a series of events in the Highlands to mark the year-long celebration of Scotland's iconic produce has been announced.

As part of the national drive to promote Scotland as a land of food and drink, additional funding of £25,000 has been awarded to events in the Highlands. This funding, which is in addition to financial support already being provided to a wide range of events across the Highlands, will support activity showcasing the finest Scottish cuisine and encouraging greater use of local and seasonal produce.

The events aim to build on the success of Homecoming 2009, which generated an additional £53.7 million in tourism revenue for Scotland's economy and helped secure 372,000 more visits to Scotland than in 2008. As a legacy of Homecoming Scotland 2009, Scotland's Year of Food and Drink (May 2010-May 2011) is the first in a series of focus years highlighting some of Scotland's great assets. The year will help support two of Scotland's key sectors - tourism and food and drink.

More information on the Year of Food and Drink and how your business can get involved is available from teh VistScotland website or you can download the Food and Drink Toolkit here

TM Briefing - Using Google Alerts

One of the least used tools in our experience by the hospitality sector is Google Alerts and in all honesty it should be up there as one of yur online marketing priorities.

If you search the internet you'll find loads about reputation management - roughly translated as the process of monitoring (and improving) how others view you, or your business and products. If set up properly, and by properly that equates to approximately ten minutes in the first place and some tweaking here and there, Google Alerts will keep you up to date hourly, daily or weekly on what the internet (or more accurately those on it) is saying about your business.)

And if you're smart you'll also use it to see what they are saying about your competitors. Of course it's not only about reputations and customer comments. Want to be kept up to date with what promotions your oppostion are running or planning. Well you can track that too.

Accessible and managed from your Google Account, Alerts works by tracking all instances your key phrases are mentioned online. It will then email you on a regular basis - you set the frequency - with refernces to your selected  phrases.

Start off your Alerts with some of the following for your own business:-

• Your Business Brand Name- (hotel golf course, restaurant, etc)
• Location Linked - (property name and town or area)
• Location and event or activity linked - (eg Ayrshire Golf events, Speyside whisky trail)
• Former names of your business
• Names of your products - (restaurants, bars, golf courses)
• Your owners or management company
• Your competitors (repeat all of above even with their names?)

As said above constant tweaking is the best way forward. Add and delete phrases as required but do keep on top of what's out there. It makes clear sense to use the tools in front of you to better understand your business and the market place surrounding you.

Contact us for further information on how to build your online tourism marketing strategy

Scottish Enterprise - Value for Money?

In the light of all of the figures being pushed about about budget cuts and job losses across the public sector it would seem logical that tourism and hospitality will feel the pain in terms of budget reductions and staffing cuts. However there are arguments made that in fact these cuts may actually be of a benefit to the development of Scottish tourism and not a hindrance.

Over the next couple of weeks we'll try to explore the arguments further and identify just where the public sector should be spending its hospitality pound if anywhere. I've heard the argument made most strongly that there is very little that would not be taken up by the private sector in travel, tourism and event development should VisitScotland, the councils or the enterprise companies not have funds available to support.

Your comments on what role the public sector should be playing in the next five years in tourism and hospitality would be welcomed. In the meantime the polar opposites of the value of Scottish Enterprise were highlighted in the linked article from The Herald.

Who's right?

MTV Crashes into Glasgow

News release this morning from EventScotland who have been involved with MTV in bringing MTV Crashes... to Glasgow in late summer:-

 

"The event which will take place on September 29 is "to be headlined by global superstar Diddy’s new collective; Diddy – Dirty Money. This exclusive free concert will take place at The Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow; fans can apply for free tickets online at www.mtv.co.uk/crashesglasgow. The show will be filmed as a MTV Worldstage and broadcast via MTV channels in 161 countries and over 640 million households as part of MTV’s global Friday night live music programming."

The press release continues saying that "Working in close partnership, MTV, Glasgow City Marketing Bureau and EventScotland will develop a 2010 exclusive, bespoke night of music; hosted by the world’s number one youth brand, bringing one of the world’s top artists to Scotland and reinforcing Glasgow’s style credentials to a global audience."

 

Kerry Taylor, Senior Vice President Content & Creative, MTV Networks UK & Ireland said: “Glasgow is the ideal destination for MTV Crashes... The city’s legendary venues and thriving music scene have already led to Glasgow being hailed as ‘Europe’s secret capital of music’ by Time Out and combining that with the unprecedented kudos that the MTV brand delivers will make this a gig to remember!"

 

In the Daily Record, Glasgow council leader and chairman of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, Gordon Matheson, said: "Having an act of the magnitude of Diddy - Dirty Money performing in Glasgow not only represents a major coup for the city but also reinforces its style credentials."