EventScotland a Non-Event?

Whaddya mean you've never hard of EventScotland? Surely you have? It's the organization that, amongst other things, has been coordinating Homecoming Scotland – that mega event designed to bring Scots home in their droves during the course of 2009. You'll not be surprised to know that they have about the same abilities in their web site activities as their counterpart VisitScotland.

According to their web site "At EventScotland we are working hard, with our partners, to ensure Scotland remains one of the premier event destinations in the world." It's yet another quango who are sucking up money that could be better spent if it were part of a better structured situation under the tourism umbrella (although not VisitScotland of course). So inept are the numpties at EventScotland that they cannot even spell Britain in their literature (they think it's Britian!). They have also just paid a London PR firm £40,000 to undertake PR on Homecoming Scotland. EventScotland employs around 25 people with a staff cost of £4.6 million and last year they contributed almost £4 million to various events (not saying that's a bad thing but when their staff costs are higher than what they contribute it begs the question). EventScotland's other operating costs were almost £600,000.

By the way, still no word on how VisitScotland intend to run their online booking service following the debacle with eTourism. eTourism's cumulative losses to the end of 2007 were £12.4 million, VisitScotland have had to write-off a £2.7 million of loans and interest on loans in their last accounts. Meanwhile we still have a rubbish web site and no sign of things getting any better.