More proof visitscotland knows little about Scotland…
published this on 3:47 pm, Sunday, 5th July, 2009Business| Community News| Tourism activities | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
… or : ‘a rolling groan gathers no Moss’. The expensive, unimaginative and underinformed national tourism agency, visitscotland has just laid claim to former World Champion race driver Stirling Moss as a Scot. A bewildered and misplaced Moss says he feels first British and then English.
Let’s not talk about gaffes. Let’s just talk about basic procedure – checking your facts. Local newspapers operating on a shoestring and a sense of service can be forgiven for the odd casual mistake. The limousine-budgeted visitscotland can not.
The agency trumpeted Moss as an icon of ‘Scotland’s Automotive Heritage’, along with Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and Colin MacRae, describing them on its website and in an email as: ‘ambassadors of the Scottish winning spirit’.
The act of reverse colonialism was part of a Homecoming Scotland 2009 promotion. While hardly a serious error it is nevertheless another indicative act of incompetence.
It does not behove a Scottish Government majoring on capability to retain an organisation so widely discredited and so lacking in the respect of the industry it exists to serve. It has no credibility – just the kudos of a title and a budget that could be much better spent.
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July 6th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Interesting to read your objective piece on VisitScotland. It’s a shame that you didn’t check your facts (ie that VisitScotland were not involved in writing or submitting this copy)- please feel free to phone our 24 hour press office in the future – it all goes to show that you can’t believe everything you read in the press.
Here’s the response that was given by the Homecoming team to the story
Homecoming Scotland is delighted to be promoting the Scottish Perthshire Hill Rally as a part of the national programme of Homecoming celebrations in 2009, highlighting Scotland’s rich motor sports heritage and the country’s reputation for leading innovation and setting new standards in the industry. Promotional copy related to this event is supplied by the organiser, however we accept a mistake has been made and have subsequently removed the specific reference from our website and future promotional materials. We are grateful to you for having brought this to our attention.
July 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
It would be helpful to us and to our audience to have a clear picture of the ‘structural’ relationship between eventscotland and visitscotland; and an understanding of the nature of the partnership between them and the way it works. Any light you could cast on this would be very welcome.
July 6th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
No problem – EventScotland is a directorate of VisitScotland, so we work really closely together. Both organisations work together with the Scottish Government to deliver a whole raft of marketing, PR and events activity for Homecoming 2009. Examples of the work we’ve been doing can be found at this link:
http://www.visitscotland.org/events-and-training/homecomingscotland/story_so_far.htm
However, just to be clear – in this case,the copy was not supplied by either organisation – but by the event organiser. As soon as we were made aware we removed the copy.