Newsletter 1

Why yesscotland.com

yesscotland.com was finally launched in early January, a few months later than originally anticipated due to a few unforeseen technical problems all of which have now been resolved. There are upwards of 10,000 paid for and free entries on the site and the number of businesses converting from free entries to enhanced ones is increasing by the week.
The site was set up to offer potential visitors an honest view of Scotland. These views may not, at times, be exactly "PC" but it is yesscotland.com's view that a purely sanitised version of Scotland is a dis-service not only to Scotland but also to the visitors whom we hope to attract.
We will praise where we feel it is due but at the same time disagree where we see visitors being short-changed by below standard products or less than good value for money. A yesscotland.com recommendation will be worth something and will not be given lightly.
The people behind the site are seasoned tourism professionals with experience of tourism both here in the UK and abroad and with a vast knowledge of Scotland and its tourism assets. yesscotland.com gives us the opportunity to write about this beautiful and diverse country of ours and try and help potential visitors to convert their aspirations into reality. As simple as that!

Number of Businesses

yesscotland.com is broken down by region, town/city/village and by type of business. The gazetteer already has over 2,100 cities, towns and villages most of which have some sort of description - this is on-going and any additions (or corrections!) to the gazetteer would be gratefully received!
The site also has over 125 different business types, all fully searchable from Accommodation - B&B to Yacht Charters and all businesses have, at least, the postal address and telephone number available.
The total number of pages in the site must be well over 11,000 by now but the actual figure is difficult to ascertain! However, we do know that the search engines have been doing their work and that Google has scanned over 10,000 pages with MSN and Yahoo not far behind. The site has been designed to be very search engine friendly.

Traffic

Although the site has only been "live" for 15 weeks, traffic has evened out at just over 4,000 page downloads per day. One week in February gave rise to 65,000 page downloads and that has been the peak to date.

Hot Deals

We are working very closely with our Tour Operator colleagues in Scotland and with our trade colleagues and the number of Hot Deals is rising - not surprising if their "deal" is being seen on every page of the site by 5,000 people per day!


Google Promotion

The site is soon to commence a promotional campaign with Google.

Imagery

It is true to say that any tourism site on the web is looking for new images and we are no exception. Should you have a favourite view of any part of Scotland that you would like to see on the web, let us see it and if we have room we will put it up. However, please give us full details of the view and the date it was taken with your permission to use them on the site!

Holiday Ideas

This section of the site is being expanded every week. Most of the content is taken from personal recollections/experience of the yesscotland.com personnel and colleagues. Any recommendations from yourselves will be considered but we have to verify before adding to the site. Likewise, your recommendations on accommodation, restaurants etc.

Recommendations and "yesscotland.com says" comments
These are not given lightly. Every recommendation is considered in depth by the Editorial staff. If, having been published, we receive negative comments, these will also be taken into account.