It has become vitally important to have a strong online presence in every part of the tourism industry – but nowhere is this more important than when working in the accommodation sector where being available to book online is essential.
As well as using your own site to promote your availibity and offer online bookings why not look at VisitScotland who can display external availability on visitscotland.com for accommodation bookings. The new and improved business listings on the site have been designed to reflect what visitors are looking for and drive as many referrals as possible to businesses. There were 1.2 million referrals in 2015, up 5% on the previous year.
Currently VisitScotland are working with 14 different booking engine providers and this list is continuing to grow. This list currently includes Booking.com, Beds24, Freetobook, LovetoEscape, Bookster, MyUK.travel, Cottages&Castles, Private House Stays, Discover Scotland, Queensborough, Edinburgh View, Supercontrol, Eviivo and SYHA. To appear in an accommodation search that includes preferred dates you must be working with an integrated booking engine – and if you already are this is a great opportunity to have your availability shown in a prominent location online.
To find out more and how to integrate your booking engine into your VisitScotland listing have a look at their information page and the downloadable pdf instructions.