We have launched the new homepage for visitscotland.com – the national booking and information website for Scottish tourism.

Introduced on 1 August 2009, the new homepage for visitscotland.com has been redesigned to give a more comprehensive shop window for Scottish tourism, with dynamic and exciting content visible from the first click of the mouse.

Emphasising the use of rich media (images and videos), these changes are designed to inspire users and draw them further into the site. The new homepage gives quick and more direct access to accommodation, event information, attraction and activities and features a new improved site search. Current marketing campaigns will also be featured on the homepage.

Elsewhere in the site, the changes at this stage are largely cosmetic, removing the current blue/green colour scheme and replacing it with colours that reflect the VisitScotland brand.

Hold the front page! The new issue of VisitScotland.com e-newsletter has just hit the stands. Highlight of this month’s edition is one of our best competitions so far: this is your chance to win a luxury holiday in the Scottish Highlands this summer. The prize is for a two-night stay for you and the family at the Isles of Glencoe Hotel and Leisure Centre. If that wasn’t enough, we’re throwing in a thrilling fast boat wildlife tour with Sea Xplorer. Plus, there’s news and info about exciting events in Scotland and what’s happening on VisitScotland.com. Happy May days to you all.

Our TripAdvisor pilot went live yesterday for around 500 serviced accommodation providers. To see how it renders, do an accommodation search and look for the TripAdvisor logos; alternatively, there are screenshots (and information on its operation) here.

The reviews widget will be activated for a second block of providers very shortly and over the next few months, we will be evaluating how the widget is being used. We will also be monitoring feedback from both customers and the industry at large before, hopefully, extending this initiative to a wider range of tourism service providers.

As of Monday 16th March, the offices of VisitScotland.com will relocate from Fairways Business Park in Livingston to the VisitScotland headquarters in Leith. Our new postal address will be

VisitScotland.com
Ocean Point One
94 Ocean Drive
Leith
Edinburgh
EH6 6JH

All parts of the business will transfer to the new location on this date and it is intended that all services will maintained throughout the move period.

Personal email addresses will be unchanged by the move although obviously there will be new direct-dial phone numbers; these will be notified to all contacts by members of staff once they are finalised. The 0845 2255 121 contact number for the National Booking & Information Centre remains active and unchanged.

Our monthly e-newsletter has just gone out and as usual, it’s full of news, info and great competitions. This month, you can win a fantastic two-night stay for two people at Dalhousie Castle, one of the finest luxury hotels in Scotland. Be sure to sign up to receive future e-newsletters direct to your in-box.

This month’s big news is that we’ve teamed up with the world’s number one travel review, TripAdvisor, which will allow us to feature  independent feedback from travellers on over 500  establishments spread throughout the country.

This exciting new development recognises – and is our response to -  the increasing importance that visitors are placing on the views and experiences of their fellow travellers. As more and more people use the internet to plan and book their holidays so they have come to rely increasingly on review sites featuring posts of  experiences of destinations, accommodation and activities. Many consider this candid, independent advice an essential part of planning their trip, with recent research showing that traveller-generated reviews are second only to photographs and videos in influencing travel-booking decisions.

From the end of February, visitors to our site will begin to see TripAdvisor branding and reviews against selected properties on accommodation search results and on property detail pages. Used in conjunction with the existing VisitScotland Quality Assurance star gradings, these TripAdvisor ratings will allow our customers to make more informed choices about the best places for them to stay in Scotland, which can only be good for both customers and businesses alike.

For more information, check out these FAQs.

In honour of the Bard’s 250th anniversary, we’ve added a new section telling you everything you wanted and needed to know about Robert Burns and all the Homecoming Scotland celebrations devoted to him.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave (or in one of the few corners of the earth that the Scottish diaspora didn’t reach), you’ll be aware that Homecoming Scotland is nearly upon us. The team has been busy loading up a great range of dedicated packages and short-breaks for various signature Homecoming events: the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Open Golf Championship, the Gathering of the Clans, to name but a few.

As more and more travel companies get behind Homecoming so we’re being inundated with more and more package offerings to feature on the site and the packages section will grow and develop accordingly as the year progresses. It’s probably best to bookmark this page to make sure you don’t miss anything.

The official Homecoming Scotland website has the full listing of  events for the year.

We’ve just sent out the our latest e-newsletter packed with seasonal goodies, including the chance to win Edinburgh Hogmanay Street Party tickets plus a luxury hotel break for two. It’s well worth  signing up if you want to receive future e-newsletters for exclusive competitions, offers, news, features and all the best about Scotland.

As the country’s first ever Homecoming celebration moves ever closer, VisitScotland has launched a new TV advert to fire up native Scots themselves, getting them to help spread the Homecoming message and invite friends and family back to Scotland in 2009. The advert features home-grown celebrities from the worlds of music, sport and the movies performing a rendition of Dougie Maclean’s moving tribute to his native land, Caledonia, against a backdrop of iconic Scottish scenes. As First Minister Alex Salmond noted, the song ‘resonates with Scots the world over. For those far away, it is a reminder of strong bonds, full of the promise of return. That is what makes it the perfect anthem for our Year of Homecoming’.

You’ll be able to see the advert in STV, Border and Grampian tv regions from Friday 28 November to Friday 5 December and in cinemas across Scotland. What we’d like you to do then is help us spread the word about Homecoming by sending this link to all your friends and family – especially those living outside Scotland – to let them know about the fantastic programme of over 200 events running throughout the year:

www.homecomingscotland2009.com/news/caledonia.html

For the record, the list of celebrities and locations are:

• Buachaille Etive Mhor, Glencoe – Amy Macdonald
• Glasgow Science Centre – Chris Hoy
• Ring of Brodgar, Orkney – Brian Cox
• Turnberry – Sam Torrance
• Robert Burns Statue, Dumfries – Eddi Reader
• Strathisla Distillery, Keith, Speyside – Kelly Brown & Thom Evans, from the Scottish Rugby Team
• Far Beach, Sutherland – Sandi Thom
• Edinburgh Castle – Sir Sean Connery
• Castle Stalker – Lulu