The Old Course Experience - Scottish Golf's Ryanair?

It's an old hobby horse and it's not going to be resolved just because we flag it up again and anyway it suits enough of the big players in Scottish golf tourism as to not "needing fixed" but for the rest of us or for the consumer it really does stick in the throat a little.


Yes, it's "Old Course Travel Trade Tee Time" charade again - the one where tour operators from across the world are given exclusive access to tee times on the Old Course if you only have a mximum of eight golfers, have the lead name in place, have the money to pay the full fees up front, can ensure that the clients details won't change, and only if the tour operator has accommodation in St Andrews.


Oh yeah and in exchange for these restrictions it will only cost you £1602 per fourball and you'll have to pay all of your tee times up front by November 30th this year.

How this arrangement has escaped the scrutiny of bodies such as the Office for Fair Trading or even not be roundly condemed by the golf loving First Minister or VisitScotland is a mystery. Probably however a political mystery.

• It is not good for golf tour operators.
• It is not good for hotels outside of St Andrews in the rest of Fife and beyond.
• It is not good for Scottish Tourism.
• It is not good for the consumer.

It is good for the corporate big boys however and the Links Trust. Ah for a bit of inclusion and Olympic spirit eh?

Here is the full termns and conditions for all you cash rich independant tour operators and golf promoting agents all over the world.

It's only when you read it again that you realise that apart from not threatening to charge you £30 for reissuing a lost scorecard it could be Ryanair's terms and conditions...

Applications for Travel Trade Times 2013 

Applications for Travel Trade tee-times on the Old Course for 2013 will be accepted as follows –

1. Via e-mail from Monday 1st October until Friday October 12th to traveltrade@oldcourse-experience.com Applications received before or after this time will not be considered. 
2. Each application must clearly state the name of the lead golfer or booking reference, the total number of golfers and the dates that they are able to play the Old Course. Tour Operators making a number of applications may send all their applications as an attachment on one e-mail. 
3. The maximum number of golfers per application is 8. Please note that Travel Trade tee-times are sold in 4-balls only. 
4. Successful applications will be notified by Friday 2nd November. 
5. Full payment must be made by Friday 30th November, otherwise tee-times will be released automatically and the reservation cancelled. 
6. The payment is non-transferable and non-refundable. 

If you request a range of dates this may improve your chances of success. Please note the Old Course is closed from May 6 – 9, July 29 – August 5 and September 9 – 30 inclusive for tournaments.

The price for 2013 Travel Trade tee-times is 1620 GBP per 4-ball (405 GBP per golfer) inclusive of VAT – including one round on Old Course and one round on New or Jubilee course. If golfers wish to upgrade to the Castle Course the supplement is 65 GBP per 4-ball.

If you are unsuccessful, applications will not be held on file. Applications for cancellations will be accepted in the same way on Wednesday 9th January 2013.

Travel trade times are allocated for tour operators to package with accommodation in St Andrews and sell to golfers. They are not intended to be re-sold or exchanged as “tee times only” to other tour operators. Any operator that re-sells times in this manner may be excluded from the application process for the following year.

We look forward to welcoming many of your clients to the Old Course next season.

Boat of Garten Guest House Upgrades Online presence

Our Open Room Lite web development package which includes the full integration of online reservations and social media sharing has been selected by another Highland Guest House as the way forward.

The Boat House Guest House in Boat of Garten in the Scottish Highlands went live this week with an all new website and booking engine to replace the VisitScotland web in a box version they had previously been using.

The Open Rooms Lite package was specifically designed with small independent operators in mind and can come with or without the booking engine providing full content management, social media integration, site optimisation and highly personalised design.

When designed properly there is no reason why the independent operators can't have the highest level of content and destination management information to inform and entice their guests to the area and to their property.

Plan B believe that the new Boat House Guest House website achieves both.

Read More about the project and what is included
Visit the Boat House Website

Bravo For Argyll - Brave Cinema Screenings

I think all blogs should be written as freely and openly and as professionally as For Argyll. You just visit it for a couple of minutes a week and find them saying it as it is. It is so much more refreshing reading independant local opinions without fear or favour. They have been at it again with the following article on Brave late last month.

Film distributor makes VisitScotland seem responsible for heavy-handed Brave move on local cinemas

Posted on July 18, 2012 by newsroom

Local and regional cinemas in Scotland have had a communication many assume is from or via VisitScotland, the national tourism agency.

This has led them to understand that they ‘must’ screen the film Brave as a matinee every day over two weeks, whether or not it attracts an audience.

We have had complaints on this from some cinemas beyond as well as in Argyll. In some cases the instruction is impacting on planned showings of local interest.

The cinemas have been told that VisitScotland has a substantial investment in the enterprise and that local support for it is important.

The Disney Pixar animation, Brave, has £7 million of VisitScotland’s (our) money invested in a marketing campaign aimed at using the film to attract overseas visitors to this country.

Why therefore ram it into Scottish local cinemas.

We contacted VisitScotland to enquire about the motivation behind what had been taken to be their initiative – and have received the following statement:

‘The directive will be with the distributor of the film to organize cinemas viewings in their entirety. VisitScotland’s involvement extended to the premiers.

‘We have had no involvement in the listing and screening of Brave for after the general release date.’

So what on earth is the purpose behind this heavy handed and apparently not entirely straightforward move?

Is the film distributor hoping to justify VistScotland’s multimillion pound commitment by convincing it that, even at home, local cinemas cannot wait to get their hands on it?

Is the imperative to persuade taxpayers at home that Brave must have gone viral because it’s also on their own doorsteps?

Or is it an attempt to arouse nationalist sympathies by getting this film out there at all costs?

If it is the latter, the attempt to sell Scotland to residents in Scotland through this film is as likely to misfire as to succeed.

We have seen the advance clips as television and YouTube, as have many.

The sight of a fat, bearded, cartoon kiltie bending over, flipping the back of his kilt over his head, baring his (mercifully) unseen but inevitably hairy buttocks and roaring ‘Feast your eyes’ – and a clutch of simpleton teuchters apparently short of the full merk – may appeal to third form humour but does not augur well for a home audience’s discriminating response to the film.

We’re keeping an open mind – a constant struggle, we admit, as the clips offer little encouragement – and will review the film when we get to it. This is obviously now going to be at a matinee near-ish to home.

This seems a pretty maladroit move from the film distributor and it is a local irritant to VisitScotland’s reputation. Scots don’t warm to ‘being told’. Let’s hope the marketing behind Brave does not prove to be a £7 million misdirection.

VisitScotland Scottish Events Info For Sale!

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Championship Golf. Only About The Money?

The Open has started so there'll be loads and loads of stuff about golf quoted on sites throughout the world but the first one that jumped out on me was the interview on the BBC website with R&A head Peter Dawson.

Now I've never met Peter Dawson and he probably doesn't really care what I think of the statement about Royal Portrush but I do think it deserves some analysis if not some criticism

There is of course the danger that he has been misquoted or misinterpreted but the message in the piece regarding the fitness of purpose of Royal Portrush to host a future Open Championship.

"There would be much work to do for an Open ever to go to Portrush," siad Dawson.

"We have been there before. It's always, to an extent, been on our radar and our championship committee, I'm sure, will continue to evaluate it. But don't expect anything imminent - that's for sure."

That's fine but it the tone of what is then said; 

"If you were at the Irish Open and compare it to what we're doing here, we're talking 20,000 grandstand seats here. I doubt if there were 2,000 at the Irish Open. You're talking about a tented village here that I would estimate is 10 or more times the size than it was at the Irish Open.The crowd size at the Irish Open, while it was very, very good, was only as good as perhaps the lowest we would expect at an Open venue, ie Turnberry. Where would you put the big grandstand complex? The practice ground at Portrush would [also] need a lot of work, in my estimation. We don't have a finishing hole that would have the grandstands around it."

A lot of negatives and not a lot of pluses. But is it not this mindset that has possibly caused the current problems in for example Scottish football. Everything with a commercial price but little value, biggest being best, follow the broadcasting deals and sponsorship opportunities. A lack of sporting integrity?

The Open is more than some commercial opportunity and most of the big players recognise the history. I have been lucky to have watched Open first as a son way back at Murifeld in '72 and then as a father most recently at Turnberry in Ayrshire. I also had the dream job of being 18 and caddying for amateur qualifier Chris Poxon in the '82 Open at Troon.

And the best was then a couple of years ago myself and the Captain, Secretary and Pro at Prestwick all  went out and played from the cairn marking the spot of the original first hole of that historic course on the anniversary of the very first Open Championship 150 years earlier.

And on that day of the 150th anniversary of The Open Championship there was nothing on the R&A website, no press releases issued, no recognition of it at all.  We just teed off and reminisced to ourselves.

None of these events ever had anything to do with money but are all full of emotion and memories.

So when I see such a downplaying of such a magnificent venue you have to question whether golf is in safe hands over on the east coast.

Taking The Open back to Royal Portrush would involve a host of changes for sure but are they bad?

An Open that only attracted 200,000 over six days. Bad? No massive stands around the 18th. Bad? Practice ground logistics. Overcome as they have been with other venues. A smaller tented village. Well I for one could live without the overpriced branded goods that the R&A shamelessly cash in on.

Taking The Open back to Royal Portrush would be so much more than a golf event. It would be (another) defining moment for the inhabitants of that country (north and south) and quite possibly end up being one of the finest, friendliest events in Open history. And even if it was a one off, never to return, the statement from golf's governing body would be clear and be inclusive and be an indication that perhaps there is still some decisions made in the game that we love that are not simply about the largest sponsorship deal possible.

Maybe I'll bump into Peter Dawson at next's week's Seniors Open at Turnberry and I can ask him about why they couldn't just do something for the good of the game without undertaking a Cost Benefit Analysis.

Hopefully Darren Clarke will beat me to it...


Read the Full BBC Article

VisitScotland Urged to Change Online Booking Policy

Over the past three or four months we have tried very hard to keep our comments private with regards to the new VisitScotland.com website and extranet. However as deadlines come and go with increasing regularity we have sent the following content to all of our booking engine clients explaining the situation. The content is relevant to all accommodation providers throughout Scotland and we are asking for support in ensuring that the current situation regarding the VS booking process is changed.

Dear Accommodation Provider

You will all no doubt be aware that in April of this year VisitScotland launched their new website and supporting extranet package.

As part of the contracted proposals VisitScotland should, at the same time as launching the new website designs, have launched an integrated channel management style process which was to allow for the integration of the accommodation’s availability and price direct from their own preferred booking engine. This was in fact one of the major changes to the system and was to ensure that accommodation providers could compete fairly and utilise their own booking engine without being forced to use VisitScotland’s proprietary system.

Whilst it was denied at that time by VisitScotland themselves, it became clear to us in late 2011 that this was clearly behind schedule and the programme for integration of SuperControl, FreetoBook, Bookassist and others was not likely to be ready for the March launch; it was then put back to the first week in June and we now have no definite date for this most important integration.

At a meeting in May of this year we were advised by the VisitScotland digital team that the intention to create in-house “channel management” software to allow operators to link their own availability directly was being seen as extremely expensive and problematic - a position that had been made clear to them on several occasions over the previous two years – and that they were now in discussions with English based Eviivo to utilise an off the shelf channel management solution. Whilst we still have serious commercial concerns over this option it was, we were advised, a solution that could be implemented quickly.

Nearly two months on from that meeting and in the middle of the tourism season we have now been advised that there are still no timescales for this integration and the position remains that the only way to update availability on VisitScotland.com is through a single system charging commissions and increased cost of sales at a time when everyone is feeling economic pain.

It was a critical part of the new website development plan that has taken place over the past two years that the integration of third party booking engines was put in place to ensure that accommodation providers were able to sell their rooms direct at the lowest possible cost. VisitScotland have failed in this important commitment to the accommodation sector and as a result hotels and B&B’s are being once again forced to use a VisitScotland booking engine tool that is neither fit for purpose nor offers any completion.

Bookassist in line with other booking engine providers have become increasingly frustrated with the position that VisitScotland are taking and we now believe that they are impacting directly on the revenues (and costs) of the accommodation providers by not offering the promised integration.

We believe that the current position should not be allowed to continue and call on VisitScotland to implement the easiest of solutions, and one that could, and should, have been in place at the relaunch of the new website. We are simply asking for a direct link to the accommodation providers own booking page to replace the Book Now button currently in situ.

Having been involved in various meetings with VisitScotland through the development process we are aware of how this could easily be done with little or no cost nor time delay and we are calling on the industry to get behind this call.

What is Being Requested

Currently there is a Book Now button on accommodation providers page that links ONLY to VisitScotland’s availability.

We are proposing that where the accommodation provider chooses this button should be replaced with a Book Direct button that opens a new frame opening up the booking page of the accommodation provider directly.

The link would be inserted by the accommodation provider in the current Extranet area. This would only require a simple insertion of a field and button by VisitScotland in the current extranet.

This may not provide the integrated search that VisitScotland wish to have but it does in the short term allow the visitor to access the best available and rates direct from the accommodation provider. This in the end reduces cost and improves service for both the visitor and supplier and increases the attractiveness of the VisitScotland distribution channel.

At a time of difficult market conditions, booking direct remains the lowest cost of sale for all Scottish operators and we think it is incumbent on the national tourism body to facilitate ease of booking for the site visitor and where possible assist in reducing the costs of sales to accommodation providers. Given the comments we have had from accommodation providers in relation to the problems updating the new booking extranet this may be a very popular decision amongst accommodation providers.

We believe that the inclusion of the Booking button could be implemented without any disruption to the new site layout with the addition of a different field pointing the booker to a window or frame. VisitScotland currently link to third party booking sites already without warning the visitor that they are leaving the site so this need not even be seen as a change of strategy and be a quick, convenient and logical fix to an issue that otherwise appears complicate, convoluted and expensive.

We have been pushing for the integration of the Bookassist booking engine for two years now and with the latest delays we felt we now had to seek your support in applying pressure on VisitScotland to change their processes. This can only be of benefit to both the site visitor and accommodation provider.

We are therefore asking you to reply with your own comments indicating whether your support the above statement.

Please add any comments you may have regarding the new VisitScotland extranet as this may assist in producing a stronger case.

Thank you in anticipation for your time.

Seniors Open Qualifying on Scotland's West Coast Links

Of course the thing about Scotland's West Coast Golf Links is that it provides so much more than just three Open Championship venues and that has been shown this year with the number of clubs involved in providing venues for big events.

2012 has seen The Amateur Championship being held over Royal Troon and Glasgow's Gailes Links, The Scottish Amateaur at Barassie Links and the Seniors Open is on its way to Turnberry's Ailsa course - however three other great west coast links courses are involved in the Qualifying for the Seniors Open.

Dundonald Links, Kilmarnock Barassie Golf Club and Turnberry’s Kintyre Course will be hosting an estimated 300 hopefuls hoping to seal a spot in the Championship on the Ailsa course at Turnberry.

The 18-hole qualifier will be played across the three courses on Monday July 23 ahead of the star-studded Senior Open Championship starting three days later and it will give non-exempt players the chance to join some of golf’s great names in the Championship with the hope of reproducing the performance of Pete Oakley in 2004, who came through qualifying before going on to win the Championship at Royal Portrush.

Johnnie Cole-Hamilton, R&A Assistant Director of Championships, said on behalf of the Championship: “We are delighted to bring this most prestigious tournament back to the wonderful Ailsa course at Turnberry, which has produced so many historic and memorable moments in the past. The quality of golf courses on display for the qualification stage of the Senior Open Championship, as well as the main event at Turnberry, only serves to highlight the plentiful golfing assets in the region of South Ayrshire.

The 2012 staging will be third time since the turn of the century that the Championship has been held at Turnberry and if the previous two occasions are anything to go by, it is sure to produce some drama.

We think the drama will start on the three qualifying courses and if you get the chance why not pop along - it's free admission at all three clubs.